LYDIA had indeed as little prospect of going abroad as any girl could have. Her own kindred dreamt of no such indulgences, and she had no friends likely to suggest them. In these days people stayed still where their home was, and did not think of the continued changes and absences which make up our modern life—though the spirit of travel was beginning to be in the air, and younger spirits, even in the Fell-country, began to form dreams on the subject. Perhaps there never was a time when the idea of travelling was not attractive to the young, and when Italy was not a name to conjure withal. Lydia Joscelyn had read everything that fell into her hands all her life, even the Book of Beauty, which her brother-in-law, Philip Selby, presented to her with an inscription on the flyleaf, at Christmas. Half the stories, and half, almost all, the poetry there, bore reference to “the sunny South.” She was resolute to go “abroad” some time or other; to live among the dark-eyed Antonios and lovely Rosalbas of romance. And there, she had made up her mind, she would find Harry, and bring him back to her mother. It was her dream. Whenever she had nothing else to do she thought of it, and represented to herself how she should find him, how he would try to conceal himself from her, and by what wonderful ruses and clever expedients she would discover his secret and prove him to be her brother. It is not to be supposed that there did not mingle in Lydia’s dreams, visions of some other figure still more attractive than that of her brother, who having been five-and-twenty when he disappeared, ten years ago, was according to her calculation “quite old” by this time. It is not quite certain that she did not expect him to be grey-haired, and a little decrepit; but there would be some friend, some protector, some handsome young count, or even prince, who would have afforded the stranger hospitality, and in whom Liddy felt the possible hero of her life to be embodied. He was quite vague, except a pair of beautiful eyes; there was nothing at all about him else that she was certain of; but those eyes looked out of the mists upon her, with every kind of tender and delightful look. He would help her, could any one doubt, to bring Harry home? and afterwards—perhaps—would ask for his reward. Such was the natural sequence of events. To do Lydia justice, however, this visionary prince was a secondary personage, only indulged in as a dream by way of recreation, after she had, in her thoughts, tracked Harry down, and got him at her mercy.
She had not much society or recreation at the White House. There were times, indeed, when, if it had been possible for a girl to have done so, Lydia would have had no objection to try, as Harry had done, what the society of the “Red Lion” could do for her; but to do her justice one trial would have been enough. She did what was quite as good, and more innocent; she ran off sometimes into the kitchen of the White House, and talked with the servants, and heard a hundred stories both of the past and present, and learned the countryside, so that she knew who everybody was, and their mothers, and their wives, and all that had happened to them. It was there, rather than from her mother and her sister, that she heard about Harry. The old cook remembered everything about him, from the time when he had cut his teeth. She had a recollection of that night when he had gone away, and still excused herself for not having gone to the rescue. “T’ master was all about t’ house, travelling up and down in his stocking-feet—was it my part to oop and open the door?” Thus her apologies accused her according to the proverb. The other women were younger, but they too had something to tell. And then Liddy would go back to the quietude of the parlour, where her mother was sitting in the same attitude, reading the same book. The parlour looked cheerful enough, but there was never any change in it, not half so much as in the kitchen, where some one was always moving about, and there was a perpetual flow of talk. Liddy never spent an evening away from home, except two or three times a year to her sister’s, when there was “a party” prepared weeks in advance, and talked of for months after; or at Dr. Selby’s in the village, where now and then there were entertainments of a homelier kind.
Young Selby, who had been Harry’s friend and a frequenter of the “Red Lion,” though he had not yet sown all his wild oats, was a person of some importance in the village society. He was his father’s assistant, and although it was said that he was far more interested in the fees than in the Doctor’s patients, yet the fact that he was almost the only unmarried man in the neighbourhood gave him a certain importance. He was continually meeting Liddy when she went out to ride, and he looked very well on horseback, and gave her a great deal of good advice about the management of her horse. Perhaps but for that young Count in her dream, she would have got to understand what young Selby meant, though she scoffed at the adjective, and declared that he was not young, but as old as his father. He was the most entertaining person in the neighbourhood all the same, and the hero of Joan’s parties when they came round, one in summer, one about Christmas. These entertainments were pretty much alike, whatever was the time of year. Garden parties were not known in those days. In summer the windows were open, in winter the shutters shut over them and the curtains drawn. In other ways they were very much alike. There was a great round game carried on at the round table in the centre of the room. The tea had been served in the dining-room, so it did not interfere with the evening’s arrangements. Mr. Pilgrim’s family from Wyburgh were among the guests, and all the clergymen round, and any other notability who was not too great for the occasion. Few of the guests indeed could be called county people; but there were a good many who visited with the county people, and is not that very nearly the same? Joan, though she was homely enough, held her head somewhat high at her own table. The Selbys were but of moderate pretensions, but she never forgot that she was a Joscelyn. And she kept Liddy by her, not allowing any indiscriminate flirtations, and distinctly discouraging young Selby, who was her cousin by marriage, but had never won her heart. Mrs. Joscelyn never came to her daughter’s parties, though she was pleased to hear all about them; and it was only on condition that Liddy was to keep by her sister’s side that she was permitted to go, “You needn’t fear, mother, that she’ll meet with anyone she oughtn’t to meet with at my house,” Joan said, and she took care of her accordingly. It troubled her mind on the occasion to which we are about to refer, that a young man had come with Mrs. Pilgrim’s party, about whom she knew nothing. He was nice-looking, but she had not even caught his name. She could not help thinking it a little wrong of Mrs. Pilgrim to bring a stranger to such an assembly. If he had been in love with one of her girls, Joan allowed that would have made a difference; but there was not the least appearance that he was in love with one of the Pilgrim girls. They were very assiduous in their attention to him, pointing out everybody and making conversation for the young man, who, without being rude or disagreeable, held himself just a little aloof from the company in general, as if he had come there solely because he was brought, and had no special interest in the proceedings. His head, for he was tall, appearing steadily over Mrs. Pilgrim’s, at last began to irritate Mrs. Selby, who felt herself to be in every way a greater personage. She called her husband to her again and again to point out to him this wholly ineffective member of the party.
“What is he wanting here?” she said.
“My dear, what they all want—to enjoy himself,” Philip Selby replied.
“Enjoy himself—do you call that enjoyment? He looks as if he had swallowed a poker; and is never trusted for a moment out of the charge of two or three Pilgrims. I don’t think I’ll ask these people again.”
“They are very good sort of people, Joan; and considering the position in which they stood to your uncle Henry——”
“I’m very tired of Uncle Henry, Phil; besides, the girls didn’t stand in any position—and I never authorised them to bring a strange young man.”
“He will be after Amy or Tiny—or——”
“He’s after none of them. Can’t you see that with half an eye? It’s my belief he’s spying out for our Liddy. And what will mother say to me if I let her make acquaintance with a stranger? I said, ‘You needn’t fear, mother; she’ll meet nobody you don’t want her to meet at my house.’”
“Well, well,” said Philip Selby, soothingly; “there’s half the room between them; and nobody can say, my dear, that it’s your fault.”
“But that’s just what mother will do,” said Joan, with a puckered brow, as if her mother had been the most alarming critic in existence. She laughed at herself afterwards, and went to the table to superintend the round game, in which Liddy was deeply involved, seated by young Selby’s side. There was a strong sense of responsibility on Joan’s mind, or rather, she was a little cross. Her cakes had not come quite so well out of the oven as she intended, and Mrs. Doctor Selby had suggested a fault in the flavour of the tea. She went up to the players in a stormy state of mind. “Come, come,” she said, “you’re not sitting right. Liddy, you come over here and help little Ellen; all you strong ones are together. Raaf,” this was to young Selby, “stay where you are. I’ll put Miss Armstrong, she’s not playing at all, next to you.”
At this young Selby made a grimace, but Liddy tripped out of her place with all the alacrity possible, leaving her seat and devoting herself to little Ellen. She even gave her sister a smiling look of gratitude. “Thank you,” she said, in an under-tone, “but it was rude, Joan.”
“Now you are a deal better arranged, and the game will go faster; there will be no cheating,” Joan said. She did not care a bit for being called rude. Raaf Selby should know that he was not good enough for a Joscelyn whatever his cousin might be. “One’s enough,” she said to herself. Besides, she wanted for Liddy something that should be out of the common altogether. She herself had done very well in marriage. She had got an excellent man, with enough to be comfortable upon. But she did not feel that she would be satisfied with only so much for her little sister. Not that Raaf Selby at his best could hold a candle to Phil. He was not much except when he was on a horse; then she was obliged to allow he looked pretty well. But a man can’t always be on a horse’s back, and anywhere else he was not worth looking twice at; very different from Phil. Even Phil, however, much as she respected her husband, was not the kind of person she wanted for Liddy. A fairy prince, if any such fantastic being had ever existed in Joan’s steady imagination, was the sort of person who ought to be Lydia’s fate; a fine young fellow (young to start with), and handsome, and well off, and with an air above the rest of the world. Unawares, as her eyes went round her guests, they fell once more upon the tall young stranger behind Mrs. Pilgrim’s chair. Was that the kind of man? Well, if he had not been an intruder, a stranger, a hanger-on of the Pilgrims’ (though certainly not in love with either of the girls), that was the kind of person. She drew near Mrs. Pilgrim as this unsolicited thought arose in her mind. She was annoyed with herself to think that a person whom she did not know, and who had no right to be here, should thus have taken her eye.
“You are doing nothing, Amy,” she said to the eldest Miss Pilgrim; “I’m sure they want you in the game yonder—or you might give us some music. You and your sister might play a duet. I like to see everybody employed.”
“That is what I always say. You don’t let the grass grow beneath your feet, Mrs. Selby, neither in work nor in pleasure. I was just saying to——” here she made signs with her thumb, pointing to the stranger, who was inspecting the party from his eminence, and talking languidly to one of the girls. “He was introduced to you,” she added, in a whisper, “when he came in?”
“I should think,” said Joan, “that nobody would bring a strange man into my house without introducing him to me. But your friend is doing nothing either,” she said, with compunction, and a relenting of hospitality. “He has just got into a corner; and the evening’s lost when you once do that.”
“Oh, Mrs. Selby, he doesn’t know anybody. We promised we would take care of him if he came with us,” Amy Pilgrim said; and the object of Joan’s mingled interest and indignation laughed a little, and said that he hoped Mrs. Selby would not trouble herself, that he was very well there.
Then Joan sought her husband again. “Look at them,” she said, “all sitting in a corner with this strange man, as if they were above the rest of us: as if it was my lady Countess and her party from the Castle looking at the poor people’s amusements. I will never ask these Pilgrims again.”
“My dear, my dear,” said Philip Selby, “they are very good sort of people; and if they have a strange man with them that knows nobody, in civility what can they do?”
“Then in civility it’s your part to make him know somebody. Are you not the master of the house? Phil, you are lazy; you are not doing your duty,” Joan said, giving him a little push towards the corner in which the Pilgrims were enthroned. “If there is one thing I cannot put up with it is a knot of people in a company making their observations.” She was quite excited by the Pilgrims and their guest—“for he is their guest, and not mine, though it’s in my house,” Joan said to herself. But alas for her consistency! Next time that she disengaged herself from the lesser crowd round the card-table, Joan saw a sight which displeased and satisfied her at the same time. The group of the Pilgrims had broken up; that is to say, “the strange man” had been led or had strayed away, and Amy and Tiny, having no longer anyone to take care of, and describe the company to, had sought refuge at the card-table, and were much merrier, if not so fine, as in their former position. That was all very well; but, on the other hand, there was Lydia, seated demurely in a chair apart, with Raaf Selby standing on one side of her like a thunder-cloud, and on the other, talking and making himself very agreeable, the Pilgrims’ “strange young man.”
“Raaf,” said Joan, promptly, “you’re as bad as Phil; you’re taking no trouble. How is the game to go on without you to look after it, when it’s well known that you are far the best player here?”
“I have been playing all the evening. I think I may be permitted a little rest,” Raaf said, with a gloomy countenance. He was older and shorter than the strange young man, and not so tall, and there was a something about this personage which was above the level of young Selby. He could not tell what it was. He himself had more ornaments, he had a finer head of hair, and more shirt-front, but yet there was something. Lydia was replying very gravely to what the stranger said to her, but she gave him her whole attention, and the other girls had given evidence that they saw something in this new comer which was not in their familiar hero. He felt crestfallen, and he felt angry. He was not in a humour to be ordered about by Joan.
“Then sing us one of your songs,” Mrs. Selby said. “Things are going a bit slow; I don’t know what is the matter: or perhaps it’s only me that’s the matter. But I think things are going a bit slow.”
“That’s my opinion, too,” Raaf said; “but I don’t think it’s my fault.”
Upon which Lydia suddenly struck in, “Never mind how they are going, Joan, Joan! Let the people alone; they will amuse themselves. Mr. Brotherton has never been among the Fells before, and he wants to learn about us and all our ways. We are the natives—a kind of savages, but friendly; and talking a kind of dialect that can be understood with a little trouble. Come, Joan, and listen. It is nice to hear so much good of ourselves.”
This she said a little vindictively, with a glance at her new companion which brought the colour to his face. He had opened the conversation unguardedly, as fine people are often in the habit of doing with each other, by talking about the natives and the barbarous people. It was a compliment, if Lydia had known, to the superior air of her dress, and her appearance generally; how it is that one individual looks comme il faut, and another does not, is the most difficult of questions. Lydia in fact was no way superior to the rest: but the stranger thought she was a young person of the world, somebody who was in society, storm-stayed like himself.
“Do not take me at such a disadvantage,” he said; “if I spoke nonsense, it was because I did not know any better. I have got a relation somewhere among these good natives. You cannot think I do anything but respect them when that is the case.”
“Do you always respect your relations?” Lydia asked. She was perfectly disposed to flirt, and had an instinctive knowledge how to do it, though she had so little practice—no practice, it may be said; for young Selby was not light enough in hand to give her any experience, and he was almost the only individual with whom it would have been possible to flirt.
“If you are looking for friends,” said Joan, with immediate interest, “we have been here in this country since before the memory of man, and, if anybody can help you, we should be able to do it. Who is it you want?” She took a vacant chair and sat down by her sister—partly to guard Lydia, partly because she was full of curiosity about the strange young man—and partly, also, because Joan was a great genealogist, and knew everybody’s descent and how their grandfathers had married—when they had any grandfathers, it must be said.
“They are people of my own name,” said the stranger, “or, I should rather say—it is a distant cousin of my own name, who married somewhere hereabouts heaven knows how many years ago. My father recollects her well enough. She was a pretty girl in his day, and he told me to look her up; but as he had forgotten her present name (if she is still living), and she was married some forty years ago or more, I doubt if I am very likely to succeed.”
“Your—own name?” said Joan, with a little confusion. In her own house, and in the capacity of hostess to the stranger, she felt that it was rude not to know his name. She gave a glance of appeal at Liddy, who was mischievous, and in no humour to throw any light on the subject.
“Joan will tell you,” the girl said. “She knows everyone, and whom they married, and all their aunts and uncles. You have only to ask my sister.”
More and mere confused grew Joan. She looked at Liddy with reproachful eyes; she even addressed a plaintive glance to Raaf, who did not understand her embarrassment, and for the moment was too angry to have helped if he had. “Of your—own name?” she said, faltering.
“Yes; forty years ago, or so, she was Lydia Brotherton.”
“Why, it’s mother!” said Joan, her countenance beaming. There was a victory over everybody, Pilgrims and all; while the young man, starting, turned round with amazed pleasure, and looked, not at Joan, who spoke, however, but at Lydia, who listened, looking up at him, as much astonished as he.
“Mother!” Lydia said, and her fair countenance brightened into smiles from which all the mischievous meaning had gone.
“Well, that’s as easy a find as I ever heard of,” cried Joan, “and how lucky you should have come here! Mother will be pleased! She has not seen any of her relations for years. She was an only child, so she had never any near friends. How pleased she will be, to be sure! The best thing you can do is to stay here all night, and ride over with Liddy to-morrow: she is going home to-morrow. Bless me, I think I’ll go too, just to see mother so pleased!”
“It is a delightful discovery,” said young Brotherton. “How fortunate that I mentioned it now; my father charged me to find out—but I confess I had forgotten till this moment. How lucky I thought of it! I am afraid I must go home to-night with these good people who have been so kind to me; but I will come back in the morning. It is delightful to fall among kindred,” the young man said, looking at Lydia, whose face reflected all manner of pleasant sensations, surprises, a delightful sense of novelty and exhilaration. She had but few relatives, and a new cousin was delightful—especially a cousin so completely creditable, a gentleman, one about whom there could not be two opinions. The Pilgrims, who had been so proud of this “strange young man,” had altogether disappeared now, and Raaf was left entirely out of the little group of three, all so pleased with themselves and each other. Joan forgot even those duties which usually she performed with such devotion, leaving the round game and its players to themselves, and no longer thinking either of the duet of the Pilgrim girls, or Raaf’s song.
“I took the greatest notice of you from the moment you came in,” she said. “I cannot tell you how it was. It’s not that there is any family likeness, for I can’t see any. Liddy favours mother, and there’s not a feature alike in her and you; but all the same I took notice of you from the first. I didn’t catch your name, or it might have made me think—but there was something. I was more vexed than pleased with those Pilgrims; but all the same, when I caught sight of you——”
“It was kindred at first sight,” said the young man.
“That’s a new way of putting it,” said Joan, laughing; and it glanced through her mind that she had already thought, if he had not been with the Pilgrims, that this might be the right sort of man; and now it was clear that he did not belong to the Pilgrims. She gave a rapid glance from him to Lydia, and back again. As yet she had not the least idea who he was. She had never seen any of the Brotherton connections, and knew nothing about them. Mrs. Joscelyn had often told her children that she had no relations nearer than cousins, and with them even she had kept up no acquaintance. Her children were entirely in the dark about the family. They knew that there was a Sir John who gave dignity to it; but that was all. Joan was very straightforward, but she did not like to plunge at once into details, and ask him who he was. But when she had talked a great deal to the new relative, and arranged the expedition to the White House to-morrow, she went back to Mrs. Pilgrim, who sat somewhat deserted in her corner, a little humiliated by the desertion of her “gentleman,” with the most cheerful cordiality. “I did not catch the gentleman’s name,” she said, “when you brought him in; but what a good thing you brought him! He’s a cousin of ours, and came here looking for mother; for her own friends live far away, and we’ve long lost sight of them. Of course,” said Joan, with a little artifice, “he had no notion whose house he was coming to. There’s always a great confusion in a family about your married name.”
“Came here—looking for——? I thought he came looking for a place for the shooting,” Mrs. Pilgrim said, confounded. She could scarcely allow herself to believe it. It had been a distinction to bring a new “gentleman,” a person of such distinguished appearance, in her train; and to have him taken from her bodily, nay, carried off soul and body, so to speak, not indeed to her enemy’s side, but at all events into another family, was hard to bear.