The Heir of Redclyffe Read online

  'Nothing,' said Guy, smiling; then, as he took his place by Mrs. Edmonstone, 'I hope you are not tired after your hard day's work?'

  'Not at all, thank you.'

  'Amy, can you tell me the name of this flower?'

  'Oh! have you really found the arrow-head? How beautiful! Where did you get it? I didn't know it grew in our river.'

  'There is plenty of it in that reedy place beyond the turn. I thought it looked like something out of the common way.'

  'Yes! What a purple eye it has! I must draw it. 0, thank you.'

  'And, Charlotte, Bustle has found you a moorhen's nest.'

  'How delightful! Is it where I can go and see the dear little things?'

  'It is rather a swamp; but I have been putting down stepping-stones for you, and I dare say I can jump you across. It was that which made me so late, for which I ought to have asked pardon,' said he to Mrs. Edmonstone, with his look of courtesy.

  Never did man look less like an offended lover, or like a morose self- tormentor.

  'There are others later,' said Mrs. Edmonstone, looking at Lady Eveleen's empty chair.

  'So you think that is all you have to ask pardon for,' said Mr. Edmonstone. 'I advise you to study your apologies, for you are in pretty tolerable disgrace.'

  'Indeed, I am very sorry,' said Guy, with such a change of countenance that Mr. Edmonstone's good nature could not bear to see it.

  'Oh, 'tis no concern of mine! It would be going rather the wrong way, indeed, for you to be begging my pardon for all the care you've been taking of Charlie; but you had better consider what you have to say for yourself before you show your face at Broadstone.'

  'No?' said Guy, puzzled for a moment, but quickly looking relieved, and laughing, 'What! Broadstone in despair for want of me?'

  'And we perfectly exhausted with answering questions as to what was become of Sir Guy.'

  'Dreadful,' said Guy, now laughing heartily, in the persuasion that it was all a joke.

  '0, Lady Eveleen, good morning; you are come in good time to give me the story of the ball, for no one else tells me one word about it.'

  'Because you don't deserve it,' said she. 'I hope you have repented by this time.'

  'If you want to make me repent, you should give me a very alluring description.'

  'I shan't say one word about it; I shall send you to Coventry, as Maurice and all the regiment mean to do,' said Eveleen, turning away from him with a very droll arch manner of offended dignity.

  'Hear, hear! Eveleen send any one to Coventry!' cried Charles. 'See what the regiment say to you.'

  'Ay, when I am sent to Coventry?'

  '0, Paddy, Paddy!' cried Charles, and there was a general laugh.

  'Laura seems to be doing it in good earnest without announcing it,' added Charles, when the laugh was over, 'which is the worst sign of all.'

  'Nonsense, Charles,' said Laura, hastily; then afraid she had owned to annoyance, she blushed and was angry with herself for blushing.

  'Well, Laura, do tell me who your partners were?'

  Very provoking, thought Laura, that I cannot say what is so perfectly natural and ordinary, without my foolish cheeks tingling. He may think it is because he is speaking to me. So she hurried on: 'Maurice first, then Philip,' and then showed, what Amy and Eveleen thought, strange oblivion of the rest of her partners.

  They proceeded into the history of the ball; and Guy thought no more of his offences till the following day, when he went to Broadstone. Coming back, he found the drawing-room full of visitors, and was obliged to sit down and join in the conversation; but Mrs. Edmonstone saw he was inwardly chafing, as he betrayed by his inability to remain still, the twitchings of his forehead and lip, and a tripping and stumbling of the words on his tongue. She was sure he wanted to talk to her, and longed to get rid of Mrs. Brownlow; but the door was no sooner shut on the visitors, than Mr. Edmonstone came in, with a long letter for her to read and comment upon. Guy took himself out of the way of the consultation, and began to hurry up and down the terrace, until, seeing Amabel crossing the field towards the little gate into the garden, he went to open it for her.

  She looked up at him, and exclaimed--'Is anything the matter?'

  'Nothing to signify,' he said; 'I was only waiting for your mother. I have got into a mess, that is all.'

  'I am sorry,' began Amy, there resting in the doubt whether she might inquire further, and intending not to burthen him with her company, any longer than till she reached the house door; but Guy went on,--

  'No, you have no occasion to be sorry; it is all my own fault; at least, if I was clear how it is my fault, I should not mind it so much. It is that ball. I am sure I had not the least notion any one would care whether I was there or not.'

  'I am sure we missed you very much.'

  'You are all so kind; beside, I belong in a manner you; but what could it signify to any one else? And here I find that I have vexed every one.'

  'Ah!' said Amy, 'mamma said she was afraid it would give offence.'

  'I ought to have attended to her. It was a fit of self-will in managing myself,' said Guy, murmuring low, as if trying to find the real indictment; 'yet I thought it a positive duty; wrong every way.'

  'What has happened?' said Amy, turning back with him, though she had reached the door.

  'Why, the first person I met was Mr. Gordon; and he spoke like your father, half in joke, and I thought entirely so; he said something about all the world being in such a rage, that I was a bold man to venture into Broadstone. Then, while I was at Mr. Lascelles', in came Dr. Mayerne. 'We missed you at the dinner,' he said; 'and I hear you shirked the ball, too.' I told him how it was, and he said he was glad that was all, and advised me to go and call on Colonel Deane and explain. I thought that the best way--indeed, I meant it before, and was walking to his lodgings when Maurice de Courcy met me. 'Ha!' he cries out, 'Morville! I thought at least you would have been laid up for a month with the typhus fever! As a friend, I advise you to go home and catch something, for it is the only excuse that will serve you. I am not quite sure that it will not be high treason for me to be seen speaking to you.' I tried to get at the rights of it, but he is such a harum-scarum fellow there was no succeeding. Next I met Thorndale, who only bowed and passed on the other side of the street-- sign enough how it was with Philip; so I thought it best to go at once to the Captain, and get a rational account of what was the matter.'

  'Did you?' said Amy, who, though concerned and rather alarmed, had been smiling at the humorous and expressive tones with which he could not help giving effect to his narration.

  'Yes. Philip was at home, and very--very--'

  'Gracious?' suggested Amy, as he hesitated for a word.

  'Just so. Only the vexatious thing was, that we never could succeed in coming to an understanding. He was ready to forgive; but I could not disabuse him of an idea--where he picked it up I cannot guess--that I had stayed away out of pique. He would not even tell me what he thought had affronted me, though I asked him over and over again to be only straightforward; he declared I knew.'

  'How excessively provoking!' cried Amy. 'You cannot guess what he meant?'

  'Not the least in the world. I have not the most distant suspicion. It was of no use to declare I was not offended with any one; he only looked in that way of his, as if he knew much better than I did myself, and told me he could make allowances.'

  'Worse than all! How horrid of him.'

  'No, don't spoil me. No doubt he thinks he has grounds, and my irritation was unjustifiable. Yes, I got into my old way. He cautioned me, and nearly made me mad! I never was nearer coming to a regular outbreak. Always the same! Fool that I am.'

  'Now, Guy, that is always your way; when other people are provoking, you abuse yourself. I am sure Philip was so, with his calm assertion of being right.'

  'The more provoking, the more trial for me.'

  'But you endured it. You say it was only nearly an outbreak. You parted friends? I am sure of
that.'

  'Yes, it would have been rather too bad not to do that.'

  'Then why do you scold yourself, when you really had the victory?'

  'The victory will be if the inward feeling as well as the outward token is ever subdued.'

  '0, that must be in time, of course. Only let me hear how you got on with Colonel Deane.'

  'He was very good-natured, and would have laughed it off, but Philip went with me, and looked grand, and begged in a solemn way that no more might be said. I could have got on better alone; but Philip was very kind, or, as you say, gracious.'

  'And provoking,' added Amy, 'only I believe you do not like me to say so.'

  'It is more agreeable to hear you call him so at this moment than is good for me. I have no right to complain, since I gave the offence.'

  'The offence?'

  'The absenting myself.'

  'Oh! that you did because you thought it right.'

  'I want to be clear that it was right.'

  'What do you mean?' cried she, astonished. 'It was a great piece of self-denial, and I only felt it wrong not to be doing the same.'

  'Nay, how should such creatures as you need the same discipline as I?'

  She exclaimed to herself how far from his equal she was--how weak, idle, and self-pleasing she felt herself to be; but she could not say so--the words would not come; and she only drooped her little head, humbled by his treating her as better than himself.

  He proceeded:--

  'Something wrong I have done, and I want the clue. Was it self-will in choosing discipline contrary to your mother's judgment? Yet she could not know all. I thought it her kindness in not liking me to lose the pleasure. Besides, one must act for oneself, and this was only my own personal amusement.'

  'Yes,' said Amy, timidly hesitating.

  'Well?' said he, with the gentle, deferential tone that contrasted with his hasty, vehement self-accusations. 'Well?' and he waited, though not so as to hurry or frighten her, but to encourage, by showing her words had weight.

  'I was thinking of one thing,' said Amy; 'is it not sometimes right to consider whether we ought to disappoint people who want us to be pleased?' 'There it is, I believe,' said Guy, stopping and considering, then going on with a better satisfied air, 'that is a real rule. Not to be so bent on myself as to sacrifice other people's feelings to what seems best for me. But I don't see whose pleasure I interfered with.'

  Amy could have answered, 'Mine;' but the maidenly feeling checked her again, and she said, 'We all thought you would like it.'

  'And I had no right to sacrifice your pleasure! I see, I see. The pleasure of giving pleasure to others is so much the best there is on earth, that one ought to be passive rather than interfere with it.'

  'Yes,' said Amy, 'just as I have seen Mary Ross let herself be swung till she was giddy, rather than disappoint Charlotte and Helen, who thought she liked it.'

  'If one could get to look at everything with as much indifference as the swinging! But it is all selfishness. It is as easy to be selfish for one's own good as for one's own pleasure; and I dare say, the first is as bad as the other.'

  'I was thinking of something else,' said Amy. 'I should think it more like the holly tree in Southey. Don't you know it? The young leaves are sharp and prickly, because they have so much to defend themselves from, but as the tree grows older, it leaves off the spears, after it has won the victory.'

  'Very kind of you, and very pretty, Amy,' said he, smiling; 'but, in the meantime, it is surely wrong to be more prickly than is unavoidable, and there is the perplexity. Selfish! selfish! selfish! Oneself the first object. That is the root.'

  'Guy, if it is not impertinent to ask, I do wish you would tell me one thing. Why did you think it wrong to go to that ball?' said Amy, timidly.

  'I don't know that I thought it wrong to go to that individual ball,' said Guy; 'but my notion was, that altogether I was getting into a rattling idle way, never doing my proper quantity of work, or doing it properly, and talking a lot of nonsense sometimes. I thought, last Sunday, it was time to make a short turn somewhere and bring myself up. I could not, or did not get out of the pleasant talks as Laura does, so I thought giving up this ball would punish me at once, and set me on a new tack of behaving like a reasonable creature.'

  'Don't call yourself too many names, or you won't be civil to us. We all, except Laura, have been quite as bad.'

  'Yes; but you had not so much to do.'

  'We ought,' said Amy; 'but I meant to be reasonable when Eveleen is gone.'

  Perhaps I ought to have waited till then, but I don't know. Lady Eveleen is so amusing that it leads to farther dawdling, and it would not do to wait to resist the temptation till it is out of the way.'

  As he spoke, they saw Mrs. Edmonstone coming out, and went to meet her. Guy told her his trouble, detailing it more calmly than before he had found out his mistake. She agreed with him that this had been in forgetting that his attending the ball did not concern only himself, but he then returned to say that he could not see what difference it made, except to their own immediate circle.

  'If it was not you, Guy, who made that speech, I should call it fishing for a compliment. You forget that rank and station make people sought after.'

  'I suppose there is something in that,' said Guy, thoughtfully; 'at any rate, it is no bad thing to think so, it is so humiliating.'

  'That is not the way most people would take it.'

  'No? Does not it prevent one from taking any attention as paid to one's real self? The real flattering thing would be to be made as much of as Philip is, for one's own merits, and not for the handle to one's name.'

  'Yes, I think so,' said Amy.

  'Well, then,' as if he wished to gather the whole conversation into one resolve, the point is to consider whether abstaining from innocent things that may be dangerous to oneself mortifies other people. If so, the vexing them is a certain wrong, whereas the mischief of taking the pleasure is only a possible contingency. But then one must take it out of oneself some other way, or it becomes an excuse for self- indulgence.'

  'Hardly with you,' said Mrs. Edmonstone, smiling.

  'Because I had rather go at it at once, and forget all about other people. You must teach me consideration, Mrs. Edmonstone, and in the meantime will you tell me what you think I had better do about this scrape?'

  'Let it alone,' said Mrs. Edmonstone. 'You have begged every one's pardon, and it had better be forgotten as fast as possible. They have made more fuss already than it is worth. Don't torment yourself about it any more; for, if you have made a mistake, it is on the right side; and on the first opportunity, I'll go and call on Mrs. Deane, and see if she is very implacable.'

  The dressing-bell rang, and Amy ran up-stairs, stopping at Laura's door, to ask how she prospered in the drive she had been taking with Charles and Eveleen.

  Amy told her of Guy's trouble, and oh! awkward question, inquired if she could guess what it could be that Philip imagined that Guy had been offended at.

  'Can't he guess?' said poor Laura, to gain time, and brushing her hair over her face.

  'No, he has no idea, though Philip protested that he knew, and would not tell him. Philip must have been most tiresome.'

  'What? Has Guy been complaining?'

  'No, only angry with himself for being vexed. I can't think how Philip can go on so!'

  'Hush! hush, Amy, you know nothing about it. He has reasons--'

  'I know,' said Amy, indignantly; 'but what right has he to go on mistrusting? If people are to be judged by their deeds, no one is so good as Guy, and it is too bad to reckon up against him all his ancestors have done. It is wolf and lamb, indeed.'

  'He does not!' cried Laura. 'He never is unjust! How can you say so, Amy?'

  'Then why does he impute motives, and not straightforwardly tell what he means?'

  'It is impossible in this case,' said Laura.

  'Do you know what it is?'

  'Yes,' said Laura, perfectl
y truthful, and feeling herself in a dreadful predicament.

  'And you can't tell me?'

  'I don't think I can.'

  'Nor Guy?'

  'Not for worlds,' cried Laura, in horror.

  'Can't you get Philip to tell him?'

  'Oh no, no! I can't explain it, Amy; and all that can be done is to let it die away as fast as possible. It is only the rout about it that is of consequence.'

  'It is very odd,' said Amy, 'but I must dress,' and away she ran, much puzzled, but with no desire to look into Philip's secrets.

  Laura rested her head on her hand, sighed, and wondered why it was so hard to answer. She almost wished she had said Philip had been advising her to discourage any attachment on Guy's part; but then Amy might have laughed, and asked why. No! no! Philip's confidence was in her keeping, and cost her what it might, she would be faithful to the trust.

  There was now a change. The evenings were merry, but the mornings were occupied. Guy went off to his room, as he used to do last winter; Laura commenced some complicated perspective, or read a German book with a great deal of dictionary; Amy had a book of history, and practised her music diligently; even Charles read more to himself, and resumed the study with Guy and Amy; Lady Eveleen joined in every one's pursuits, enjoyed them, and lamented to Laura that it was impossible to be rational at her own home.

  Laura tried to persuade her that there was no need that she should be on the level of the society round her, and it ended in her spending an hour in diligent study every morning, promising to continue it when she went home, while Laura made such sensible comments that Eveleen admired her more than ever; and she, knowing that some were second-hand from Philip, others arising from his suggestions, gave him all the homage paid to herself, as a tribute to him who reigned over her whole being.

  Yet she was far from happy. Her reserve towards Guy made her feel stiff and guarded; she had a craving for Philip's presence, with a dread of showing it, which made her uncomfortable. She wondered he had not been at Hollywell since the bail, for he must know that she was going to Ireland in a fortnight, and was not likely to return till his regiment had left Broadstone.