Dimly Helen understood her father, and inwardly she registered a passionate vow of loyalty to his wishes. For the second time her clinging fingers closed round her stepmother's irresponsive hand. Mrs. Desmond made no movement. She accepted the charge, but she obstinately withheld the love that might have made that charge an easy one. The little wan figure creeping into the darkened room had had no power to move her. But the meeting between father and daughter, the quiet content that had come to her husband with Helen's presence and that all her tenderness had failed to produce, these things she noted with jealous eyes, and they gave a fresh impulse to her morbid feelings with regard to her stepdaughter. Even here, by the sick-bed, Helen was first. Colonel Desmond's first conscious request had been to see his child. The scene did not last long. Mrs. Desmond quickly, almost impatiently, motioned to Helen to go, and Helen obeyed unhesitatingly. Henceforward she told herself, as in the glad morning light she knelt in prayer for her father, there must be no more disobedience. If this awful shadow might pass away, if the consequences of her sin might be averted, her whole life should be spent in trying to redeem her fault. Pledges we often make, how lightly! But our little Helen was made of sterner stuff. Wilful and wayward as she was, there was a strain of that fibre in her, possibly an inheritance from some martyred Irish ancestor, from which saints and martyrs have been made. That, and the few following days of alternating hope and fear, were an ordeal which left a mark upon her never to be afterwards effaced. When, one morning, Dr. Russell himself came to her and told her that her father was out of danger, she received the news gravely, almost solemnly, for in the midst of her joy and thankfulness she could not forget that she had been, in a certain sense, taken at her word, and that her life was henceforth consecrated to the fulfilment of the promises she had made in her hour of distress.
CHAPTER V.
LONGFORD GRANGE.
An old orchard, its trees gnarled and moss-grown, their blossoms lying thick upon the grass beneath. A little to the left the embowered gables and red chimneys of an old house. On the right, and stretching away towards the horizon, a wide expanse of quiet meadows starred with buttercups, and intersected by tall hawthorn hedges. Over all the delicate blue sky of an English summer day.
It was a typical midland landscape, a landscape that possesses a quiet charm peculiarly its own; and Helen, swinging herself gently to and fro in a hammock under the bright sunshine, felt as much at home as though Longford Grange had been her habitation for as many years as it had been days.
The sad days in Bloomsbury Square were things of the past. The dreary house was shut up; the precious china was carefully packed away, the chairs and tables were shrouded in their dust-sheets, and Mrs. Desmond's household gods were temporarily, at least, at peace. It had all been accomplished in far too great a hurry to please that lady; but Dr. Russell's orders that the colonel was to leave London directly he was well enough to be moved were peremptory, and Mrs. Desmond was forced to give way to necessity. The idea, too, of a country life was by no means pleasant to her, and she was wondering in a bewildered way what spot to fix upon as a temporary resting-place when a letter arrived from her half-sister, Mrs. Bayden, the wife of a country clergyman, saying that Longford Grange, a house within a quarter of a mile of the Rectory, was to let, and might suit her sister's purpose. The idea did not immediately approve itself to Mrs. Desmond, who disliked the too close neighbourhood of poor relations; but the colonel, hearing of the suggestion, expressed a desire to fall in with it, and the matter was settled. Helen's fate trembled in the balance for a few days, as Miss Walker found herself unable to leave town, and Mrs. Desmond seriously contemplated leaving her troublesome stepdaughter behind in the governess's charge. Upon the first suggestion of such a plan to the colonel, however, he spoke so decidedly of his determination not to be separated from Helen that Mrs. Desmond saw that, for the present at least, it was useless to argue the point. Dr. Russell, meeting his little friend upon the stairs one day clenched the matter by remarking upon her altered looks, and he went out of his way to urge upon her parents the necessity of change of scene and a life of freedom for their child after the evident strain she had undergone during her father's illness. Mrs. Desmond scarcely relished this advice; but even she looked a little anxiously at the girl, and wondered rather uncomfortably whether Helen's curiously changed manner could be due to physical causes. As for Colonel Desmond, he took fright at once. Helen must have a holiday, must run wild if necessary, he declared. He was very weak still, and in the full enjoyment of an invalid's privileges. Although his wife positively shuddered at the idea of Helen's running wild, she did not attempt to gainsay him, and after this there was no more discussion about the matter. Helen went to Longford Grange without a governess, and with a tacit understanding that, under certain restrictions, such as early rising and punctual attendance at meals, she was to be allowed to do pretty much as she pleased.
But in spite of her father's tenderness, of the charms of a country life, and the delights of freedom, Helen did not recover her health or her spirits directly. Perhaps she was by nature a little morbid, and, if so, the unnatural repression to which she had been subjected during the past year, and the want of wholesome sympathy and young companionship had tended to dangerously foster such a quality. She was always brooding over what was past, and exaggerating her own failings. Morbidly conscious that she was an object of dislike to her stepmother, she credited Mrs. Desmond with a depth of feeling of which that cold-natured woman was incapable. Anxious to show her true contrition for what was past, she was perpetually fidgeting her stepmother with small attentions which Mrs. Desmond not only failed to appreciate, but which she ascribed to motives of which Helen's generous, open nature was incapable. Colonel Desmond, indeed, looked on smiling. What an improvement in Helen! To be sure he missed the child's bright ways and frank outspoken talk. But for this, and for his little daughter's white, oldened face, he would have begun to believe that his Margaret's training had worked miracles. But to see these two beginning to understand one another was worth anything, even his illness. No doubt it was her stepmother's tender sympathy through that sad time that had brought Helen to this mind.
So reasoned the colonel, and was content. Meanwhile he and his wife became once more a good deal absorbed in each other's society, and Helen was left to her own devices. Lonely Helen, lying in her hammock on this bright summer's day thinking of many things about which young heads should not concern themselves, heard a step in the orchard, and starting up hastily, saw a young girl, apparently about her own age, coming towards her.
"One of those tiresome girls from the Rectory, I suppose," she said to herself discontentedly. Helen had as yet only seen her stepmother's relatives in church, Mrs. Desmond having hinted very strongly to her sister that, owing to the colonel's state of health and her own shattered nerves, intercourse between the Grange and Rectory would be necessarily restricted, especially as regarded the young people. Agatha, however, the eldest Rectory girl, had been presented to her aunt, in whose eyes she had found favour, as Helen knew to her cost, having smarted more than once under an unflattering comparison between herself and the young lady in question.