CHAPTER IX.
‘DON’T FRET.’
August was verging slowly towards September; the hues of the flowers were more gorgeous and more autumnal; the foliage of the trees had taken a soberer, more mature tinge. The weather was sultry and still, as it is wont at that time of the year to be.
One afternoon, Nita Bolton, book in hand, and Speedwell by her side, paced slowly up and down the river walk, looking a little pale and drooping. Always soon and easily tired; never of the strong, robust temperament, she had looked of late more delicate than usual, and when questioned as to the reason of her heavy eyes and pale cheeks, had replied that ‘it was the heat—the sultry weather; the Abbey stood so low; and the end of the summer was, she was convinced, the most tiring and trying time of the whole year.’ She pooh-poohed all attempts to make her neglect any of her usual duties, and attended to both her outdoor and indoor tasks with unabated diligence; but the zeal, the pleasure in them was gone. Then her father proposed that they should go away on one of their usual tours—she and he and John—but Nita thought she would prefer to wait until later in the year: Wellfield was so beautiful now. When they did go away, she wished, she said, to go to the Italian lakes, and in a month later it would be time enough for that. Her word at home was a mandate, and her injunction was obeyed, though John, in his slow and deliberate manner, did remind her that there was a little touch of inconsistency between her two statements: first, that the Abbey lay so low, and that this was the most tiring and trying time of the whole year; and, second, that Wellfield was nicer now than at any other season. To which she answered, a little wearily, ‘How you quibble about things! I don’t want to go away from home. I hate changes.’
Nita had always led a remarkably quiet life. Her friends in or about Wellfield were very few; she had not a single intimate girlfriend. Her father, and still more her cousin, John Leyburn, had always been her greatest confidants. All things that a sister may say to and confide in a brother whom she esteems and loves, and in whom she has the most boundless trust and confidence, Nita had always been in the habit of saying to and confiding in John Leyburn. His image was inseparable from her scheme of life. She never saw him without a feeling of contented pleasure—much the same feeling as that she experienced when Speedwell, with a great sigh, came up to her, laid his great nose on her lap, and looked with his honest brown eyes intently into her face. The idea of life without John in it had never occurred to her. She was usually on excellent terms with her father’s cousin, Miss Shuttleworth, knowing her sterling worth; but her nature had not much real sympathy with the sternly disciplinarian one of Aunt Margaret. Their terms were neutral. The gaieties at Wellfield might be said to be—none. The Boltons visited with none of the old families residing near the place; they were looked upon, and they knew it, somewhat in the light of interlopers, which fact had not troubled them much.
It sounds, in description, a dull life; but Nita had never found it so, hers being essentially one of those natures to which ‘peace at home’ is the one thing needful. She did not care to seek distractions outside, and no amount of distractions could have filled up the ache which would have been there if she had felt that at home, in the background, there was a jar, a quarrel, a dissension of any kind. Indeed, I am not sure that there may not be duller things for a girl than to live in a beautiful home which she loves, with human interests around her, not many, but deep, with a good father, a good friend, and a good dog as her chief and almost her only associates. Such a life Nita Bolton had led now for seven years—a silent, still, uneventful life, but one which she had always found sufficient, nay, delightful. Vague yearnings after lovers, and devotion, and romance, had been singularly absent from her thoughts. She had literally wandered
‘In maiden meditation, fancy free.’
Sometimes, after reading some very noble or beautiful poem, some very striking and powerful novel, she had, it is true, wondered a little if life was ever to contain any romance for her, and had thought that such a romance would be pleasant. Then, being well endowed with a certain shrewd, homely, common sense, she had often observed her own reflection in the looking-glass, and had said to herself, ‘Nita, my child, don’t flatter yourself that any man will ever fall in love with you for your beauty; and if he should tell you he does, don’t believe him. He might like you for some of your other qualities, if he ever took the trouble to find them out, and no doubt many persons might be found to love your money, and take you with it as a necessary appendage; but I think you would do best to keep heart-whole, and not marry anyone at all.’
She had been very contented in this prospect, though it must be owned she had never contemplated the future without placing in it the figure of John Leyburn in the character of ‘guide, philosopher, and friend.’ Then her father had appeared one afternoon, with Jerome Wellfield at his side, and from that hour Nita’s fixed and settled plans for life were upset.