Chapter 27

At Ashurst.

It was two days after Graham's talk with Madelon, that some people of whom mention has once or twice been made in this little history, were sitting chatting together as they drank their afternoon tea in Mrs. Vavasour's drawing room at Ashurst, a low, dark-panelled, chintz-furnished room, with an ever-pervading scent of dried rose-leaves, and fresh flowers, and with long windows opening on to the little lawn, all shut in with trees and shrubberies. Mrs. Vavasour, who sat by the fire knitting, was a calm, silent, gentle-looking woman, with smooth, fair hair under her lace cap, and those pathetic lines we sometimes see in the faces of those who through circumstances, or natural temperament, have achieved contentment through the disappointments of life, rather than through its fulfilled hopes. She was the mother of many children, of whom the elder half was already dispersed--one was married, one dead, one in India, and one at sea; of those still at home, the eldest, Madge, an honest, sturdy, square- faced child of eleven or twelve, was in the room now, handing about tea-cups and bread-and-butter. Dr. Vavasour was a big, white-haired man, many years older than his wife, who had married him when she was only seventeen; he was a clever man, and a popular doctor, and having just come in from a twenty miles' drive through March winds and rain, was standing with his back to the mantelpiece, with an air of having thoroughly earned warmth and repose. He was discussing parish matters with Mr. Morris the curate, who was sitting at the small round table where Maria Leslie, a tall, rosy, good-humoured-looking young woman of five or six-and-twenty, was pouring out the tea.

"If the Rector is on your side, Morris," said the Doctor, "of course I can say nothing; only I can tell you this, you will lose me. I will have nothing to do with your new-fangled notions; I have said my prayers after the same fashion for the last sixty years, and as sure as you begin to sing-song them, instead of reading them, I give up my pew, and go off to church at C----, with my wife and family."

"Not with Miss Leslie, I trust, Doctor," said the Curate; "we could not get on without Miss Leslie, to lead the singing."

"Miss Leslie does as she likes, and if she prefers sham singing to honest reading, that's her concern, not mine. But I tell you plainly, sir, I am an old-fashioned man, and have no patience with all these changes. I have a great mind to see if I can't get made churchwarden, and try the effect of a little counter-irritation. Madge, my child, bring me a cup of tea."

"I hope _you_ do not hold these opinions, Miss Leslie," said the Curate, in an under tone to Maria Leslie; "we could not afford to lose you from amongst us; you must not desert us."

"Oh, no, I could not give up my Ashurst Sundays," answers Maria, fidgeting amongst her cups and saucers; "I have too many interests here, the schools, and the church--and the preaching--not that the Rector's sermons are always very lively; and then I like chanting and intoning."

"And can you not convert the Doctor?"

"I think that would be impossible; Dr. Vavasour always held to his own opinions. Will you have some more tea?"

"No more, thank you. I should have thought, Miss Leslie, you might have converted any one; I cannot fancy any arguments you might use being other than irresistible."

"Mr. Morris," said Mrs. Vavasour, breaking in upon this little tête-à-tête, "have you seen those curious spiders that my brother brought home from South America? You might fetch Uncle Horace's case, Madge, and show them to Mr. Morris; they are worth looking at, I assure you."

An hour later this little party had dispersed. Mr. Morris had taken leave, Maria had gone to dress for dinner, Madge to her school-room; Dr. Vavasour and his wife were left alone.

"I had a letter from Horace this afternoon," she said, taking it out of her pocket, and giving it to the Doctor to read. "What do you say to our having Miss Linders here for a time? I have often thought of asking her, and this will be a good opportunity. Do you object?"

"Not in the least, my dear; she is some sort of a cousin of yours; is she not?"

"A remote one," said Mrs. Vavasour, smiling. "However, I am very willing to make her acquaintance, especially if the poor girl wants a change. I agree with Horace, that a too prolonged course of Aunt Barbara must be trying."

"Why, I thought Mrs. Treherne was everything that was perfect and admirable; she has never troubled us much with her society, but I am sure I understood from you----"

"So she is," said his wife, interrupting him; "that is just it--Aunt Barbara is quite perfect, a kind of ideal gentlewoman in cultivation, and refinement, and piety, and everything else; but she is, without exception, the most alarming person I know."

"Well, let Miss Linders come by all means," repeated the Doctor. "Isn't it nearly dinner-time? I am starving. I have been twenty miles round the country to-day, and when I come in I find that long-legged fellow Morris philandering away, and have to listen to his vacuous nonsense for an hour. Whatever brings him here so often? He ought to have something better to do with his time than to be idling it away over afternoon tea. Is he looking after Madge?"

"Poor little Madge!" answered Mrs. Vavasour, laughing. "No, I wish I could think Mr. Morris had nothing more serious on hand: but it is much more likely to be Maria."

"Maria!" cried the doctor; "is that what the man is up to? But surely he knows she is engaged to Horace."

"Indeed I much doubt it," Mrs. Vavasour answered; "the engagement was to be a secret, and I am not aware that any one knows of it but ourselves, and Aunt Barbara--and Miss Linders probably--and if Maria will not enlighten Mr. Morris as to how matters stand, I do not see what any one else can do."

"Then Molly is very much to blame; and I have a great mind to tell her so."

"I think you had better let things take their own course," said Mrs. Vavasour. "Maria is quite old enough to know what she is about, and Horace will be down here in a few days to look after his own interests."

"Well, but--bless my soul!" cried the doctor, "I can't make it out at all. Do you mean that Maria is allowing this fellow Morris's attention? I thought she and Graham were devoted to each other, and had been for the last five years?"

"I think they thought they were, five years ago, when Horace, fresh home from the Crimea, was all the heroes in the world in Molly's eyes; and he was just in the mood to fall in love with the first pretty bright girl he saw. But all that was over long ago, and in these five years they have grown utterly apart."

"Then the sooner they grow together again the better," said the Doctor.

"I don't believe it is possible," answered his wife. "I don't see how they can ever pull together; they have different tastes, different aims, different ideas on every conceivable subject. I am very fond of Molly; she is an excellent, good girl in her way, but it is not the way that will fit her to become Horace's wife. She will weary him, and he will--not neglect her, he would never be unkind to a woman--but he will not be the husband she deserves to have. For my part, I think it will be a thousand pities if a mistaken sense of honour makes them hold to their engagement."

"That may be all very well for Horace," said the Doctor; "but what about Molly? When a girl has been looking forward to marrying and having a house of her own, it is not so pleasant for her to have all her prospects destroyed."

"Then she can marry Mr. Norris, if she pleases."

"Indeed! Well, if Maria's mistaken sense of honour does not stand in the way of a flirtation with Morris, I shall be much astonished if Horace's does not make itself felt one way or another. However, it is no concern of mine; manage it your own way."

"Indeed I have no intention of interfering," said Mrs. Vavasour. "I can imagine nothing more useless, especially as Horace will be here in less than a fortnight. But I will write to-night to Aunt Barbara about Miss Linders."

"Oh, yes, ask Miss Linders down here, by all means; and if Morris would only fall in love with her, that might settle all difficulties; but I suppose there is not much chance of that." And so saying, the Doctor went to dress for dinner.

It was a new world, this, in which our Madelon found herself, after the still leisure of her home in Cornwall, with its outlook on rocks, and sea, and sky, after the unbroken regularity of her London life, with its ever-recurring round of fixed employments--a new world, this sheltered English village, lying amongst woods, and fields, and pastures, divided by trim brown hedges, whose every twig was studded with red March buds, and beneath which late March primroses were blowing--and a new world, too, the varied life of this bright, cheerful house, where people were for ever coming and going, and where children's footsteps were pattering, and children's voices and laughter ringing, all day long.

It was with the children especially that Madelon made friends in the early days of her visit. From Mrs. Vavasour she had the kindliest welcome; but the mistress of this busy household had a thousand things to attend to, that left her but little time to bestow on her guest. She had deputed Maria Leslie to entertain Madelon; but Maria also had her own business--school- teaching, cottage-visiting in the village; nor, in truth, even when the two were in each other's society, did they find much to say to each other. It had never been a secret to Madelon that Graham was engaged to Maria Leslie, and the girl had looked forward, perhaps, to making friends with the woman who was accounted worthy of the honour of being Monsieur Horace's wife; but the very first day she had turned away disappointed. There was, both instinctively felt, no common ground on which they could meet and speak a common language intelligible to both; memories, interests, tastes, all lay too wide apart; and as for those larger human sympathies which, wider and deeper than language can express, make themselves felt and understood without its medium, something forbade their touching upon them at all. There was, from the first, a certain coolness and absence of friendliness in Maria's manner, which was quite at variance with her usual good-humoured amiability, and which Madelon felt, but did not understand. She could not guess that it was the expression of a vague jealousy in Maria's mind, excited by Madelon's beauty and graciousness of air and manner, and by a knowledge of her past relations with Horace Graham; Maria would hardly have acknowledge it to herself, but it raised an impassable barrier between these two.

As for Graham, no one saw much of him. He was shut up all day in his brother-in-law's study, writing, copying notes, sorting and arranging specimens, preparing the book that was to come out in the course of the next season; and, when he did appear, at breakfast or dinner, he was apt to be silent and moody, rarely exchanging more than a few words with any one. Madelon wondered sometimes at this taciturn Monsieur Horace, so different from the one she had always known; though, indeed, in speaking to her the old kindly light would always come back to his eyes, the old friendly tones to his voice. But, like every one else, she saw but little of him; and, in fact, Graham in these days, a grim, melancholy, silent man, brooding over his own thoughts, his own hopes, plans, disappointments perhaps, was no very lively addition to a family party.

There was one small person, however, whom our Madelon at once inspired with a quite unbounded admiration for her. A few evenings after her arrival, some one knocked at her bedroom door as she was dressing for dinner; she opened it, and there stood Madge in the passage, her hands full of red and white daisies.

"I have brought you some flowers, Cousin Madelon," said the child shyly.

"They are beautiful," said Madelon, taking them from her; "won't you come in? I will put some of them in my hair."

She sat down before the looking-glass, and began arranging them in her hair, whilst Madge stood and watched her with wide-open eyes.

"They are out of my own garden," she said presently.

"I might have guessed that, they are so pretty," said Madelon, turning round and smiling at her; it was in the girl's nature to make these little gracious speeches, which came to her more readily than ordinary words of thanks. "I like them very much," she went on; "they remind me of some that grew in the convent garden."

"Were you ever in a convent?" asked Madge, with a certain awe.

"Yes, for two years, when I was about as old as you are."

"And were there any nuns there?" asked Madge, whose ideas were not enlarged, and who looked upon a nun as the embodiment of much romance.

"To be sure," answered Madelon, rather amused; "they were all nuns, except some little girls who came every day to be taught by them."

"Then you were at school there?" said Madge.

"Not exactly; my aunt was the--what do you call it?--Lady Superior of the convent; that was why I went there."

"And did you like it?" inquired Madge, who was apparently of opinion that such an opportunity for gaining exceptional information should not be wasted.

"I don't know," answered Madelon; "I don't think I did at the time; I used to find it very dull, and I often longed to be away. But the nuns were very kind to me; and it is pleasant to look back upon, so quiet and peaceful. I think we don't always know when and where we are happy," she added, with a little sigh.

She sat leaning against the table, her head resting on her hand, thinking over the past--as she was for ever thinking of the past now, poor child! How sad, how weary they had been, those years in the convent--yes, she knew that she had found them so--and yet how peaceful, how innocent, how sheltered! Reading her past life in the new light that every day made its shadows darker, she knew that those years were the only ones of her childhood which she could look back upon, without the sudden pang that would come with the memory of those others which she had found so happy then, but which she knew now were--what? Ah, something so different from what she had once imagined! But as for those days at the convent, they came back to her, softened by the kindly haze of time, with the strangest sense of restfulness and security, utterly at variance, one would say, with the restless longing with which she looked out on the world of action--and yet not wholly inconsistent with it perhaps, after all. Did she indeed know when and where she would be happy?

Madge, meanwhile, stood and looked at her. She had fairly fallen in love with this new cousin of hers; her beauty, and gracious ways, her foreign accent, and now her experiences of nuns and convents had come like a revelation to the little English girl in her downright, everyday life. With a comical incongruity, she could compare her in her own mind to nothing but an enchanted princess in some fairy tale; and she stood gazing first at her and then at the glass, where soft wavy brown hair and red and white daisies were reflected.

"What are you thinking of?" said Madelon, looking up suddenly.

"I--I don't know," replied Madge, quite taken aback, colouring and stammering; and then, as if she could not help it--"Oh! Cousin Madelon, you are so pretty."

"It is very pretty of you to say so," said Madelon, laughing and blushing too a little; then holding out both hands she drew Madge towards her, and kissed her on her two cheeks. "I think you and I will be great friends; will we not?" she said.

"Yes," says unresponsive Madge shortly, looking down and twisting her fingers in her awkward English fashion.

"I would like you to be fond of me," continued Madelon, "for I think I shall love you very much; and I like you to call me Madelon--nobody else calls me so--except--except your Uncle Horace."

"It was Uncle Horace told me to," cried Madge. "I asked him what I should call you, and he said he thought Cousin Madelon would do."

"I think it will do very well," said Madelon, rising. "To- morrow will you take me to your garden? I should like to see your daisies growing."

After this Madge and Madelon became great friends; and when the former was at her lessons, there was a nurseryfull of younger children to pet and play with, if Madelon felt so disposed. Sometimes in the morning, when she was sitting alone in the drawing-room, little feet would go scampering along the floor upstairs, shrill little voices would make themselves heard from above, and then Madelon, throwing down book or work, would run up to the big nursery, where, whilst the two elder children were in the school-room with their mother, three round, rosy children kept up a perpetual uproar. It was quite a new sensation to our lonely Madelon to have these small things to caress, and romp with, and fondle, and she felt that it was a moment of triumph when they had learnt to greet her entrance with a shout of joy. Down on the floor she would go, and be surrounded in a moment with petitions for a game, a story, a ride.

Graham came up one day in the midst of a most uproarious romp. "Nurse," he said, putting his head in at the door, "I do wish you would keep these children quiet--" and stopped as suddenly as the noise had stopped at his appearance. Madelon, all blushing and confused, was standing with the youngest boy riding on her back, whilst the little girls, Lina and Kate, were holding on to her skirts behind; they had pulled down all her hair, and it was hanging in loose waves over her shoulders.

"I beg your pardon, Madelon," said Graham, coming in, and smiling at her confusion. "I had no idea that you were here, and the instigator of all this uproar; where is nurse? I shall have to ask her to keep you all in order together."

"Nurse has gone downstairs to do some ironing," says Lina. "Oh, Uncle Horace, we were having such fun with Cousin Madelon."

"Uncle Horace, will you give me a ride? You give better rides than Cousin Madelon," cries Jack, slipping down on to the ground.

"Uncle Horace, Cousin Madelon has been telling us about South America, and we have been hunting buffaloes."

"I am sorry," says Madelon; "I quite forgot how busy you are, Monsieur Horace, and that you could hear all our noise. We will be quieter for the future, and not hunt buffaloes just over your head."

He looked at her without answering; there was a flush on her pale cheeks under the shadow of the heavy waves of hair, a smile in her eyes as she looked at him with one of her old, shy, childish glances, as if not quite sure how he would take her apology. He could not help smiling in answer, then laughed outright, and turned away abruptly.

"Come here, then Jack, and I will give you a ride," he said, lifting the boy on to his shoulder. "This is the way we hunt buffaloes."

Half-an-hour later, Maria, just come in from the village, looked into the nursery, attracted by the shouts and laughter. "It is really very odd," she said afterwards to Mrs. Vavasour, in a somewhat aggrieved tone, "that when Horace always declares he cannot find time to walk with me, or even to talk to me, he should spend half his morning romping with the children in the nursery." And Mrs. Vavasour, who had also gone upstairs with Madge and Harry when they had finished their lessons, had not much to say in answer.