“But you are so old,” they said.
“It’s a pity, isn’t it?” said the little gentleman.
They were as much at their ease together as if they had known him all their lives. What mother could resist such a scene? She paused on the stairs and looked over the banisters and watched them. If it had not been for the tragedy involved, for her husband’s death and her son’s disinheritance, what more pleasant than this domestic scene! The children had never been so much at their ease with their father, nor would it have occurred to them to use half so much freedom with Paul as they did with the stranger Gus. Lady Markham’s heart thrilled with pleasure and pain, and when at last she went downstairs, there was a tone of cordiality in spite of herself in her morning greeting.
“I fear I am a little late. I have kept you waiting,” she said.
“Oh mamma! he has had his breakfast with us,” cried the little girls.
“You must not mind me. I am from the tropics. I always rise with the dawn,” said the little man. “But I am quite happy so long as I have the children.”
He followed her into the breakfast-room, Bell linking herself on to his arm and Marie holding his hand. They brought in some of the sweetmeats with them, and the little girls began with great importance to open them, each making her offering to mamma. It was the first appearance of anything like cheerfulness since grief had entered the house. While this little bustle was going on, Alice came in after her mother very quietly, hoping to avoid all necessity of speaking to the intruder. The feeling that was in her mind was that she could not endure to see him here, and that if her mother would not leave the place, she at least must. When Gus saw her, however, her hope of escape was over. He came up to her at once and took her hand, and made a little speech.
“You will not make friends with me as the children do,” he said; “but you will find your old brother will always stand your friend if you want one.”
Alice drew her hand away and escaped to her usual place with her cheeks blazing. Why did he offer to “stand her friend?” what did he mean by his reference last night to some one else? She knew very well what he meant—it was this that made it impertinent. He had met her two or three times with Mr. Fairfax, and no doubt had been so vulgar and disagreeable as to suppose that Mr. Fairfax—not having the least idea of course how they had been brought together, and that Mr. Fairfax’s presence at Markham was entirely accidental! Alice knew perfectly well what Gus meant. He thought the young man was an undistinguished lover, whom probably Lady Markham would not accept, but whom Alice was ready enough to accept, and it was in this light that he proffered his presumptuous and undesired help. Alice could not trust herself to speak. It seemed to her that besides the harm it had done Paul, there was another wrong to herself in these injudicious, unnecessary offers of assistance. She would not look at the curiosities the little girls carried in their frocks, folding up their skirts to make great pockets, nor taste their sweetmeats, nor countenance their pleasure. Instead of that, Alice wrapped herself up in abstraction and sadness. To be able to hide some sulkiness and a great deal of annoyance and bitter constraint under the mask of grief is often a great ease to the spirit. She had the satisfaction of checking all the glee of Marie and Bell, and of making even Lady Markham repent of the smile into which she had been beguiled.
Thus, however, the day went on. When Lady Markham again watched her children going down the avenue, one on either side of the new master of the house, with a softened look in her face, Alice turned away from her mother with the keenest displeasure; she forsook her altogether, going away from her to her own room, where she shut herself up and began to make a review of all her little possessions with the view of removing them, somewhere, anywhere, she did not care where. And very dismal visions crossed the inexperienced mind of Alice. She did not know how this miserable change in the family affairs affected her own position or her mother’s. She thought, perhaps, that they had lost everything, as Paul had lost everything. And sooner than live on the bounty of this stranger, Alice felt that there was nothing she could not do. She thought of going out as a governess, as girls do in novels. Why not? What was she better than the thousands of girls who did so, and rather that a hundred times, rather that or anything! Then it occurred to her that perhaps she might go with Paul. That, perhaps, would be a better way. Even in the former days, out of the midst of luxury and comfort, it had seemed to her that Paul’s dream of living a primitive life and cultivating his bit of land, his just share of the universal possession of man, had something fine, something noble in it. With her brother she could go to the end of the world to sustain and comfort him. What would she care what she did? Would she be less a lady if she cooked his dinner or washed his clothes? Nay, not at all. What better could any woman wish? But then there was this girl—the man’s daughter who had been at Markham with Paul. Thus Alice was suddenly stopped again. Walls of iron seemed to rise around her wherever she turned. Was it possible, was it possible? Paul, who was so fastidious, so hard to please! Thus when despairing of the circumstances around herself she turned to the idea of her brother, her heart grew sick with a new and cruel barrier before her. An alien had come into her home and spoiled it; an alien was to share her brother’s life and ruin that. All around her the world was breaking in with an insupportable intrusion—people who had nothing to do with her coming into the very sanctuary of her life. Lady Markham was going to put up with it, as it seemed, but Alice said to herself that she could not, would not, put up with it. She could not tell what she would do, or where she would flee, but to tolerate the man who had taken Paul’s inheritance, or the woman who had got Paul’s heart, was above her strength. Should she go out as a governess? this seemed the one outlet; or—was there any other?