THE HEIR.
Miss Gwynne returned to Glanyravon on Christmas Eve. She had not visited it before, since she left it when her father married. She had seen her father, his wife, and her little brother almost yearly in London, whither Lady Mary Nugent insisted on dragging her husband annually; but she had not hitherto had love, or courage, or Christian charity enough to visit them at home. When last in town, and repeatedly by letter, her father had urged her doing so, and she had at last complied with his request, more from a latent sense of duty than from inclination.
It was a bright, frosty night, when the carriage that had been sent to meet her drove up to the door. If poor Netta had fainted on returning to the farm, Freda was obliged to brush away gathering tears as she returned to the Park. Every branch of tree, as it glittered in the moonlight in its dress of hoar frost, was familiar to her, every pane of glass in the windows of the old place seemed a friend.
On the lowest step, bare-headed and expectant, were the old butler and footman she had left when she went away; she shook hands with each, and they almost rung her hand off. In the door-way stood her father, not bare-headed, but expectant, who received her with paternal warmth. Freda knew that he must for once have forgotten himself and his nervous debility to have thus exposed himself to the frosty air. In the hall was Lady Mary ready with smiles and embraces, with which Freda would gladly have dispensed; but she did her best to seem, if she could not feel, glad to see her.
Her ladyship preceded her to her own old bedroom, where a huge fire, and bright wax candles bade her welcome, and whither she was followed by Frisk, who was exuberant in his demonstrations of delight at his return home after his long absence.
'I have ordered my maid to wait on you my dear,' said Freda's stepmother, 'because I find your's does not return to you. But we can replace her. Dinner will be ready whenever you are; can I do anything for you?'
'No, thank you, I shall not be long,' said Freda mechanically.
Lady Mary left the room.
Freda felt that her tact was good after all; for no nice feeling could have been more successful than it was. She had received her just as if she had come home after a short absence. No demonstrations of any kind; her room was much as it had ever been. There were even some of her clothes in the wardrobe.
'I won't cry! I won't give way!' muttered Freda, beginning to take off her wrappings.
There was a tap at the door.
'Come in!' And Anne the old housemaid appeared.
'Oh, miss, I am so glad to see you home again, it do seem so natural. Please to let me unpack your things, miss. My lady thought you might like me better than Mrs Pink.'
'Thank you, Anne, it does look like home to see you.'
'Shall I get your dress, miss?'
'I can't dress to-night, I am too tired. There, that will do. Now I will go downstairs.'
She did so, and found her father alone in the library.
'I won't cry,' again she said, as she kissed him affectionately.
'Thank you for coming, Freda, it will do me good, and my wife is delighted. Harold, too, is in ecstasies, and only went to bed with a promise that sister Freda—he calls you sister, you know, and—and all that sort of thing.'
The 'my wife,' grated strangely on Freda's ear, but she promised to go and see her little brother.
Lady Mary came in, and they went to dinner.
It seemed strange to see her at the head of the table, and Freda felt as if she were in a dream. But nothing could be more perfect than her ladyship's manner. She behaved as if nothing had ever happened to cause the least estrangement between them, and almost as if she were still Lady Mary Nugent. Handsome as ever, and perfectly well-bred, she almost made even Freda believe, after her long absence from her, that she really was what she seemed. However, Freda tried to take her as she was, and to feel thankful that she was no worse. It was she who principally kept up the conversation; Freda made great efforts, and signally failed, and Mr Gwynne never talked much.
After dinner, Freda proposed to go and see the little brother. As she looked at the magnificent boy who lay peacefully sleeping in his little crib, she was thankful to be able to kiss him, and say, 'God bless you, my brother,' without feeling angered that he had deprived her of the inheritance she had once been so proud of. She knew that Lady Mary was watching her narrowly, but there was no hypocrisy in her affection, so she did not care.
They went down to the library, where were Mr Gwynne, tea and coffee.
'Is he not a splendid fellow, my dear?' said Mr Gwynne.
'He certainly is, papa,' replied Freda, aloud, saying inwardly, 'and everything with you now. I am quite second—third I ought to say.'
This was true; Mr Gwynne was proud of his wife and son. The former took care of him, and did not greatly interfere with his pursuits or peculiarities, the latter gave him new life and hopes. An heir in his old age was a gift that might well exceed that of the daughter who could not perpetuate his name.
Freda was glad when she went to bed, which she did as soon as tea was over. It was a great relief to sit down once more in the easy-chair which had helped to nurse so many crude fancies and humours in days gone by, and think over the past and present. There was an atmosphere of unreality about everything at Glanyravon, that she hoped to clear off on the morrow, so she resolved to try not to feel depressed under its influence; but having once known what it was to enjoy living with real, working men and women, with aims beyond the formalities of society, it seemed hard to be thrown back upon the cold worldliness of her stepmother, and the selfish nervousness of her father.
She was, however, aroused on the blessed morning of Christmas Day by something that was very real.
'A merry Kismas, sister Freda,' shouted a sharp little voice into her ear, and before her eyes were half opened brisk little feet were stamping at her bedside, and the same voice authoritatively enouncing, 'Put me up, Dane, I 'ull be put up.'
'I beg your pardon, miss,' said the nurse, who stood in the doorway, 'but Master Harold would come, and my lady isn't up, and—'
'Never mind, let him in,' said Freda, sitting up in bed, and opening her arms to receive the rosy, wilful, handsome child, who did not know how he had supplanted her.
'A merry Kismas!' he repeated, returning Freda's kisses by pulling off her night-cap, and letting down her long hair before she knew what he was about. 'Now, I'll dive 'ou to Tewey.'
'Master Harold! don't, sir!' said the nurse.
But Master Harold was jumping on the pillow behind his sister, making reins of her hair and horses of her head in no very gentle fashion.
'I sha'n't give you what I brought you from London if you pull my hair,' said Freda, catching the bare, firm, sturdy leg of the small tyrant who called her sister.
'Is it soldiers?' asked the child, suddenly tumbling down before her.
She caught the little fellow in her arms, and told him that if he would go away whilst she dressed he should have the present. After some demur he consented, having first informed Freda that ''ittle Minnie, and Winnie, and Dot, and baby' were all coming to dinner.
'A family party!' groaned Freda, when the child was carried away by its nurse, 'myself the only rightful member of the family, and probably the only one who will feel as if she doesn't belong to it.'
Freda got up and looked out upon the fine park and the hills beyond. She sighed involuntarily.
'Why should I sigh,' she said. 'I am happier than when it was my home,—happier, and, I hope, more useful. My father doesn't want me,'—here she paused. Perhaps that father really did want her, for she, at least, loved him, and his wife did not; and she was beginning to be conscious, daily more and more conscious, of the exceeding preciousness of love.
Breakfast passed, with the same effort to feel at home on her part, and attempt to keep up a conversation on that of Lady Mary, as had the dinner of the previous day.
Harold made a diversion by bursting into the room to ask for his soldiers. He, at least, was quite natural, and entirely spoilt.
Immediately after breakfast they drove to church. It was delightful to Freda to see the good vicar in the reading-desk, and his wife in the pew beneath. She felt at home again for the first time. For the first time, also, she really listened to the worthy man's somewhat dry sermon, and strove to feel 'in charity with all men' on that blessed day. She thought once or twice of a sermon Rowland had preached that day twelvemonth, which riveted the attention of his large congregation, and made her wonder whence he had received the gift, by half-an-hour's plain eloquent preaching, of opening the heart to receive truths hitherto more understood than felt. Rowland had become to her, and many, the type of a preacher and minister of the Gospel, and to him she owed, under God, the fuller enlightenment and enlargement of her own mind.
After the service was over she went into the vicarage. Here, again, she was at home. She had much to tell Mrs Prothero of the kindness of Sir Philip Payne Perry and his wife to her, and many messages to deliver from them. She had also to hear Mr and Mrs Jonathan's opinion of Netta, and of the approaching wedding. She avoided any word that could recall Howel.
'I hope you are not displeased with the match?' said Freda.
'By no means,' was Mrs Jonathan's reply. 'I always thought Gladys very superior, and her turning out to be Mr Jones' niece removes our only objection. It is quite a romance!'
'She is a clever young woman,' said Mr Jonathan. 'I was surprised the other day to find how much history she knew. As to Wales, she has it by heart, and is not wholly unacquainted with the antiquities of the country. It was quite a pleasure for me, Miss Gwynne, I assure you, to meet with any one who took so much interest in ancient lore. And now she is to be one of the family she is so much more at her ease. Actually asked me, of her own accord, of the fossils in the Park quarry, and a very acute question concerning the lords of the marches. She even knew that her name, Gladys, meant Claudia, and that the original Gladys is, probably, the very Claudia mentioned by St Paul.'
'We shall all be thrown into the shade now, Mrs Prothero,' said Freda, laughing. 'Gladys will evidently be the favourite.'
'I am afraid I must break up your conversation, my love,' interrupted Lady Mary. 'You can drive or ride over to finish it when you like.'
On their way home her ladyship remarked,—
'I suppose this unfortunate discovery concerning Mr Howel Jenkins will quite ruin Mr. Rowland Prothero's position in London society?'
'He is scarcely in what is called "society;" but his friends are not likely to be changed by the conduct of his brother-in-in-law. He is far too highly esteemed and admired to be injured by such a man as Howel Jenkins.'
Freda felt the blood rush to her cheeks, and was convinced that Lady Mary noticed it.
'I am glad to hear you say so, my dear,' said Mr Gwynne. 'He is a great favourite of mine, and I should be sorry to think his prospects were injured. They are a rising family. His brother is very much thought of, and improving his own and my property amazingly. A most energetic young man, and so amusing, that he almost kills me whenever I see him. I am glad he is going to marry that pretty Gladys.'
When they arrived at home they found the party from Abertewey ready to receive them,—at least, Mrs Gwynne Vaughan and her children. The colonel was to join them at dinner.
'Oh, Freda, dear, I am tho glad you are come home again!' lisped Mrs Gwynne Vaughan. 'Tho ith Gwynne. He thaith it will be delightful to have you. Thith ith little Gwynne, and thith ith Minnie, and we call thith one Dot, and baby ith in the nurthery. You thall thee her by-and-by. Kith Aunt Freda, Minnie,—they all call you Aunt Freda, you know.'
Freda, not at all rejoicing in the honour, stooped to kiss all the pretty little children by turns, and had soon made friends with them all. The children were the greatest possible relief to her; she turned to them as a sort of neutral ground between the war in her own heart and the tact and inanity of her stepmother and stepsister.
The latter was as unchanged as the former. Very handsome, very fashionably dressed, very good-tempered,—in short, Miss Nugent simply turned into Mrs Vaughan. Freda wondered how the really clever and agreeable Colonel Vaughan could live with so dull a companion.
Having got through luncheon and the afternoon somehow, thanks to the children, the dinner-hour arrived, and therewith the colonel. Freda always felt reserved with him, and his studied kindness and politeness to her when she had met him occasionally in London, irritated her. She had spoken to him before his marriage so unreservedly of his wife, and had given him to understand so unmistakably that she knew what had passed between him and Gladys, that she fancied he must at heart cordially dislike her. Moreover, she had loved him. Much as she despised herself now for having done so, she knew it, and she despised him all the more on that account.
There was, however, no mistaking the real warmth of his welcome, and for the moment—only for the moment—Freda's heart beat quick.
'I am so glad to see you, Freda,—sister Freda, you know, now,—and looking so well.'
'Yeth, ith'nt the looking well. I think the lookth younger than when the went away.'
'Handsomer, at any rate. I may pay you a compliment, now, Freda.'
Freda could not return it. Colonel Vaughan looked more than six years older since his marriage, and there was a dissatisfied expression on his countenance very different from the old suavity.
Freda was not long in discovering that if he had improved his fortune by marriage he had not improved his temper, or increased his happiness. Fortunately for his wife, her imperturbable placidity and want of acute feeling prevented her from appropriating many hard hits from her husband that would have made Freda wretched.
Again, she admired the tact of the mother. By it she managed her husband admirably, and retained her power over him in precisely the same way as she did before she married him; while Wilhelmina wholly lost what little she had gained over hers prior to her marriage. Her silliness annoyed him continually, and her beauty, for want of expression, palled upon his fastidious taste.
Freda's contempt very soon turned to pity. The handsome, fascinating, deceitful colonel was amply indemnified for all the hearts he had broken, and those broken hearts fully avenged by the tedium of his home life.
Of course, Freda did not discover all this during that one Christmas Day, but it developed itself during her subsequent stay at Glanyravon.
'We did not ask any one else to dinner to-day, Gwynne,' said Mr Gwynne, 'because we thought Freda would like to have us alone, you know, and see the children, and—and all that sort of thing.'
'I hope Freda enjoys a family-party better than I do,' said the colonel, looking at her as he spoke. 'Of all things on earth, it is the slowest.'
'Complimentary,' said Lady Mary.
'Oh! Gwynne ith alwayth tho fond of thaying what he dothn't mean. He often doth to me, don't you, my dear? But I don't mind, becauth I underthtand him now.'
Freda looked at Mrs Vaughan to see if she spoke ironically. Not at all. She fully believed what she said. Colonel Vaughan saw the glance, and smiling, said,—
'All in good faith, I assure you.'
Freda blushed, and to turn the conversation, began to talk to him of his children, and to praise their beauty. He smiled again, as perfectly understanding her ruse.
'People call them loves and angels!' he said, 'and even go into raptures over the baby. For my part, I never look at them when they are babies. Indeed, I don't like children, and all ours are so spoilt. Wilhelmina doesn't know how to manage them, and now their governess is away, the house is like a lunatic asylum.'
'Oh, Gwynne, how abthurd you are! He ith tho fond of them, Freda, you can't think, and they are thuch little dearth.'
'I was greatly amused,' said Freda, 'to hear Minnie call Harold "uncle," just now; and he seemed not a little proud of his dignity.'
'Surely, Freda, you haven't learnt to talk baby talk!' said Colonel Vaughan. 'You used to eschew such twaddle.'
'It was time for me to learn to like a great many things that I professed to hate. I hope I am improved since I was here last. But I always liked children.'
'Oh! Harold is so fond of her,' said Mr Gwynne. 'He is a wonderful boy.'
Here followed a history of various achievements of Harold, during which Colonel Vaughan vainly endeavoured to catch Freda's eye. She was only too well-disposed to smile at the infatuation of the doating father.
'Here are the children, I think,' said Lady Mary.
In bounded Harold, and jumped, unbidden, on Freda's lap.
'I ull have some of that—and that,' said Harold.
'And I will have—' began Minnie.
'You will have nothing if you ask for it,' said the colonel with a frown.
His little trio were quiet in a moment.
'Ganpapa, take me up,' said Dot, creeping round to Mr Gwynne.
Freda felt her blood creep at that word 'Grandpapa,' and also felt the colonel's glance. He seemed to take a pleasure in watching every expression of her countenance, and it did, unfortunately, always convey her feelings to the watcher.
Freda had never passed so uncomfortable a dinner since the day when the present Mrs Vaughan came of age. Probably she was the only one of the party who was conscious of Colonel Vaughan's changed manner and temper, because it was new to her, and she could scarcely believe him to be himself. Her father was wrapped up in his boy—his wife's attention was divided between him and the other children, and Mrs Vaughan smiled and lisped on all by turns.
Freda thought of old times, when her father and herself were so happy together; and then she thought of the last Christmas day in London, when Mr and Mrs Jones, Rowland, and herself dined late off a Glanyravon Park turkey, having first feasted as many poor people as the kitchen would hold, on geese from Glanyravon Farm. Certainly the comparison with her present companions was 'odious' to her.
Freda scarcely knew which was worst—the riotous, untameable spirits of Harold, who did and said what he liked, unchecked either by father or mother, or the cowed and altered manner of the other children in the presence of their father; they, too, had been noisy enough before he arrived.
'It was very good of you to come to-day, Gwynne,' said Lady Mary; 'I scarcely expected you, knowing how you dislike this frosty weather.'
'Freda is attraction enough to draw off the frost, though she has become so much better than her neighbours. Wilhelmina, my dear, why do you let Minnie stuff her mouth so full of orange? The child will choke.'
The dinner came to an end at last, and the children went to bed. Freda played and sung some sacred music at Colonel Vaughan's request, and he complimented her on her improvement, and said he wished his wife played and sung as well, because music was such a resource in a dull country place.
'I suppose you have practised a great deal since you have been in London?' he said.
'Mrs Jones and I play and sing whenever we have time, and I have had some lessons,' replied Freda. 'Besides, one hears all the first musicians and singers, and they teach one.'
'Did you see much of that young parson, Prothero? I remember he was somewhere in your neighbourhood,' asked the colonel.
Freda was sure this question was a feeler, and she answered carelessly,—
'Yes, naturally. He is Mr Jones' brother curate.'
'Now confess, you didn't like those people, and that sort of life? You must have been ennuyée from morning to night.'
'On the contrary, the days were not half long enough.'
'Freda!' exclaimed Mrs Vaughan, 'I get tho tired, and tho doth the colonel, before half the evening ith over.'
'Some one else seems in the same condition,' said Freda. 'Papa is fast asleep.'
'And mamma nearly,' said Mrs Vaughan. 'And I am tho tired. I think Chrithmath dayth are very dull. One dothn't know what to do.'
'That isn't peculiar to Christmas days in your year,' said the colonel, sarcastically; 'but I suppose we had better go to bed. I hope we shall be more amusing to-morrow, Freda. All your old friends, the constant Sir Hugh amongst them, are invited to meet you. Let me light your candle. Remember, I always used to do that, when we had our snug evenings together such an age ago.'
'Yeth, he often talkth of you, Freda, and thayth you were thuch good company.'
Freda heard Colonel Vaughan sigh, and thought, as she said 'good-night,' and hastened upstairs, that she ought to be thankful that the imperturbable and dull Wilhelmina Nugent had been the choice of that discontented and irritable colonel, instead of the quick-tempered, independent Winifred Gwynne.