Not a year after the stroke of disappointment had fallen upon Isa, she had to endure that of sudden bereavement. A few—very few—days of anxious watching by a parent’s sick-bed, and Isa found herself fatherless as well as motherless in the world. Very heavy lay the burden of loneliness upon the young orphan’s heart. It is true that Isa had a half-brother yet living, but Gaspar was many years older than herself, and Isa had seen very little of him, as the greater part of his life had been passed in Jamaica. Still the affections of Isa clung fondly around the nearest relative left for her to love, especially as she knew her brother to be in broken health; and she resolved that to watch over him and minister to his comfort should be the object thenceforth of an existence from which all the brightness appeared to have departed.
Even with thoughts of Gaspar, however, were linked associations of mystery and pain. Isa had never imparted to any one a care which to her young spirit was more oppressive than sorrow itself. She had never told how, when the shadow of approaching dissolution lay on her father, when the delirium of fever had passed away, he had fixed his glazing eyes upon his daughter, at that midnight hour the sole watcher beside him. The dying man had seemed anxious to disburden himself of something that weighed on his mind; he struggled to speak, but his parched lips could scarcely frame articulate words. Isa strained her ear to catch the almost inaudible accents, bending down so low that she could feel the dying man’s breath on her cheek. A few scattered sentences were gathered, deeply imprinted on her memory by the solemnity of the time when they were uttered.
“Gaspar—you will be with him—something wrong—the Orissa—not her money lost—he should deal fairly by that orphan—tell him from me—” But whatever was the message intended, death silenced the lips that would have sent it, and Isa was left to ponder painfully over what could be “wrong,” and how Gaspar could have not “dealt fairly” by an orphan, at least in the opinion of his father.
The remembrance of these dying words, the dread of some painful explanation with Gaspar, alone threw a damp upon the earnest desire with which Isa looked forward to her only brother’s return to England. Her affectionate spirit yearned for the sympathy of one bound to her by the tie of blood, and she longed once more to possess a settled home. About a year after Mr. Gritton’s death, Gaspar arrived from Jamaica. Isa was at the time residing with a friend in London, and her brother took a lodging near her. Being a good deal occupied with business during the day, and too much an invalid to venture out in the evening, Gaspar did not see much of his sister,—far less than Isa desired. Her brother’s manner towards her was gentle and courteous, his kindness won her gratitude, his broken health her sympathy. Isa wished to devote herself to the care of her brother, but he preferred delaying the time when they should reside together in a settled home, until he should have built a house into which he could receive his young sister. During this period spent in London, Isa either found no opportunity of speaking to Gaspar on the subject of their father’s mysterious message, or she put off making the effort till a more quiet season, when her brother might have recovered his health. She could not bear to risk exciting him when he was so delicate, or offending him when he was so kind. Isa gladly availed herself of any excuse to delay the performance of a duty from which she intuitively shrank.
Isa felt grateful to her half-brother for selecting as the place of their future residence a spot near Castle Lestrange. She had paid many a delightful visit to her uncle’s lordly mansion, both before and after the death of his wife, and she deemed it a proof of Gaspar’s considerate affection for herself, that he should purchase a site for his house but a mile from the dwelling of those who were her relatives, but not his own. Isa could have wished, indeed, that it had not been on the Wildwaste side of the Castle, as memory recalled a flat expanse of common surrounding a miserable hamlet, and an unsightly manufactory; but she had not visited her uncle’s home for nearly six years, and many changes might have taken place during that period. Isa also encouraged herself with the thought that a little paradise might stand even in the midst of a barren heath, like an oasis in a desert; and that as Gaspar had chosen to build a house instead of buying one, it was evident that his was a taste which could not be satisfied by any ordinary attractions in a dwelling.
During the time when Gaspar was building, Isa never once saw her brother. He took a lodging above the single shop in Wildwaste, that he might superintend operations. He kept a sharp eye over the workmen who were brought from London, not suffering them, it was said, to mix with the cottagers around, or spend their evenings at the small county inn. There was no doubt that Gaspar Gritton was eccentric, and Isa was aware of the fact; but she was disposed to look at her only brother in the most favourable light, and persuaded herself that she rather liked a dash of eccentricity in a character; it redeemed it from being commonplace.
Isa was very impatient for the completion of her new home, and would, if permitted, have entered it before it was sufficiently dry to be a safe residence for her. Buoyant hope had again sprung up within her young heart, long cast down, but not crushed by affliction. Life might yet have joys in store for the bright girl. Isa would be, as she thought, everything to her brother; his nurse, companion, and friend. She would make his home a fairy dwelling, where everything on which the eye might rest should be graceful and pretty. Isa knew that her brother had sufficient means to procure every comfort; and though her own patrimony was but slender, she hoped, dispensing Gaspar’s alms, to become a benefactress to all the poor around them. Again the fairy bubble was glittering before Isa, and if its colours were now less splendid, and it rose to less lofty a height still the emblem of earthly hope was not without its beauty and brightness.
It was on a day in March that Isa joined her brother. She had enjoyed her journey by train; the sunshine had been brilliant, her companions agreeable, and her mind was full of pleasant expectation. Isa’s pleasure was damped by the little disappointment of not finding Gaspar ready to welcome her at the station. It was with a sensation of loneliness that she took her seat in a hired open conveyance to be driven to Wildwaste Lodge. The sunshine was now overclouded, a fierce north-east wind was blowing, from the chilling effects of which the young lady from London tried to protect herself in vain. The horse was lame, the drive seemed long.
“Are we far from Wildwaste Lodge?” asked Isa at last of the driver, as they skirted a dreary common of which she fancied that she could recognize some of the features.
“That be’s the house,” replied the man, pointing with his whip towards a narrow three-storied dwelling, looking staringly new, without sheltering shrubbery or even hedge, with no blinds to the windows, no porch to the door, nothing that could redeem its aspect from absolute vulgarity. Could this be the rural retreat to which Isa had given the name of home!