Wild Heather

by L. T. Meade

"I am sure you are not, auntie; I have come back to help you to get well again."

"I am saying nothing against you, poor child; you are right enough, you do credit to my training. Had you been left to his tender mercies, God only knows what sort of creature you'd have grown into. But now I will begin, continue, and end in as few words as possible. Your father came courting your mother long years ago in a dear little seaside garrison town. He was a young lieutenant then, and was very smart, and had a way with him which I don't think he ever lost."

I thought of my darling father, with his cheerful, bluff manners, with his gay laugh, his merry smile, his ready joke. Even still he had "a way with him," although it must be sadly altered from the time when my mother was young.

"Your mother was a good bit my junior, Heather, and she and I kept a little house together. She was a very pretty girl indeed, and, of course, men admired her. We were pretty well off in those days, the pressure of penury had not come near us; we were orphans, but were left comfortably off. We used to subscribe to all the pleasant things that took place in our little town, and we occupied ourselves also in good works, and I think we were loved very much. Your father came along and got introduced to your mother, and to me, and we both took to him from the first."

"Oh, auntie, did you like him, then?"

"Like him! Of course I did. Heather, he was just the sort of man to beguile young girls to their destruction.

"Well, he cast his spell over your mother, and people began to talk about them both, and I began to get into a rage, for I knew what those soldier lads were when they liked. I knew how easy it would be for him to flirt and make love and ride away. I was determined he should not do that. Your mother could not have borne it. She was so pretty, Heather, and so clinging, and so gentle, and she had just given her whole heart to your father. So one day I asked him, after he had been with her the whole morning, and they had walked together by the seashore, and sat together in the garden, and he had read poetry to her, and she had listened with her heart in her eyes—I said to him, 'Do you know what you are doing?' He stared at me and coloured, and said, 'What?'—and then I said again, 'You must know perfectly well that a girl's heart is a sensitive thing, so just be careful what you are doing with my young sister's heart.' He coloured all over his face, and I never liked him better than when he sprang forward and took my hand and said,

"'Why, Penelope!'—I knew I ought to be shocked, but I did not even mind his calling me Penelope—'Why, Penelope, if I could only believe that I had been fortunate enough to make any impression on your sister's heart, I'd be the happiest man on earth, for I love her, Penelope, better than my own life!' Yes, Heather, I can hear him saying those words just as though it were yesterday, and I was ever so pleased, ever so glad; the delight and joy of that moment come back to me even now. Of course, your father and mother got engaged, and everything was as right as possible. They were married, and soon after their marriage they went to India, and in about a year's time I heard of the birth of their child—of you—Heather. Your mother was very poorly after your birth, and had to be sent to the hills, up to a place called Simla. But even the air of the hills did not do her any good. She pined and pined, and faded and faded, and when you were about five years of age she died."

"I remember about afterwards," I said then, "I saw her after she was dead."

"Well, you needn't tell me, the knowledge would be harrowing," said Aunt Penelope. "After your mother's death I wrote to Gordon, proposing to adopt you, and begging of him to send you to me at once. He refused rather shortly, I thought, and said that he preferred you to be near him, and that he knew a family who would keep you in the hills during the hot weather. So the next few years went by. Then, when you were about eight years old I got a letter from your father. He said he was coming back to London, that he wanted to come on special business, and also that he had now changed his mind, and would bring you to me, if I had not changed my mind about having you. Of course I had not, and he brought you, and that was the end of that story. You were left with me and you fared well enough. While your father was in London I saw him several times, and I marked a great change in him, and what I considered a great deterioration of character. He knew the woman he has since made his wife even then, and often spoke of her. She was in society in Calcutta, where his regiment was stationed, and he often met her. He used to mention her in almost every letter he wrote, and I was fairly sick of her name, and also of the name of her brother. I told Gordon so in one of my letters. I said that Lady Helen's brother might be the best man on earth, but that he was nothing at all to me, and that if he wanted to write about him he had better choose another correspondent.