CHAPTER XXIV.
AT COSSART PLACE.
ffie, how well you look! You are quite brown. How glad I am to see you again!”
“I think you have got thinner, but you look well, Sheila. Oh, yes, I’m ever so much better! I’ve said good-bye to doctors. I mean to go my own way now and not take care anymore. I don’t believe in coddling. I’m going to be my own doctor in the future. I’m not sure that any of them really understood me. Anyhow, I’ve had enough of them, and now I shall go my own way. Mamma can have Oscar to coddle. I’m sure he looks as though he wanted it.”
“He’s getting into the rebellious stage now,” answered Sheila. “I shall be glad of your assistance in keeping him in order. Isn’t everything looking lovely, Effie? Are you glad to be home again? And how is dear Madeira and all the people there? Did you leave any there whom I knew?”
“Not many. Mrs. Reid sent you a lot of messages, and I’ve got a pen-tray for you from her too. We came back in the same boat as Ella and Grace Murchison; but you never knew them well, did you? All the Dumaresq party had been gone some time. I suppose you heard that from May Lawrence.”
“She told me they had gone on to Oratava when Sir Guy was so much better, but Miss Adene did not write very often.”
Effie had got her arm linked into Sheila’s by this time, and had walked her out upon the terrace, leaving Mrs. Cossart with Oscar in the drawing-room. She was all eagerness to learn the home news from him, but Effie wanted Sheila’s attention for herself.
“You know it was all a great mistake of mother’s packing you off home in one of her tantrums. I told her so at the time. I know things were a little uncomfortable, but I was against it. I can generally get my way with mother, but I couldn’t that time. But you hadn’t been gone three days before she found out what a mistake it was.”
“What do you mean?” asked Sheila with a subdued eagerness in her voice.
“Why, you know,” answered Effie, with her curious mixture of frankness and self-consciousness, “it didn’t seem to answer a bit. Mother thought Mr. Dumaresq was going to make love to me or something—as though I wanted him! I liked him all right, but I was never particularly taken by him. He has not brains enough for me, and he never understood me. I always felt that when we were talking together. I was always above his head somehow. Besides, she might have seen that the Dumaresqs had taken a fancy to you, and that packing you off would vex them. They never were a bit the same afterwards. They sat at a different table, and we hardly saw them. And people talked so. I got it out of Mrs. Reid. They all said you had been sent away because I was jealous—or mother. I don’t care what people think. It makes no difference to me. I never care a bit about gossip. But mother was terribly put about, and papa was very vexed too. It seemed to spoil things very much. I do believe, if it hadn’t been for Oscar’s illness, they would have had you back!”
Sheila made no immediate reply; she was thinking how, but for Oscar’s illness, many things might have been vastly different, and with what sort of feelings she would have regarded a summons back to Madeira.
“As for the Dumaresqs,” pursued Effie, “I never made any attempts to make up to them. That isn’t my way. I can have plenty of friends of my own sort; and some really very interesting people came who had travelled a lot, and were not just society people like the Dumaresqs. We thought them a little rough at first, but we got to like them very much. One of them admired me very much. I think he rather hoped—but I’m not that sort of girl, and he was going back to the Cape, so it was quite out of the question. I never was one for having a man always dangling after me. It bores me to death! But they talked so much of things they’d done and places they had seen or were going to see that papa got quite a travelling mania on, and so he sent for Cyril.”
“And they have gone off together?”
“Yes. It was very nice having Cyril, and we stayed a fortnight longer than we had meant, and took some excursions. After all, when I got Cyril again, I found I liked him a great deal better than all the rest of them put together. Don’t you think he has a very distinguished air?”
Sheila’s admiration for Cyril was a thing quite of the past; she had regarded him of late with aversion and contempt. But she was learning to curb her tongue, and to try and rule her thoughts also, so after a little pause she said—
“I think university men always have an air about them; but, of course, you know—about Cyril—and that it is not quite easy for me to admire him very much just now.”
Effie flushed up a little.
“Yes, of course, I know,” she answered. “Cyril told me himself. If he hadn’t, I don’t think I should have heard. Papa knows, but he has not told even mother. He thought it would be better put aside and forgotten.”
“And Cyril told you himself?”
“Yes. I think Cyril found it a great comfort to find somebody sympathetic and understanding. I’ve never set up for being a saint, and I have plenty of sympathy for sinners. I’ve always got on with Cyril. He knows more about me, I think, than anybody else. I don’t think him perfect—I’m not so silly. I’ve too much insight into character to make mistakes like that. But I can sympathise with him, and understand how he feels when other people don’t seem able to see anything but the other side of the question. I think healthy, robust people are often rather dull and dense. I’ve had lots of time to think. Cyril said I was so different from the rest of the world. I believe I was a great comfort to him.”
“Well, Aunt Tom will be very glad of that, for she was very miserable, and was afraid he would go on being miserable too. He went away feeling pretty bad, I think, though I did not see him. I was at Monckton Manor with Oscar. I was surprised he didn’t come over to say good-bye to us. Once I rather thought that he was falling in love with May.”
“Oh, dear, no!” answered Effie quickly. “That I am sure he was not!”
She spoke almost irritably, and Sheila answered at once—
“Perhaps not, but he used to go there very often. May never liked him, so perhaps she got bored and gave him a hint. Anyway, he stopped going rather suddenly, and did not even say good-bye.”
“I suspect he found May a very empty-headed girl. I daresay he was thinking of her when he told me how difficult it had been, when I was away, to find anyone with whom he could exchange ideas with any sense of satisfaction. Girls were all so selfish and empty-headed, he said. I thought he was rather severe, but that was his idea. I told him that he mustn’t be hard on them, for perhaps they had never had the time to read and think as I have.”
“Well, May is not empty-headed!” answered Sheila warmly; “but Oscar may have been mistaken in thinking Cyril admired her and went often. Perhaps it was only for the boys he went. I know May has never cared for him.”
“No, I don’t think she would have the mind to appreciate him. Cyril does not wear his heart upon his sleeve.”
“May is engaged to North,” said Sheila, with a little smile dimpling the corners of her lips.
Effie gave a slight toss of her head and laughed.
“A very suitable match! I should think they would just suit one another!”
“I think they do,” answered Sheila, laughing. “I have never seen two people more thoroughly happy together.”
“I almost wonder Mr. Lawrence approved, though,” added Effie. “North is so thoroughly commercial in all his views.”
“His views seem to suit May, at any rate, and he can give her a comfortable home away from the town. But she is too much interested in the works to care about being far away. She wants to understand everything and help in everything. I think she will be splendid when she gets her chance.”
Effie listened with some wonder to the sort of thing which commanded May’s enthusiasm, and then said with a little shrug—
“Well, I hope they will be very happy. All that sort of thing is very estimable, and people without nerves and keen senses may be able to do it, but I don’t think I could.”
“Nobody would expect it of you, Effie,” answered Sheila, with a sarcasm of which neither was conscious.
Cossart Place was a more comfortable home for Sheila just now than it had ever been before. Her aunt met her like one who wished to efface an unpleasing impression, and never was there any slightest allusion to the stormy scene at Madeira. Poor Mrs. Cossart had learned a lesson, and was really humiliated by the failure she had made. Sheila was gentler, more considerate, more tractable than ever before, and Oscar’s presence was a certain element of tranquillity and accord.
Effie was so much stronger, and was so resolved to manage her case in her own way, that Mrs. Cossart felt rather like a hen taken from her chicks, and was delighted to have Oscar to coddle. And Oscar needed care for a long while. He had thoroughly run down in health since his father’s death, and this wasting fever had left him very delicate and frail. There was no reason to think that he would not in time be as strong as ever, but it would be a long business, and during this period it was Mrs. Cossart’s great pleasure to nurse him up, cosset him and care for him, much as she had cosseted and cared for Effie whilst the girl had been so much out of health.
Sheila could not but love her aunt for all her goodness to Oscar, and he began to take almost a son’s place in that house, advising her, in the absence of the master, on all points connected with the property, and showing so much knowledge and insight that Mrs. Cossart would often exclaim—
“I can’t think how you come to know all these things!”
“I was brought up to them, you see,” Oscar would answer with a smile and a sigh. “I used to help my father, and I have been used to land from babyhood. I am much more at home still with a steward’s books than with the office accounts!”
“Well, I wish your uncle would make you his man of business when he comes back,” said Mrs. Cossart one day, after Oscar had helped her through some accounts which had often been a source of bewilderment to herself and her husband. “I believe we get imposed upon right and left through ignorance. And I don’t like the thought of your going back to that nasty stuffy office. You would be much better for an open-air life, and I always do say that John is getting too old to look after all the land he buys, and that he ought to have a regular agent.”
Oscar laughed and stroked his aunt’s hand caressingly.
“Quite too halcyon an idea to work,” he said, “but I like to think that I am helping you in his absence.”
“You are more than helping—you are doing everything, and I’m sure I’m thankful for it, for I never could understand the rights of things between landlord and tenant, and we want to do what is right and just without being imposed upon. Well, you will stay on, at any rate, till your uncle comes back, and he seems in no hurry to do so. I wonder he wasn’t as glad to come home as I was; but perhaps he knew there’d be a lot of worries waiting for him. He will be very glad to find them all straightened out like this.”
It seemed as though some idea was fermenting in Mrs. Cossart’s brain, for once when she was sitting alone with Sheila in the drawing-room she said suddenly—
“Do you ever hear from the Dumaresqs now?”
“Lady Dumaresq wrote once, and Miss Adene once. They are soon coming back to England.”
“Do you think you will see any more of them when they do?”
“I don’t know,” answered Sheila in a low voice, with crimsoning cheeks.
“Well, I was going to say I hope you won’t,” said her aunt, “for I don’t know what I should do if I were to lose you both.”
“I don’t understand,” said Sheila, bewildered.
“Well, I was only thinking that Mr. Dumaresq seemed very much attracted by you once. It may be only a passing fancy, but if it came to anything and I lost you, and Effie were to go too, why, where should I be?”
Sheila looked up suddenly; a number of hints that Effie had let drop flashed back into her mind.
“But do you mean that Effie—that Effie—is going——”
“Well, my dear, we don’t talk of it yet, and being cousins, of course, it is not exactly what we should have chosen, and we want to make sure that her health is really restored. But you know she and Cyril have never really cared for any but each other all their lives, and in Madeira it seemed to come to a crisis with them. Nothing is actually settled. Her father would not have an engagement, but I believe it will come to that sooner or later, and then they will certainly live in London, though they will always have a second home here. But they are both so intellectual—however, we need not talk of that yet. Only if I lose Effie, I do not want to lose you too.”
Sheila laughed and blushed a little.
“You are very kind to want me, for I have not always behaved well; but I do not think you will get rid of me if you want to keep me.”
“Well, I do. I am used to young people about, and the house would not be itself without them. Still, of course, I shouldn’t wish to stand in the way of anybody’s happiness. If I do have to lose you girls, I shall adopt Oscar. He, at any rate, will not want to marry yet awhile, and he is a very dear boy. I should like to keep him altogether, and not let him go back to River Street at all. I don’t care how they have improved the town, I always do say the country is healthier.”
“I am sure of it!” cried Sheila eagerly. “Oh, how delightful it would be if Oscar could always live here!”
Mrs. Cossart nodded her head with some emphasis.
“We must wait till your uncle comes back to settle things, but stranger things than that have happened before now.”
(To be continued.)
