Part 53 (1/2)

'Exactly what makes me suspicious of his coming the disinterested over me. There's something behind! He is running into debt and destruction among that precious crew about the hospitals.'

'Harry saw nothing wrong, and thought his friends in good style.'

'Every one is in good style with Harry, happy fellow! He is no more a judge than a child of six years old--carries too much suns.h.i.+ne to see shades.'

'A lieutenant in the navy can hardly be the capital officer that our Harry is without some knowledge of men and discipline.'

'I grant you, on his own element; but on sh.o.r.e he goes about in his holiday spectacles, and sees a bird of paradise in every c.o.c.k-sparrow.'

'Isn't _there_ a gla.s.s house that can sometimes make a swan?' said Ethel, slyly touching her father's spectacles; 'but with you both, there's always a something to attract the embellis.h.i.+ng process; and between Harry and Aubrey, Dr. Spencer and Sir Matthew, we could hardly fail to have heard of anything amiss.'

'I don't like it.'

'Then it is hard,' said Ethel, with spirit. 'So steady as he has always been, he ought to have the benefit of a little trust.'

'He was never like the others; I don't know what to be at with him! I should not have minded but for that palaver about elder brothers.'

Defend as Ethel might, it was still with a misgiving lest disappointment should have taken a wrong course. It was hard to trust where correspondence was the merest business sc.r.a.p, and neither Christmas nor the sister's marriage availed to call Tom home; and though she had few fears as to dissipation, she did dread hardening and ambition, all the more since she had learnt that Sir Matthew Fleet was affording to him a patronage unprecedented from that quarter.

No year of Etheldred May's life had been so trying as this last. It seemed like her first step away from the aspirations of youth, into the graver fears of womanhood. With all the self-restraint that she had striven to exercise at Coombe, it had been a time of glorious dreams over the two young spirits who seemed to be growing up by her side to be faithful workers, destined to carry out her highest visions; and the boyish devotion of the one, the fraternal reverence of the other, had made her very happy. And now? The first disappointment in Leonard had led--not indeed to less esteem for him, but to that pitying veneration that could only be yielded by a sharing in spirit of the like martyrdom; a continued thankfulness and admiration, but a continual wringing of the heart. And her own child and pupil, Aubrey, had turned aside from the highest path; and in the unavowed consciousness that he was failing in the course he had so often traced out with her, and that all her aid and ready partic.i.p.ation in his present interests were but from her outward not her inward heart, he had never argued the point with her, never consulted her on his destination. He had talked only to his father of his alteration of purpose, and had at least paid her the compliment of not trying to make her profess that she was gratified by the change. In minor matters, he depended on her as much as ever; but Harry was naturally his chief companion, and the prime of his full and perfect confidence had departed, partly in the step from boy to man, but more from the sense that he was not fulfilling the soldiers.h.i.+p he had dreamt of with her, and that he had once led her to think his talents otherwise dedicated. She had few fears for his steadiness, but she had some for his health, and he was something taken away from her--a brightness had faded from his image.

And this marriage--with every effort at rejoicing and certainty of Mary's present bliss and probability of future happiness, it was the loss of a sister, and not the gain of a brother, and Mr. Cheviot did his utmost to render the absence of repining a great effort of unselfishness. And even with her father, her possession of Tom's half-revealed secret seemed an impairing of absolute confidence; she could not but hope that her father did her brother injustice, and in her tenderness towards them both this was a new and painful sensation.

Her manner was bright and quaint as ever, her sayings perhaps less edged than usual, because the pain at her heart made her guard her tongue; but she had begun to feel middle-aged, and strangely lonely.

Richard, though always a comfort, would not have entered into her troubles; Harry, in his atmosphere of sailor on sh.o.r.e, had nothing of the confidant, and engrossed his father; Mary and Aubrey were both gone from her, and Gertrude was still a child. She had never so longed after Margaret or Norman. But at least her corner in the Minster, her table at home with her Bible and Prayer-Book, were still the same, and witnessed many an outpouring of her anxiety, many a confession of the words or gestures that she had felt to have been petulant, whether others had so viewed them or not.

CHAPTER XIX

Long among them was seen a maiden, who waited and wondered, Lowly and meek in spirit, and patiently suffering all things; Fair was she, and young, but alas! before her extended, Dreary and vast and silent, the desert of life.--Evangeline.

LONGFELLOW

'Sister, sister! who is it? Going to be married! Oh, do tell us!'

cried Ella Warden--as she now was called--capering round her elder sister, who stood beneath a gas-burner, in a well-furnished bed-room, reading a letter, its enclosure clasped within a very trembling hand.

'Mary May, dear Mary,' answered Averil, still half absently.

'And who?'

'Mr. Cheviot,' said Averil, thoroughly rousing herself, and, with a quick movement, concealing the enclosure in her bosom. 'I remember him; he was very good, when--'

And there she paused; while Ella chattered on: 'Oh, sister, if you were but at home, you would be a bridesmaid now, and perhaps we should.

Little Miss Rivers was Mrs. Ernescliffe's bridesmaid. Don't you remember, Minna, how we saw her in her little cashmere cloak?'

'Oh, don't, Ella!' escaped from Minna, like a cry of pain, as she leant back in a rocking-chair, and recollected who had held her up in his arms to watch Blanche May's wedding procession.

'And how soon will she be married, sister, and where will she live?'