Mrs. Joscelyn came out to meet them at the door. She liked to see her Liddy get down beaming, from her horse—the horse as handsome as herself, which Mrs. Joscelyn began for the first time to see the beauty of, now that her child was the rider. She did not know who the young man was, and she did not much care. Her mind had not been awakened to the matrimonial question, though, to tell the truth, no wild beast, no lion with a devouring maw, would have wakened so much alarm in Mrs. Joscelyn as the appearance of a lover for Liddy. That would have inferred the saddest fate for herself, the destruction of her present sweet life, and all the late happiness which had come to her in compensation for her troubles; but fortunately such an idea did not enter into her mind. It was a pleasant arrival. Joan, always active and bright, lifting down with her own hands her big basket, stood in the hall watching too the arrival of the young people, yet calling out to the groom some prudent suggestions about her own horse, which was being led away to the stables. She was as well informed about all the necessities of the stable as any of them, and took the deepest interest in the welfare of the animals, and she stepped forward to pat the fine neck of Liddy’s steed as her mother got the young rider in her arms.
“Did you ever see a prettier creature?” she said to Brotherton, “and I would not say but there were two of them. But mother’s just a fool about Liddy. She thinks there’s nothing like her on the face of the earth. Mother, here’s a relation come to see you,” she added, turning round.
Mrs. Joscelyn gave a little cry. Brotherton was standing against the light, so that his features were not at first decipherable. She made a quick step forward, throwing out her hands, then grew suddenly pale.
“I don’t know what I was thinking of,” she said, faintly. “I am sure I beg your friend’s pardon, Joan, and yours too.”
“I see what you’re thinking of, mother—but there’s nothing in it,” Joan said. “This is young Mr. Brotherton, who’s come to the Fells asking for a cousin of his name that married here long ago. If it’s not you, I don’t know who it can be—and I’ve brought him to see you. It would be his father you knew, for he’s but a young lad himself, as you can see.”
“He’s kindly welcome,” Mrs. Joscelyn said, and he was brought into the parlour, and a great deal of family explanation was gone through. Mrs. Joscelyn had her pride of birth, as well as her daughter, and it had always been a secret pleasure to her to think that there was a Sir John in her family, who might turn up some time or other and balance the faded Joscelyn pretensions with a far more tangible living dignity. For her own part, she did not know anything about Sir John; but it gratified her mightily to think that he had remembered he had a cousin married in the Fell-country. “There could not be any—stranger that it would give me more pleasure to see,” she said.
Young Brotherton, for his part, was delighted with his old cousin. It was from her, he perceived with pleasure, that Liddy had taken her willowy grace, and the refined and delicate features which bore little resemblance to those of Mrs. Selby. He was in a humour to be pleased with everything he saw. When the master of the house appeared, he thought him the model of an old North-country squire, rough, perhaps, but manly and full of character, as suited that strong-minded country. The plainness of manners and living, the woman-servant, not very adroit, that served the dinner—which was plainly dinner, and not luncheon—the atmosphere of farm and stables outside of the house, instead of park and pleasure-grounds, all struck him in the most favourable light. Liddy had thrown glamour in the young man’s eyes; he saw them all through her. These, the unusual features in her surroundings, appeared to him in the form of characteristic traits and country peculiarities, not as symptoms of a level of society lower than his own. It was all piquant, novel, delightful, and when he was asked to stay, a grace which Joscelyn put forth to the wonder and admiration of all the household, he accepted the invitation with eagerness. Mrs. Selby, for one, could not get over her astonishment.
“Nay, when father’s asked him there’s not a word to say,” she cried. “Father! I would as soon have believed that you and me, Phil, would have been asked to take tea with the Queen.”
CHAPTER IV.
BEGINNING.
BROTHERTON stayed a week at the White House—to the great mortification of the Pilgrims at Wyburgh, whose guest he had been. Nobody likes to have their visitors interfered with, or that a new acquaintance, whom they have themselves introduced and brought out, so to speak, in society, should desert them for a new circle. The girls and the mother were alike indignant, and the incident even had the effect of quickening the action of the father, and making him more impatient of the delays in respect to old Mr. Joscelyn’s estate. But this had little effect upon the household at the White House, which for the moment was more happy and peaceful than perhaps it had ever been before. It was the beginning of one of those new chapters in life which revive the interest of the old story. Poor Mrs. Joscelyn had lived through many such, but they had been in most cases not of the pleasant, but painful kind. Her blood had been quickened in her veins, her heart driven into wild beating, as one crisis after another occurred in the family life. But now everything was changed. Lydia had become to her another self. She was not sure whether it was not herself again, glorified, elevated, made beautiful by present youth and infinite hope, which was always about her—moving with her step for step, talking, even thinking with her: the same thoughts rising to their lips. Between two sisters such a dual life is sweet; but to a mother it is a recompense for all the pangs of life, which are seldom few or small. She was not sure that it was not herself who spoke, and thought, and smiled in Lydia; but only a self far more firm, erect, and self-supporting than she had ever been. Lydia was not afraid of anything, and of Ralph Joscelyn least of all. This of itself made the strangest difference. It gave a flavour and fragrance to their mingled life. The mother felt herself more brave and more strong in her child; and now romance was arriving to her late in the same way. Ralph Joscelyn’s wooing had been a rough one. During its course the pretty, drooping Lydia of those days had been charmed by its very abruptness, and considered the peremptory passion a double compliment to herself, and to the power of love in subduing the strong. She had liked all the silly similes, the lion enchained, the giant deprived of his strength, and had believed in her foolish heart that her half-savage hero would be always in her toils—however rough to others, yet to herself the gentlest of the gentle. From this foolish dream there had been a summary awakening; and all her long life since had been calculated to convince the romantic woman that romance existed only in her dreams. But now another kind of awakening was coming to her. Youth had come back with its visions, and Arcadia, and love. The young man who was her own kith and kin (which of itself was sweet) was also, as becomes a young man, something of her own kind. He was full of poetry, and sympathy, and enthusiasm: it was not after her old-fashioned mode, but yet it was not the common strain of prose to which she had been accustomed. To see his eyes turn to her Lydia was to Mrs. Joscelyn like the revival of all her own maiden fancies; and the affectionate worship which he gave to herself completed the charm. Perhaps she was happier than Lydia in those early days of wooing. She saw the dawn of admiration and enthusiasm in his eyes, when Lydia herself thought of him only as a sort of advanced playfellow, a something new in his youth and pleasantness. Mrs. Joscelyn saw it all from the beginning; she felt from the beginning that it was written in heaven. It was half like a story which she was reading in snatches, or chapters, a single page at a time, always longing to go on with it, to see what the next step was to be, to anticipate the end.