“But, Loo, I can’t stop here after what has happened,” said Charley when they had both recovered a little; “he may be going to do everything that’s right for anything we can tell. Don’t let us talk as if it were anybody’s fault; but I can’t stop here, you know, about Fontanel, doing nothing, as if—— Don’t cry, Loo. You would not like, anyhow, to have an idle fellow for a brother. Harry is the clever one; but I daresay my godfather, the old general, could get me a commission; and I could live on my pay,” said Charley, with a slight quiver in his upper lip, “and perhaps get on. I don’t think I should make a bad soldier—only that there’s the examinations, and all that. It’s very hard, Loo, to have lost all this time.”
“Oh, Charley, Charley dear! I can’t bear it—it’s too hard to put up with,” cried poor little passionate Loo.
“Now don’t you go and take away what little strength a fellow has,” remonstrated Charley; “it must be put up with, and what’s the use of talking? Now look here, Loo; if you make a fuss, it will do no good in the world, but only vex mamma; she can’t mend it, you know. I mean to put the best face on it, and say I want to see the world, and that sort of thing; and believe exactly as if—as if the fire had never happened,” said Charley, with a dark momentary cloud upon his face. “I can make my mother believe me; and it will be a comfort to her to have me out of the way,” said the heroic lad, with something like a suppressed sob, “and to think I don’t suspect anything. It is hard—I don’t say anything else; but, Loo, we must bear it all the same.”
And so they went wandering through the bare woods, poor Loo stooping now and then unawares to gather some violets according to her girlish habits, and Charley, even in the depths of his distress, following with his eye the startled squirrel running along a branch. They were profoundly, forlornly, exquisitely sad, but they could not ignore the alleviations of their youth. Amid all the sudden shock of this disinheritance—in which there mingled so cruel a sense of wrong, so warm an indignation and resentment—Charley still thought, with a rising thrill of courage and pride, that he might carve out for himself a better fortune; while Loo, her brother’s sole confidante and supporter, was herself supported by that exquisite consciousness of being able to console and encourage him, which almost atones to a girl’s heart for every misfortune. They could hear the distant echoes of the cheers and laughter and loud cordial talk of the guests, while they strayed along silent, with hearts too full to speak. Very different anticipations had the two entertained of this famous day so long looked forward to. They were to be the first in all the rejoicings undertaken in their honour—for the glory of the heir-apparent could not fail to be shared by the Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of Fontanel; they had pictured to themselves a brilliant momentary escape out of the embarrassments and restraints which they could not but be conscious of at home, and Charley had even been prepared to feel magnanimous to Mr Summerhayes, who, after all, was but a temporary interloper, and had no right to that inheritance of which the young Clifford was heir indisputable. Now, the sound of the merrymaking went to Charley’s heart with acute blows of anguish. It was an aggravation of the sudden misery, cold-blooded and odious; what were they rejoicing about? Because a poor boy had come to the coveted years of manhood, to learn bitterly, on the eve of what should have been his triumph, that he was an absolute dependant, a beggar, at the mercy of a stepfather. No wonder he could not speak; no wonder he put up his hands to his ears, and uttered a groan of rage and wretchedness when that burst of cheering came upon the wind, and Loo, speechless, could but cry and clench her little hands in the bitterness of her heart. This was between the tenants’ dinner and the ball in the evening, which was to be the gayest ever known in the county. Poor Charley would gladly have faced a tiger, or led a forlorn hope, could he have had such an alternative, instead of arraying himself in sumptuous raiment and appearing at that ball, where his presence would be indispensable. He seized poor Loo’s little hands harshly in his own, and pressed them till she could have screamed for pain. “Don’t cry; your eyes will be red at the ball—your first ball, Loo!” cried her brother, with a kind of savage tenderness; and Loo, half afraid of this strange new development of the man out of the boy, was fain to dry her poor eyes and cling to his arm, and coax him to go in to prepare for the greater trial of the night.
While these two forlorn young creatures were thus engaged, another conversation was taking place at a distance from the scene of the festivities, in the park of Fontanel. Mr Courtenay Gateshead had come down to be present at the tenants’ dinner in his capacity as legal adviser to Mr Summerhayes; but the young lawyer looked on with a preoccupied air, sometimes casting a keen look of inspection at the master of the feast. When the party from the great house left the humble revellers, Courtenay, instead of joining Mr Summerhayes, beckoned aside his uncle and partner. Old Gateshead had stayed for the children’s sake; but had found it totally impossible to change Mr Summerhayes’s first determination. He would not consent to read, much less to sign the document hastily prepared by the anxious old lawyer. He would think it over, he repeated, and see Courtenay, with an implied slight upon the powers and skill of Courtenay’s uncle, which galled the old man to the last degree. The young lawyer found his relative exceedingly sulky and out of temper. “I have something particular to consult you about,” Courtenay said, who did not yet know anything about the destruction of the deed; and Mr Gateshead, who had that disclosure to make, followed him with no very pleasant feelings to the verge of the wood, not very far from where Charley and Loo were wandering in the despair of their hearts. But the old lawyer was much taken by surprise by the question which his nephew did not put to him till they were quite alone, and sheltered from all eavesdroppers by the broad expanse of the park.
“Uncle, you have a wonderful memory. I suppose you remember John Clifford, this boy’s grandfather—he who broke the entail,” said Courtenay, in rather a hurried voice.
“John Clifford—what on earth has he got to do with it?” cried old Gateshead, whose memory was wonderful, but whose powers of comprehension were not equally vivid.
“Oh, nothing, I daresay,” said his nephew. “I want to know what you recollect about him, that’s all—he who joined his father in breaking the entail——”
“A very silly thing to do, Courtenay—a fatal thing to do. Good Lord, only think what a different position these poor children might have been in!” cried old Gateshead.
“Yes, yes—to be sure; but do you recollect anything about John?” said the young man.