Home, once more at home!” how joyful sounded the exclamation from the lips of Edith Lestrange, and how brightly sparkled her eyes as she uttered it, as, with a step light as a fawn’s, she revisited each spot which five years’ absence had only made more dear. With joyous impatience she ascended the broad oaken staircase of Castle Lestrange, to flit like a fairy from room to room, lingering longest in the old nursery, where she had known childhood’s pleasures, with not a few of its sorrows—and the playroom, in which her toys were still stored. There was the doll that had been to her as a companion, to which the lonely little heiress had whispered many a trouble; the pretty picture-books, the miniature tea-things of delicate china, that had been such sources of amusement. It was a pleasure to Edith, from recollections of “auld lang syne,” to touch and handle these childish treasures, though at the age of eleven she deemed herself no longer a child.
Then to the newly-returned traveller how great were the delights of the garden and the park,—the one bright with the flowers of spring, the other donning its light green robe, while in the sheltered mossy dells fragrance of violets filled the air. Edith almost wondered that the light-footed deer should bound away on her approach: her heart felt so full of joy and kindness, that it seemed strange that any living creature should fear her. The heiress of Lestrange took pleasure in visiting the cottage of her father’s steward, where the familiar faces of Holdich and his wife were as the faces of old friends, bright with hearty welcome. Her canary, cared for by Mrs. Holdich during her absence, was tamer than ever, and its quivering notes of delight seemed to its youthful mistress an echo of the music of happiness which sounded within her own soul.
For Edith did not return to the castle of her ancestors as she had left it five years before—a feeble, fragile invalid. She no longer painfully dragged her weary limbs along, with languor oppressing her spirits; springing and elastic was the step which now bounded over the mossy turf. The cheeks that had been almost as colourless as the snowdrop, had now a faint dawn of colour upon them, like that on the opening buds of the apple-blossom. Edith was still a delicate plant, like an exotic reared in a hot-house, but an exotic skilfully tended, expanding its petals in healthful life.
“Oh, how true it is that there is no place like home!” exclaimed Edith, as she sauntered up the broad avenue, with sunshine on her path, and the blue cloud-flecked sky smiling above her.
The observation was addressed to her cousin, Isa Gritton, who was spending a day at the Castle, a short time after the return of Sir Digby Lestrange and his daughter. Isa was a young lady whose age might be about two or three and twenty, and who might therefore have scarcely been deemed a suitable companion for one so youthful as Edith, had not the little heiress possessed a mind so early matured by the discipline of trial that she was scarcely regarded as a child by those who intimately knew her. Isa Gritton was a tall and graceful girl, with auburn hair, and eyes like those of the gazelle—large, soft, and expressive: mirroring each passing emotion, whether it were that of mirth and gladness, or, as was now the case, a shadow of painful thought.
“Do you not feel with me,” said Edith, “that there is a charm in the very name of home?”
THE COUSINS.
“I did so once,” replied Isa, with a sigh; “but for the last two years, since the loss of my dear father, I cannot be said to have had a real home.”
“But you have one now, dear Isa,” said Edith; “and oh, how glad I am that your brother chose to build one at Wildwaste, so near us. Why, even I—who never perform great feats in the walking line—will be able to manage the distance on foot; it is barely a mile, I hear. I dare say that Mr. Gritton kindly chose the site of his house there on purpose that you might be near your uncle and cousin. To meet you often, very often, will be such a pleasure to me; I shall feel as if I had at last what I have so often longed for, a sister to share all my sorrows and joys. I will soon return your visit, and you shall show me your brother’s new house. Has he not built a charming retreat, with a pretty garden and shrubbery round it?”
Isa Gritton laughed: but there was a little bitterness in the laugh. “Tastes differ,” she replied; “and Gaspar having been his own architect, he doubtless admires his work. But my ideal of beauty is hardly realized by a house that looks as if a geni had transplanted it bodily from one of the smaller streets of London, in all the newness of yellowish brick as yet undarkened by soot, and had dropped it on the edge of a morass—not a tree within half a mile of it—where it stands staring out of its blindless windows as if wondering how it came there, with nothing to remind it of London but the great soap manufactory, which is the most conspicuous object in the view, the smoke of which might do duty for that of a whole street in the city.”
“How could Mr. Gritton build such a house, and in such a place!” exclaimed Edith in surprise; “I could not fancy you in a home that was not pretty and picturesque. I have no clear remembrance of Wildwaste save as a wide flat common sprinkled with gorse, for I seldom or never visited the hamlet when I was a little child.”
“You will scarcely care to visit it often now, except out of compassion for me,” said Isa, smiling. “Mr. Eardley tells me, however, that Wildwaste, bad as it is, is greatly improved from what it was some years ago, when it had nothing in the shape of a school.”
“Mr. Eardley—then you know him?” cried Edith, brightening at the mention of the pastor whom she reverenced and loved.
“Yes,” replied Isa; “though, Wildwaste not being in the parish of Axe, we do not belong to his flock. Mr. Eardley had heard, through your steward’s wife, I believe, that we wanted a girl to help in the house. He called to recommend to us a young protegée of his own, a black-eyed gipsy-looking little creature, who blushes scarlet when she is spoken to, and seems to be afraid of the sound of her own voice. I think, however, that with a little training Lottie Stone will suit us very well.”
“Do you not like Mr. Eardley?” said Edith, looking as if assured that the answer must be in the affirmative.
“Very much; I wish that he were our clergyman instead of Mr. Bull, who must be nearly eighty years old, and who—but I don’t think it well to criticize preachers.”
“We attend the service at Axe—we drive there, for it is much too far off for a walk,” said Edith Lestrange. “You shall come with us every Sunday—that is to say,” she added, with a little hesitation, “if you don’t mind leaving your brother. Papa does not like more than three in the carriage.”
“Perhaps I ought not to leave Gaspar,” said Isa, gravely; and she added, but not aloud, “if I were not with him, I fear that he would not go to a place of worship at all.—No, Edith,” she said to her cousin, “I am afraid that I cannot accompany you to Axe on Sundays, but I have promised Mr. Eardley to bring Lottie twice a week to the little cottage-lectures which he gives in the dwelling of Holdich the steward.”
“Then we shall always meet there,” observed Edith. “I have such a sweet remembrance of those cottage-meetings, though I was such a little girl when I went to them that of course I could not understand all that I heard. I felt as if there were such peace, and holiness, and Christian kindness in that quiet home-church, where young and old, and rich and poor, gathered to hear God’s truth, and pray and praise together. And Holdich himself is such a good man,” continued Edith warmly: “it is not merely that he does not mind openly confessing his religion—whatever people may think of it—but that he lives up to what he professes. Papa went on the Continent, you know, rather in haste, and there had been a little confusion in his affairs, and no time to set them right. Papa was always so generous, and those about him had abused his confidence so sadly.”
“Yes, I heard something of that,” observed Isa, who, like the rest of the world, was aware that Sir Digby’s ostentatious extravagance had plunged him into pecuniary difficulties, and that change of air for his invalid child, though the ostensible, had not been the only cause of his retreat.
“But Holdich has brought everything into such beautiful order,” continued Edith,—“he has quite surprised papa by the way in which he has managed the estate. He has cared for his master’s interests as much, I think more than if they had been his own. Papa used to suspect people who had the name of being very pious, but he said this morning at breakfast, ‘A man like my steward, who brings his Christianity into his daily dealings, does more to convince infidels of the real power of faith than all the learned books that ever were written.’ I treasured up the words to repeat them to Holdich’s wife. I think that she and her husband are the happiest people that I know, and especially now that their son is doing so well as a schoolmaster under Mr. Eardley.”
“The subject of the new series of cottage-lectures is to be Gideon’s Triumph over Midian,” observed Isa.
“And the first is to begin at seven this evening,” said Edith. “Papa has given me leave to be always present—at least when the weather is fine; and some of our servants will go too. They are not all able to get to church on Sundays, for Axe is five miles from the Castle.”
The cousins, slowly sauntering up the avenue, had now reached a grassy mound at the end of it, on which a tall weather-cock stood, and which might be ascended by a flight of marble steps. Having mounted these steps, a very extensive and beautiful prospect lay before Isa and Edith, while a rural seat invited them to rest and enjoy it.
“I have looked upon many lovely views in Italy,” observed Edith, as her eye wandered with delight over the scene; “but, to my mind, there is none to compare with this. I always missed that dear little spire seen in the distance yonder, where I knew that Sunday after Sunday the real truth was preached in my own native tongue by a servant of God. It always seems to me with Mr. Eardley as if he were like the disciples, who went to their Master and had their directions in the morning straight from His lips; and that in the evening, when his labour was over, he would go and ‘tell Jesus’ all that he had done, and all that he had tried to do—receive the Lord’s smile and His blessing, and then lie down to rest at His feet.”
“It seems so with some clergymen,” said Isa. “When they feed the people with the bread of the Word, we feel that they have just taken it from the hands of the Lord—that He has given thanks, and blessed, and broken it; so that we look from the servant to the Master, and realize that the ministry of the gospel is hallowed service indeed.”
