“I am so glad you think so,” he said, with the colour rising to his face. “That is true comfort—for eyes at a little distance are so much better than one’s own.”
“Yes, she is a great deal stronger,” said Miss Musgrave, “but you must send down for the milk. I was pale too, don’t you remember, when you came first? When I was fifteen.”
“I remember—everything,” he said; “even to the dress you wore. I bought my little Mary something like it when I was last in town. It was blue—how well I remember! But Mary will never be like you, though she is your godchild.”
“She is a great deal better; she is like her mother,” said Miss Musgrave promptly; “and Johnny is like his father, the best possible distribution. You are happy with your children, Mr. Pen. I envy people their children, it is the only thing; though perhaps they would bore me if I had them always on my hands. You think not? Yes, I am almost sure they would bore me. We get a kind of fierce independence living alone. To be hampered by a little thing always wanting something—wanting attention and care—I don’t think I should like it. But Emily was born for such cares. How well she looks with her baby in her arms—all was the old picture over again—the Madonna and the child.”
“Poor Emily,” he said, though why he could not have told, for Emily did not think herself poor. Mr. Pennithorne always felt a vague pity for his wife when he was with Miss Musgrave, as for a poor woman who had many excellent qualities, but was here thrown into the shade. He could not say any more. He got up to go away, consoled and made comfortable he could not quite tell why. She was always sweet he said to himself as he went home. What she had said about being bored by children was a mere delusion, or perhaps a little conscious effort of self-deception, persuading herself that to have no children and to be independent was the best. What a wife she would have made! What a mother! he said this to himself quite impartially, knowing well that she never could have been wife for him, and feeling a pang at his heart for the happiness she had lost. Married life was not unmixed happiness always; it had its difficulties, he knew. But if she had married it was not possible that she could have been otherwise than happy. With her there could have been no drawbacks. Mr. Pennithorne looked upon the question from a husband’s point of view alone.
When he was gone, Miss Musgrave sat still without changing her place, at first with a smile, which gradually faded away from her face, like the last suffusion of the sunshine, which was going too. She smiled at her fast friend, to whom she knew, notwithstanding his legitimate affection for his Emily, she herself stood first of created beings. It was a folly, but it did not hurt him, she reflected with a faint amusement; and Emily and the children, notwithstanding this sentiment, were first and foremost really in his heart. Poor Mr. Pen! he had always been like this, mildly sentimental, offering up an uninterrupted gentle incense. But he was not in the least unhappy, though perhaps he liked by times to think that he was. Few people were really unhappy. By moments life was hard; but the struggle itself made a kind of happiness, a strain of living which it was good to feel by times. This was her theory. Most people when they come to forty have some theory or another, some settled way of getting through their existence, and adapting themselves for it. Hers was this: that evil was very much less than good in every way, and that people suffered a great deal less than they gave themselves credit for. Life had its compensations, daily and hourly, she thought. Her own existence had no exciting source of joy in it, but how far it was from being unhappy! Had she been unhappy she would have scoffed at herself. What! so many things to enjoy, so many good and pleasant circumstances around, and not happy! Would not that have been a disgrace to any woman? So she was apt to think Mr. Pennithorne extracted a certain cunning enjoyment from that vain love for herself which had been so visionary at all times, and which he persuaded himself had saddened his life. She thought it had been a harmless delusion: a secret advantage rather; something to fall back upon; a soft and visionary grievance of which he never wearied. And perhaps she was right. She sat looking after him with a smile on her face.
The sun had crept away from her open doorway as they had talked. It was stealing further and further off, withdrawing from the line of the road, from the village roofs, from the gleam of the lake—and like the sun her smile stole away, from her eyes first, and then from the lingering curves about her mouth. Why was it that he could think he felt some action upon him of John’s mind in the far distance, while she felt none? No kind of presentiment or premonition had come to her. It must be foolishness she was sure—superstition; for if sympathy could thus communicate even a vague thrill of warning from one to another through the atmosphere of the mind, surely she was a more likely object to receive it than Mr. Pennithorne! John knew her,—could not doubt her, surely. Therefore to her, if to any one, this secret communication must have come. The smile disappeared altogether from her mouth as she entered upon this subject, and her whole face and eyes became grave and grey, like the dull coldness of the east, half-resentful of the sunset which still went on upon the other edge of the horizon, dispersing all those vain reflections to every quarter except that from which the sun rose. Could it be possible after all that John might trust Mr. Pennithorne with a more perfect confidence, as one unconnected and unconcerned with all that had passed, than he could give to herself? The thought, even though founded on such visionary grounds, hurt her a little; yet there was a kind of reason in it. He might think that she, always at her father’s side, and able to influence him in so many ways, might have done more for her brother; whereas with Mr. Pennithorne, who could do nothing, the sentiment of trust would be unbroken. She sat thus idly making it out to herself, making wondering casts of thought after her brother in the darkness of the unknown, as inch by inch the light stole out of the sky. It was not a fine sunset that night. The sun was yellow and mournful; long lines of cloud broke darkly upon his sinking, catching only sick reflections of the pale light beneath. At last he was all gone, except one streaming yellow sheaf of rays that seemed to strike against and barb themselves into the damp green outline of the hill.
Her eyes were upon this, watching that final display, which, somehow in the absorption of her thoughts, kept her from observing an object near at hand, an old hackney-coach from Pennington town—where there was a railway station—which came along the road, a black, slow, lumbering vehicle, making a dull roll of sound which might have been a country cart. It came nearer and nearer while Miss Musgrave watched the bundle of gold arrows flash into the hill-side and disappear. Her eyes were dazzled by them, and chilled by their sudden disappearance, which left all the landscape cold and wrapped in a greyness of sudden evening. Mary came to herself with a slight shiver and shock. And at that moment the dull roll of the cab ceased, and the thing stood revealed to her. She rose to her feet with a thrill of wonder and expectation. The hackney carriage had drawn up at the foot of the slope opposite to and beneath her. What was coming? Had Mr. Pennithorne been warned after all, while she had been left in darkness? Her heart seemed to leap into her throat, while she stood clasping her hands together to get some strength from them, and waiting for the revelation of this new thing, whatever it might be.
CHAPTER III.
THE NEW-COMERS.
The cab was loaded with two boxes on the roof, foreign trunks, of a different shape from those used at home; and a woman’s face, in a fantastic foreign head-dress, peered through the window. Who could this be? Mary stood as if spell-bound, unable to make a movement. The driver, who was an ordinary cab-driver from Pennington, whose homely everydayness of appearance intensified the strangeness of the others, opened the door of the carriage, and lifted out, first a small boy, with a scared face and a finger in his mouth, who stared at the strange place, and the figures in the doorway, with a fixed gaze of panic, on the eve of tears. Then out came with a bound, as if pushed from behind as well as helped a little roughly by the cabman, the foreign woman, at whose dress the child clutched with a frightened cry. Then there was a pause, during which some one inside threw out a succession of wraps, small bags, and parcels; and then there stepped forth, with a great shawl on one arm, and a basket almost as large as herself on the other, clearly the leading spirit of the party, a little girl who appeared to be about ten years old. “You will wait a moment, man, till we get the pay for you,” said this little personage in a high-pitched voice, with a distinctness of enunciation which made it apparent that the language, though spoken with very little accent, was unfamiliar to her. Then she turned to the woman and said a few words much more rapidly, with as much aid of gesture as was compatible with the burdens. Mary felt herself look on at all this like a woman in a dream. What was it all—a dream or reality? She felt incapable of movement, or rather too much interested in the curious scene which was going on before her, to think of movement or interference of any kind. When she had given her directions, whatever they were, the little girl turned round and faced the open door and the lady who had not moved. She gave these new circumstances a long, steady, investigating look. They were within a dozen yards of each other, but the chatelaine stood still and said nothing, while the little invader inspected her, and prepared her assault. The child, who looked the impersonation of life and purpose between her helpless companion and the wondering stranger whom she confronted, was dark and pale, not like the fair English children to whom Mary Musgrave was accustomed. Her dark eyes seemed out of proportion to her small, colourless face, and gave it an eager look of precocious intelligence. Her features were small, her dark hair falling about her in half-curling masses, her head covered with a little velvet cap trimmed with fur, as unlike anything children wore in England at the time as the anxious meaning of her face was different from ordinary baby prettiness. She made a momentary pause—then put down the basket on the stones, threw the shawl on the top of it, and mounted the breach with resolute courage. The stones were rough to the little child’s feet; there was a dilation in her eyes that looked like coming tears, and as she faced the alarming stranger, who stood there looking at her, a burning red flush came momentarily over her face. But she neither sat down and cried as she would have liked to do, nor ran back again to cling to the nurse’s skirts like her little brother. The small thing had a duty to do, and did it with a courage which might have put heroes to shame. Resolutely she toiled her way up to Miss Musgrave at the open door.