Mitchelhurst Place: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 2)

by Margaret Veley

The habit of deference to her Uncle Hayes prevented her from resenting this speech.

"Never mind about that, please, uncle," she said gently.

"Good family, too," said Mr. Hayes, indistinctly to himself. "I did it for the best, as your mamma would see."

"Never mind about mamma, Uncle Hayes," said the girl again. "I'm sure you had better rest a little."

And when he acquiesced she went back to her novel, which was all about Adrian Scarlett. After all, he had not gone off without a thought of her—he had not slighted her. Perhaps she was too young, and at any rate she could not be angry with her uncle since he had told her of Adrian's love. She had a right to think of him as Adrian, surely, if he loved her. So he had been sent away—where? Perhaps he would see somebody else, somebody better and more beautiful, and she would be forgotten. Well!—Barbara's eyes were fixed intently on the page—even if he did forget her, it might break her heart, but she need not be ashamed that she had thought of him, since she held the happy certainty that he had thought of her. Happen what might in his after life, he had loved her once—he had!—he had! And she had feared that he had only laughed at her, she had thought that he might be heartless—Oh how was it possible that she could have been so wickedly unjust! She deserved that he should never come back to her.

It was an incongruous business altogether. It was as if a breath from a burial vault had quickened the faint flame in Barbara's heart to sudden splendour, for if old Hayes had actually been the mummy he very much resembled, he could not have been more remote from any comprehension of the message which he had delivered. His lips had relaxed in utter feebleness, and the secret had escaped. He did not see the look which flashed into the girl's eyes, and when Mrs. Strange, who might have been more observant, came to take her place by the bedside, Barbara stole softly away, hanging her head in the consciousness of those flushed cheeks, which seemed too like holiday wear for such a melancholy time. Her mother might have been surprised, for she had been a little uneasy, fancying that the girl looked sad. Barbara was but a young thing, and had been left too long shut up with but dismal company.

And, if Mrs. Strange had only known it, the poor little girl had been her own most dismal company. From the time that Reynold Harding went away she had been restless, frightened, and miserable. When the exaltation of that evening had passed, a sudden terror at the thought of her own daring overtook her. She was not only afraid of her uncle's anger, but doubtful whether she had not really committed an unpardonable sin against the social law. When she hurried to Harding with the letters, she had somehow vaguely believed that he would shelter her, that he would stand by her if she were blamed. And when he had played with her, refused to trust her, and vanished into the night with a mocking smile, leaving her utterly alone, she had felt absurdly desolate. At first she had waited, in sickening apprehension, for her uncle to hear of her visit to Mr. Harding. Fate, however, seemed whimsically inclined to protect her. First there was the storm of rain which prevented a meeting with all the gossips of Mitchelhurst at the Penny Reading. Then, a day or two later, came Mr. Hayes' accident—a mere slip on the stairs, it was supposed, till the doctor hinted at something in the nature of a fit. Barbara saw that detection was postponed, but still she felt that the sword hung over her head, and night after night she tossed in an agony of doubt. Had she really done anything very dreadful? She recalled Mr. Harding's ambiguous words and glances—did they mean that he thought lightly of a girl who would go to him as she had done? Over and over again she asked the useless questions—Did they mean that?—Did they not?—-What did they mean? And leaving his meaning out of the matter, what would other people say? Suppose she went and told them—ah! but how and what would she tell them? She might say, "I found I hadn't posted Mr. Harding's letters, so I took them to him at once: wasn't that the best thing to do?" How right and reasonable it sounded! But if she said, "I went secretly to a man's lodgings at night——" at the mere thought a blush passed over her like a scorching wave of fire. What would her mother say?

Even in her misery she was childish enough to wince at the thought of her sisters at home. She had been proud to be mistress of a house while they were still in the school-room, and the idea that she had been wanting in dignity, perhaps even in modesty, and that she might be ostentatiously controlled and watched, by way of punishment, was intolerable to her. To be humiliated before Louisa and Hetty—how could she endure it? They were not ill-natured, but they had a little resented her advancement, and Barbara, as she lay in her great over-shadowing bed, could fancy all the out-spoken comments and questionings in the roomy attic where the three used to sleep. She did not want to go back to the Devonshire vicarage, and yet Mitchelhurst was fast becoming hateful to her. The pictures on the walls gazed at her with Reynold's eyes, his presence haunted the house from which he had been banished. What was the wrong that she had done him? She did not know, and the uncertainty seemed to mock her as he had mocked her that night. The poor child said to herself quite seriously that he had taken away all her youth and happiness. She fancied that she felt old and weary as the days went by, fretting her simple heart with unacknowledged fear.

And now suddenly came the message of Adrian's love, and lifted her above all her dreary little troubles. What did it matter that it was uttered by those dry, bloodless lips, which stumbled over the blissful words? What did anything matter since Adrian cared for her, and life was all to come? Why had she tormented herself about Reynold Harding! Reynold Harding! He was utterly insignificant, he was nobody! She could tell Adrian about that expedition of hers, it was so unimportant, so trivial, that he could not be jealous; he could not mind. Adrian's jealousy! There was something delightful, even in that terrible possibility. But he would not be jealous, everything was warm, and glad, and full of sunshine when Adrian was there.

She resented Mr. Pryor's professional allusions to the uncertainty of life. There are moments so perfect that they ought not to be degraded by thoughts of disease and death, ought not to be measured or weighed in any way whatever. Barbara felt this, and she thrust aside the clergyman's lecture as soon as he left the room. Let him talk of such things to Uncle Hayes. As for her, she lingered at the window, thinking of her newly-found happiness, while she gazed at the hoary fields, with their black boundaries of railing or leafless hedge, till a faint pink flush crept over the pale sky, as if it were softly suffused with her overflowing joy. Mitchelhurst Place, of which Harding had dreamed so tenderly a few months earlier, as a home for himself and his love, was to the eager girl at that moment only a charnel-house, full of death and clinging memories, from which she panted to escape. It was true that she had first met Adrian Scarlett there, but she had the whole world in which to meet him again. "And he will always know where to find me," she said to herself with a touch of practical common sense in the midst of her rapture. "He can look out papa's name in the Clergy List, any day."