“Once or twice a year. He writes to ask how my father is—I often wonder why. He has only been here once since—since it all happened. He would not have it known that he was one of the family which was so much talked about—that he was the brother of—— ” Mary stopped with a flash of indignation in her eyes. “He has separated himself altogether from us, as you know; but he asks from time to time how my father is, though I scarcely know why.”
“And you have told him, I suppose, about the children?”
“No, Mr. Pen; he turned his back upon poor John from the beginning. Why should I tell him? what has he to do with it? We have left our subject altogether talking of Randolph, who is quite apart from it. Let us go back to our sheep—our lambs in this case. What is to be done with them?”
“I will do what I can for them, as I did for their father,” said the vicar. “I was thinking that little Johnny must very soon—and Mary might as well—They can come to me for an hour or two every day; that would be something. But I think Randolph should be told. I think Randolph ought to know. He might be thinking, he might be calculating—— ”
“What, Mr. Pen?” Mary confronted him with head erect and flashing eyes. “Why should he think or calculate about us? He has separated himself from the family. John’s children are nothing to him.”
It was not often that Mr. Pen was worldly wise; but he had an inspiration this time. He shook his head slowly. “It is just that; John’s children might make all the difference to him,” he said.
CHAPTER XIV.
AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR.
Mr. Pennithorne went home thoughtful, and Miss Musgrave remained behind, if not exactly turned in a new direction, yet confused and excited in her mental being by the introduction of a new element. Randolph Musgrave, though her brother, was less known to Mary than he was to the tutor who had travelled and lived with him in the interval during which he had made his nearest approach to friendship with his own family. He had been brought up by an uncle on the mother’s side who did not love the Musgraves, and had succeeded to the family living belonging to that race, and lived now, as he had been brought up, in an atmosphere quite different from that which belonged to his nominal home in the north. Except now and then, in a holiday visit, Randolph had scarcely spent any portion of his life at Penninghame, except the short period just before, and for a little time after, his university career, when he shared with his brother John the special instructions of Mr. Pennithorne. The two young men had worked together then, or made believe to work, and they had travelled together; but being of very different dispositions, and brought up in ways curiously unlike, they had not been made into cordial friends by this period of semi-artificial union. Randolph had been trained to entertain but a small opinion of everything at Penninghame, and when Penninghame became public property, and John and all his affairs and peculiarities were discussed in the newspapers, the younger son did something very like the Scriptural injunction—shaking the dust from off his feet as he departed. He went away after some painful scenes with his father. It was not the old Squire’s fault that his eldest son had become in the eyes of the world a criminal; but Randolph was as bitter at the ignominy brought upon his name as if it had been a family contrivance to annoy and distress him, and had gone away vowing that never again would he have anything to do with his paternal home. There had been a long gap in their relations after that, but at his marriage there had been a kind of reconciliation, enough to give a decorous aspect to his relations with his “people.” He had brought his bride to his father’s house, and since then he had written, as Mary said, now and then, once or twice in the year, to inquire after his father’s health. This was not much, but it saved appearances, and prevented the open scandal of a family quarrel. But Mary, who replied punctiliously to these questions, did not see the need of making a further intimation to him of anything that affected the family. What had he to do with John’s children? She would no more have thought of informing him of any private event in her own history, or of looking to him for sympathy, than she would have stopped a beggar on the road to communicate her good or evil fortune. But the very name of Randolph suggested new complications. She was glad to escape from the whole matter and listen to the account of the lessons when Lilias and Nello came back from one of their earliest experiences of the instruction given by Mr. Pennithorne. The children came in breathless with the story they had to tell. “Then he made me read out of all the books,” said Lilias, her dark eyes shining; “but Nello, because he was so little, one book was enough for him.”
“But it was not a girl’s book,” said Nello; “it was only for Johnnie and me.”
“And I looked in it,” said his sister; “it is all mixed with Italian—such funny Italian: instead of padre it was put payter—Mr. Pen called it so. But it would not do for Nello, when we go back, to say his Italian like that. Even Martuccia would laugh, and Martuccia is not educated.”