Harry Joscelyn: Volume 3 by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XVI.
 AT HOME.

THE rest of the journey was hurried and feverish. Lady Brotherton was not hard-hearted; she melted every day when in Liddy’s company, and under the influence of her son’s persuasions and the sight of his happiness; but in the night hardened again, occupying herself with reminiscences of former hopes, and summoning up the ideal woman whom she had intended Lionel to marry, a girl who should be noble if possible, rich and beautiful, and with the highest connections, adding to the dignity of the house of Brotherton, as well as the happiness of its future head; and in this alternation the long journey was got through. There was a night in the railway between Marseilles and Paris, a night at Paris, a night in London, in every one of which this freezing process was performed. Every morning the same round had to be gone over again; by noon the ice was melted; by evening Lady Brotherton would listen between tears and smiles to her son’s picture of his future life and all the happiness she would have in her daughter; and would kiss Liddy and bid her good night almost with an enthusiasm of tenderness. But before morning all this was undone, and she got up as unwilling as ever. By common consent Sir John was told nothing of it while the journey lasted. The information was only to be given him when he was safe at home, and his fatigues over. It was evening when Lydia, escorted by Harry, left finally the party of which she had so long formed part, and with which now her fate was linked so closely. She had stayed two days in London, days during which Lady Brotherton had been very kind to her—in the afternoon. And she was very kind to her on that evening, when she took her in her arms in a farewell embrace. She cried over Liddy, and called her my child, and bade God bless her.

“I don’t know what I shall do without you. It will be like losing my right hand,” Lady Brotherton said. And Lionel, as was natural, took a still more tender leave at the railway.

“I shall not be long after you,” he whispered, with his head projected half-way into the carriage. Liddy shook her head.

“I don’t build any hopes on that. Your mother will——”

“What will my mother do? If you think I will allow myself to be coerced by anyone——”

“But I shall!” said Lydia. “It must never, never be, Lionel, unless she is pleased.”

“She will be pleased; but it shall be anyhow, whether she is pleased or not.”

“Oh, no,” Lydia said.

“Oh, yes, yes! and I shall have the last word,” he cried. This little contention went on till the very moment of their parting, and Lydia put down her veil and cried gently when it was over, and the darkness had closed over her and her train, and all that chapter of her life was over. Was it over? for ever and ever done with, not one last moment still left between her and the blank of the elder world? It was dreadful, she knew, to feel as she did, to think of her home with despair, and all those lingering days which would pass without an incident, without a break, in dread monotony and quiet, nothing happening but a visit from Joan, nothing even to be afraid of but a fit of temper on her father’s part. She was frightened by the prospect. It took away her breath. “Mother, dear mother!” she said to herself, with a gasp of self-disgust; that poor mother would be happy to-day thinking of her child’s return; she would go all over the house to see that everything was in order for Liddy. There would be flowers gathered, and fresh curtains hung, and cakes made, and butter churned, and cream put upon the table for Liddy. And Liddy, she cried to herself, with an ache in her heart, Liddy would not care! Oh, the hypocrite she would have to be; the pretences she would have to make for love’s sake! She must look happy whether she was happy or not; she must make believe even to be thankful to get home again. At this Liddy cried still more behind her veil. Harry observed her with curious eyes. He was very much interested in his little sister, and he thought he understood women—not like Lionel, who pretended that they were inscrutable; but then Harry was a married man.

“You don’t seem to be very cheerful about going home,” he said, at last.

“Oh, yes, very happy,” said Liddy, and cried; “It is only—such a change—Wandering about has been so different—and one never knows—”

Here she broke off, and made a vehement effort to be cheerful. “You will find it very different, too.”

“Yes, I shall find it very different; but I am always sorry for a girl—we can get away, but you can’t. You have never said a word to me, Liddy, but I am not so blind as not to see how things are. Are the objections—on their side?”

“I don’t know that there are objections. Yes, I suppose they are on their side. But how can I ever leave mother?” the girl cried, waking up to the other side of the question. She had never thought of it before, but now stared at her recovered brother, very pale, with large, wide-open eyes.

“Poor mother!” he said, softly. By dint of having children himself Harry had come to a little understanding. “She will never stand in anyone’s way,” he said. He began to perceive a little what life was to some souls. She had been happy in little Liddy, and now Liddy was going too. She would not struggle, but resign the last, with one more pathetic wringing of her hands. She had wrung those hands often for him, and he, more than any, had wrung her heart, and had thought little of it; but somehow he perceived it now. She would stand in nobody’s way. She would give up, having given up all her life; and now there would be no compensation possible, nature herself would be against her. A great pang of pity was in his heart for his mother. She did not know yet what was in store for her. Whoever was happy it must always be her fate to suffer for them all.

The rough little country phaeton, which Harry remembered long years ago, was waiting for them in the early morning at the station. Nobody knew that Harry was coming. The man who drove it stared at him. It was none of the young masters he knew (middle-aged Will and Tom being still indifferently called t’ young masters at the White House), and yet there was a look of the young masters, and of the old master, too, about this finely dressed (as Robin thought), foreigneering gentleman, wrapping himself in his fur-lined coat against the chill freshness of the morning. Was it some one Miss Liddy had picked up in her travels? Liddy had a perception, as she got into the carriage—or, rather, remembered afterwards, that she had perceived other people, strangers, getting out at the little country station, which was not a very usual thing; but she was excited and preoccupied, and did not stay to look who they were, or even notice them much, at the time. She had not written home, except the merest intimation of her return, since she had found her brother, and now she was a little alarmed at her own reserve, wondering what her mother would say, whether she would know him at once, and what effect the discovery would have upon her. Such things had been known as people dying of joy. She began to grow alarmed and very nervous; and Liddy looked round upon everything, to tell the truth, with troubled and doubtful eyes. She was afraid even of the sight of the home landscape, the grey hills, the misty valley, the limestone houses, and dividing dykes, which were so very different from everything she had been seeing. But it was a beautiful morning, and all this grey northern world was bathed in the early glory of the sun; and to Lydia’s great relief the country had not grown smaller, or the hills insignificant, or the sky dirty or prosaic, as people in Italy said. The blue was pale, but still it was heavenly blue; the white mists on the hills, here and there breaking away like the opening of a prison, unfolding on both sides and showing the grey slopes, the stony peaks, the lonely stormy Fells, were as full of poetry and dramatic life as ever. The stream still looked bold and rapid, the village friendly, nestling about the church and over the bridge. “It is not a bit like Italy,” said Liddy, to her brother. He felt the sharpness of the morning air as he never would have done had he stayed among the Fells. “No, you can be quite confident on that subject,” Harry said.

“But it is just as fine as ever,” cried Lydia, with a little enthusiasm. “It is not small nor contracted, nor ugly, as I feared. It is finer than it used to be. These are real hills, after all; and it is so broad, and so pure, and such a delightful air. What would you give in Tuscany for air like that?”

“We should die of it in a month,” Harry said, buttoning his furred coat at the throat.

Lydia was almost angry. He had been there so long, he had got choke full of Italian prejudice. But she was thankful, very thankful, to find that the country-side was still pleasant in her own eyes. And now they drive through the village, one or two early risers looking with expectant faces out of the windows and waving their hands to her as she passes, all with a look of surprise at the strange gentleman in his fur coat, quietly smoking his cigar behind: and the river is crossed, and they come within sight of the White House. Well! there was no doubt it looked small: she had been sure it must look small, grey and homely, and undistinguished, scarcely discernible in its whiteness, which was grey, like everything here, from the slope of the Fell-side. But Lydia had no time to make remarks of this description to herself, for immediately at the door there appeared a slim and tremulous figure, with clasped hands, looking out; and she gave a cry of uncontrollable joy and excitement, and sprang down, almost before the carriage stopped, from her seat, and into the arms of her mother. No, no! there was no change there! For a moment all her depression and heaviness, and sense of guilt and baseness, in the thought that her return was no pleasure to her, all melted away in real natural happiness to see that worn face, and feel the clasp of those tremulous arms again.

“Oh, Liddy, my darling! it’s been long, long! but here I have you again, my own!”

“Oh, mother! why did I ever leave you?” cried the girl, and they clung together as if they would never part.

Mrs. Joscelyn had no eyes for anything but her child. She was about to lead her in with her arm round her.

“They will all be out in a minute, Liddy; but never mind, my pet, you’ll see them later, and they’ll bring in your boxes and all your things. Come in, come in, you must be tired with your night’s journey—and let me look at you; I want no more, but just to look at you, you’re better than Italy to me.”

“Mother,” Lydia said, holding back, “I have brought some one with me—a gentleman; you must give a welcome to him too.”

“A gentleman!” Mrs. Joscelyn gave a little sigh of disappointment. “It will be Lionel. Yes, I am glad to see him; but I should have liked you all to myself this first morning. He knows he is welcome, my dear.”

“It is not Lionel, mother; it is some one whom I met—in Italy.”

Mrs. Joscelyn began to tremble a little, and looked earnestly in her daughter’s face, but not with any suspicion of the truth.

“I will try—to give anyone a welcome, my darling; if you love him, and if it is for your sake.”

Harry had got down from the phaeton like a man in a dream. He gazed about him at the place which was so familiar, yet so strange, as if he had dropped from the skies, remembering everything all in a moment, his boyhood, his old childish holidays, his last night. He remembered the foolish exaggerated passion with which he stood, furious, shut out, before that closed door. He was full of agitation, of compunction, of wonder, at his own boyish unreasonableness, and at the long obdurate closing of his heart, which could not have been, he said to himself, had it not been full of other things. His heart beat as he looked at his mother, and heard the cry with which she clasped to her her other child. And Liddy was going to forsake her too, poor woman, poor mother! Somehow he thought more of this than of all the trouble he had himself brought upon her. He stood at a little distance, keeping his furred coat closely round him, stamping his feet a little to get them warm. Had he lived always on the Fells, he would have wanted no furred coat, and felt no cold in his feet. Then Lydia beckoned to him, and he went towards them. It was all he could do to keep calm. “I am sure the gentleman is very welcome, Liddy,” he heard his mother say, in her tremulous voice. He came up to them where they still stood in the doorway. Something about his air, about his general aspect, startled her, though she was so pre-occupied, and Harry did not know how to contain himself as his eyes met hers. She gave him a smile, a little forced, with her lips, but her eyes more sincere, betrayers of her heart, investigated him with anxiety and wonder. He could not meet them without betraying himself. He took the hand she held to him, and bowed over it and kissed it, as he had learned to do in Italy; and he felt as he did so that the worn white hand, which he thought he must have recognised had he seen no more of his mother, trembled. She said, “Come in, Sir,” with a quaver in her voice; “Come in—you are kindly welcome,” and tremulously led the way into the hall he remembered so well, and opened the parlour door. The fire was burning brightly within, the table laid for breakfast, everything as if he had left it the day before. Mrs. Joscelyn would have had her guest, who had set her all a-tremble, yet whom she thought she welcomed reluctantly, enter before her, in old-fashioned politeness; but when he held back, went in precipitately, holding Liddy by the hand. She turned round instantly to look at him again.

“Liddy—you have not told me—the gentleman’s name?” she said, feeling her head go round. “Liddy! I think—I must have seen him before.”

Then Harry could keep himself in no longer. He loathed a scene like every Englishman, but he forgot this, as even Englishmen do in moments of extreme feeling. He fell down on his knees before her, not knowing what he did. “Mother! will you forgive me?” he said. And he did not well know what followed, till the air cleared a little again, and the day came back, and they had put her in the great chair, her face like death, her eyelids quivering, her lips trembling and incapable of speech. She had given a great cry of “Harry! Harry!” which startled all the house.

Then some one else came noisily clattering down the stairs, crossing the hall with a heavy foot. “Where is my little Liddy?” Ralph Joscelyn said; and he added with a certain rough sympathy as he kissed his child, “I told her it was more than she was up to. Let her be, let her be—she will come round. I wanted her to bide in her bed, and I would bring you to her there. Well, and so you’re back, my lass—and welcome! There’s nobody like you to mend her. Did you bring—a doctor with you all the way?”

Then there was a pause; nobody spoke to give any explanation. “Did you bring a doctor with you,” Joscelyn repeated, with a sudden excited burst of laughter, “all the way? or who may this be?”

Harry turned round and came forward into the light, holding out his hand. “You turned me out last time I was here, father,” he said, not able to forego the gratification of this taunt; “I ought to have asked your leave first before I came back now.”

Ralph Joscelyn stood and stared, a dark red colour coming over his face. He looked uncertainly from Liddy to the stranger. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said shortly; then, “Do you mean this is—Harry? that’s what your mother meant, shrieking out, disturbing everybody in the house. Look to your mother, Liddy! Well! you’ve been a long time coming back. You seem,” he said, looking at the new-comer from head to foot, “to have done well for yourself.”

“I have done very well for myself,” Harry said, shortly. “I want help from nobody now.”

“Well, my lad!” said Joscelyn, suddenly striking his hand into that of his son with another hoarse, unsteady laugh, “that’s the best of reasons why you should have whatever you want. You’re welcome home; and there’s a pretty property waiting for you. And it saves a confounded deal of trouble, I can tell you, that you should turn up now.”

All this time Liddy was kneeling by the chair, kissing her mother’s feeble hands and colourless face. There was no particular alarm about her among them; but she lay floating between life and death for a moment in the extremity of emotion which was too much for her feeble flesh and blood. Then the balance turned—the wrong way. If she died then, how happy for her! but instead she slowly came back, opened her eyes, and returned to life. “Is it a dream?” she said, feebly. “No—my Liddy, my darling, you are real; and the other—wasn’t there another?”

They all sat at breakfast half an hour after like people in a dream. Mrs. Joscelyn sat between her son and daughter, and looked at them alternately, and sipped a feeble cup of tea, and shed a tear or two of pure happiness. She was not strong enough yet to ask any questions; she put her hand now and then on Harry’s arm and patted it softly. She heard the story of how he was found out without understanding it in the least, and echoed feebly her husband’s loud but tremulous laugh at the name his son had taken. “Isaac Oliver—that’s the finest joke I ever heard in my life. Isaac—Oliver! Dang it, but that is the best joke——” And he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. The young people both sat by with the strangest sense of unreality. To go away across half a world, and then come back again to the same unchanging scene, even to ameliorations of the past which bring out more clearly the astounding difference between it and them—how strange it is! In all Harry’s knowledge of his father, he had never been so friendly or so amiable; but this only made the gentleman-peasant, the yeoman-horsedealer more extraordinary, as a father, to his son. Liddy had a far less shock to sustain in one sense, but a greater in another; for she had come home—and here was her natural place, love and duty and every tradition binding her; but, alas! her heart so far away.

The strange meal was still progressing, the whole family lingering over it; for the household table was a kind of natural centre and place of union; when wheels were heard again, and a carriage stopped at the door. “It will be Joan,” Mrs. Joscelyn said; “she would not lose a moment in coming; and what will she say when she sees—oh, Harry, my boy! She has always had a warm heart for you—the warmest heart for you; we’ll say nothing about old times; but her and me—Run out and meet your sister, Liddy, and say nothing, say nothing—let us see if she will know him.” Mrs. Joscelyn put her hand upon his sleeve. “It’s a pleasure to touch you—I like to touch you in case my eyes should be deceiving me. And did you ever think of your poor mother all these years?”

Liddy had run out—to meet her sister as she thought—and her father, not unwilling now that the meeting was over to leave his wife alone with her son, followed her, with the intent of taking another look, as he said to himself, of his pet, and making sure that he had really got her back. But Liddy, instead of running out to meet her sister, stood arrested in the doorway, watching the disembarkation from a rickety country coach of the strangest party that ever produced itself in the Fell-country. First came a little man with a high hat, a huge cloak with a faded lining of blue, which would have delighted a painter, flung over his shoulder, and a huge comforter round his neck; next a bundle of an old woman, wrapped in half-a-dozen shawls, one over the other, who rolled out of the quivering carriage, like something half benumbed and half asleep; lastly, a figure which sprang out as light as a bird, pushing aside both the companions who held out anxious hands to assist her, and flew along the little path between the two grass plats. Liddy clasped her hands together in wonder and dismay.

“Mrs. Harry!” she cried, with consternation. She was so much surprised that she made no step to meet her; but stood transfixed, her face pale with astonishment. Rita was all aglow with pleasure, and excitement, and triumph. She flung herself upon Lydia as if she had been her dearest friend in the world.

“Look, I have done it!” she cried. “I am better than ever I was in my life. I am so happy. I like the cold. I like the country; I think it is beautiful! Call this England? it is Paradise! Oh, Liddy, Liddy, you dear little sister, I shall be as fond of you as Harry is—fonder, for he has me first to think of. I owe all this to you.”

“Mrs. Harry!” Liddy repeated, with consternation. “Father, this is Mrs. Harry; if you were coming, why did you not come with us?” She could think of nothing that was kinder to say.

But Rita was too much delighted with herself to stand in need of words of kindness. She walked up to Ralph Joscelyn, and stretched up to him, offering her pretty glowing cheek to be kissed.

“How do you do, father?” she said. “Harry ought to present me to you, but I don’t want any introduction. You are like him; our little boy is called Ralph, after you. Harry will be dreadfully angry when he sees me, and I dare not think what papa will say; but I am so happy to be in England that I don’t mind. Will you take me in, please, to where my husband is?” and with the air of a little princess Rita took her father-in-law’s arm. He was a stately, handsome old man, with his white hair. The eyes of the new-comer found no fault in him. The roughness which wounded his children was invisible to her. “He is almost as handsome as papa,” she said to herself.

Meanwhile Liddy, still more bewildered, stood at the door, and watched the approach of the two other persons, not glowing and happy like Rita, but miserable, as unaccustomed travellers, half dead after a succession of night journeys, cold, and sick, and out of heart, could be. She could scarcely recognise the spruce little Paolo, in the worn-out, fagged traveller, shivering in his big cloak, and trying in vain to satisfy the coachman with the money which he did not understand.

“Five shilling, that is six francs twenty-five, six francs twenty-five, my good man—it is six francs twenty-five, all the world over,” he was saying, placing a solid French five-franc piece, with other moneys of the same coinage, in the driver’s hand, and scorning all remonstrances. “No, no; I am no foreigner—you you will not cheat me. I am not von,” cried Paolo, betrayed by excitement into inaccuracies which he had quite got the better of, “to be bullied. I am not von to pay too moche. I am English as you.”

As for old Benedetta, who was the other companion of Rita’s journey, she was prostrate with cold and fatigue. She did nothing but weep and groan as she sank upon the first seat in the hall. “Ah, Signorina! oh, Signorina! Sono morto! sono morto!” she cried, while Paolo took off his hat, by this time somewhat battered, and smiled a forlorn smile, his teeth chattering as he spoke. “All things that have been spoken of the English climate are below the truth,” he said. “Miss Joscelyn will forgive me, I have the cold just in my bones; but Miss Joscelyn, and also, indeed, Signorina Rita, one is bound to say it, they bloom like the rose.”

“Now, don’t be angry,” said Rita, walking her father-in-law in to the parlour door, which was slightly open, and through which she saw the glimmer of the fire, and the white cloth of the breakfast-table, and appearing before her astonished husband, like some mischievous spirit, in a glow of happiness and delight, “don’t be angry, Harry. I am going to telegraph directly to papa. I am perfectly well, and delighted with everything. I am not cold a bit. I am not tired. England, I always was sure of it, is just the place for me. Present me to your mother. Dear madam,” she cried, after a little pause of contemplation, dropping Joscelyn’s arm, and darting forward, “I see you are ill; you are all trembling with the emotions you have had this morning. And, I am sure, it is quite natural; you don’t want me to make them more. But kiss me once, please, for I know I shall love you. I am your Harry’s wife.”

“Rita!” cried Harry, finding room at last to express his sentiments, “what, in the name of all that is foolish, brings you here?”

“Thank you, dear mother,” said Rita, in return for the astonished kiss which poor Mrs. Joscelyn had bestowed. She sat down by her without any invitation, and took one of her hands and caressed it between her own. “I never had any mother,” she said; “I do not know what it means; nor did I ever want one of my own, for papa has been everything to me. But it is sweet to borrow Harry’s mother, and have her for mine, too; not borrow,” she added, kissing Mrs. Joscelyn’s hand, “you are mine because you are his, is it not so? Harry, do not look so like a bear, but come and kiss me, too.”

“Rita, your father will never forgive me,” cried Harry, obeying his wife with no bad grace, yet incapable of withholding his lecture; “he will say it was my fault. And how did you persuade him to let you go?”

“He did not let me go. I said I was going to the villa to the children. He will not find out till Sunday, that is to-morrow, and he will have my telegram first. There is no harm done. I believe,” she added, tranquilly, “he will be as glad as any one to think I have taken it into my own hands. And look, I am not cold. I liked the air above everything. Poor Paolo and Benedetta chattered with their teeth, but it was delightful to me. My poor little mamma was a girl; I am full grown, strong; and I adore England. It is beautiful. I am enchanted with the Fells. The grey is lovely; it is your only colour. Harry, Harry, you great bear, say you are glad to see me, or your mother will think we are not fond of each other: which is not true, dearest, dearest lady,” said Rita, once more kissing Mrs. Joscelyn’s hand.

“I am sure anybody would be fond of you,” Mrs. Joscelyn said, gazing with wonder and awe—but flattered, touched, astonished beyond measure—at this beautiful young woman, so enthusiastic, so self-possessed, so fluent, whom she had never heard of before.

“Oh, fond of her, what has that to do with it?” cried Harry. “So you have brought Benedetta and poor Paolo,” he cried.

After this Paolo was brought in, and warmed and fed; but it took a long time to bring him round. He had thought it a very fine thing to come off to England for his holiday, romantically following a beautiful young lady, helping another to reunite herself to her husband; but the journey and the privations, want of sleep and over-fatigue, and the wind of an English May, blowing at six o’clock in the morning over the Fells, had been too much for poor Paolo. He sounded his friend a few days after, when he had partially recovered his spirits, as to the custom in English families when they married their daughters.

“For example,” he said, “Amico, if it is not impertinent. A young lady like Miss Joscelyn; so beautiful, so charming. When your parents make up their minds to marry her, they will of course make it a condition that the ’usband being so happy should live near?”

“Certainly they would make the condition,” said Harry, promptly. “Could anyone be so cruel, do you think, Paolo, as to take away her last prop from my mother? They are everything to each other, as you can see.”

“It is true,” said Paolo, much crestfallen. And next day he took a tearful leave, kissing Liddy’s hand with respectful deference. The unusual salutation made her blush quite unnecessarily. It was a resignation of all pretensions on Paolo’s part. He could have made, he said afterwards, as great a sacrifice to his love as any man; but to have lived on what they called the Fells, was more than it was possible to contemplate. But he was a little consoled by a burst of bright weather in London, and saw the Parks and the Row in all their glory, and lost his heart to a great many other English young ladies before he carried it, pieced up again so as to be serviceable for actual living, but in a sadly battered and shattered condition, back again to Leghorn; where he was a great authority upon everything English to the end of his days.

Rita turned out to be right, as she so often was. Her father, after the first shock, was glad beyond measure that the venture had been made and proved successful, and that the embargo was taken off his native country, and he could permit him to return. The accumulations of Uncle Henry’s money was enough to make a pretty, old-fashioned house out of Birrenshead, where the Harry Joscelyns settled down, Mr. Bonamy with them, though without giving up the Italian villa and its associations. Mr. Bonamy got a C.B. and many compliments when he retired from the service, though he had never been anything more than a Vice-Consul. As for Lydia and her concerns, it is needless to say that they ended prosperously; for what was there that Lady Brotherton could refuse to her only son? and Sir John saw only through her eyes. So this marriage was accomplished also towards the autumn, before the year was out, from the time of their first acquaintance. Harry and his children were known to be coming home by that time, as soon as the house was ready for them, “Which was something for mother to look forward to,” Joan said. “A thing to look forward to is almost better than a thing she’s got, to mother,” according to that authority. “She can’t fret about it till she has it.” But nobody could be more tender and sympathetic than Joan when Lydia was married and went away, leaving a blank that nothing could fill up. “It’s hard to say what’s the good of us women,” she said, “to rear children and never have them but when they’re babies, and think all the world of them, and watch them go away. Phil and me, we are best without any, though that’s a hard trial too. But, mother, don’t you make a fuss, poor dear. It’s the way of the world, and it’s the course of nature, and there isn’t a word to say.”

This was the case, and Mrs. Joscelyn felt it. She clasped her hands as she had done so often, and held them up to heaven in prayer that was perpetual. That was all. She saw her children now and then, and they were all happy, and in no need of her. What could any woman desire more?

THE END.