A Rich Man's Relatives Volume I Part 13

"Take her to Selby, Miss Matildy," cried the worthy Martha, little dreaming how her husband and his aunt wished her a lockjaw. "He is married to a sister of Judy's there--plays the organ at St.

Wittikind's--does it beautiful, my dear, but you will have heard him--and if there is any sing in the child it is he will bring it out.

He'd make the kettle sing."

"We can all do that," said Judith disgusted. "Put another stick in the stove, that's all it wants. And this is little Muriel's birthday. Miss Matilda? How old is she today? Twelve? Ah--Pretty child, but not very tall. But that is in the family, I suppose. Dionysius is almost short, and Betsey there is really stumpy. But I do not see much resemblance in her to Betsey."

"Neither do I."

"But one would expect to see a family-likeness."

"Between second cousins? I do not see the necessity."

"Blood always tells, you know. Yet she is not even like Dionysius----no trace of his square intellectual forehead, or anything."

"Your niece and her uncle are Bunces, perhaps, and Muriel a Stanley."

"But she is not like you either."

"I confess I never was clever about seeing likenesses, but I am sure I could not be fonder of the child if she were ever so like me.

Penelope, do you not think we might have tea, now?"

Considine had heard Martha's mention of Selby. It was the first time in years that he had heard the name. It awoke recollections which had long been asleep. Jordan, his co-trustee in the Herkimer fortune had no doubt told him the family story on his return to Montreal, but at that time his mind was full of his own cares, and since then the mere periodical investment of dividends had not called for a recurrence to the subject. Though, doubtless, he remembered his old attachment, and would still have felt a kindness for its object had his thoughts wandered that way, the preoccupations of business led them in other directions; the tender pa.s.sages were relegated to the same limbo as the memories of childhood, and his _ante bellum_ possessions wiped out of existence by the event of war. Love-dreams, longings, the yearnings of what we call our "hearts," are luxuries of the well-to-do, living at their ease. When the wolf comes to the door, and the means of subsistence are in doubt or danger, Cupid, the ethereal sprite, feeding daintily on sighs and idle fancies, wings himself way; and in the turmoil of hard material facts, he is not missed. It is best so.

The heart wounds, forgotten, skin over and heal, where head and arms are in danger from the blows of fortune; and so the undivided energies are free for the combat. But now, his personal affairs having arranged themselves in an easy well-to-do routine which gave no anxiety, his mind was open to other interests, and of these there were not enough to engage it. He often felt dull and lonely. He would now and then accompany Ralph to St. Euphrase, remaining over night and returning to town in the morning, thereby killing a long afternoon, as on the present occasion; but this could be only an occasional palliation. The "planting" years of his youth, as he called them, and the fighting years which followed, had not been the apprenticeship to make him take an undivided interest in business for its own sake after he had secured income sufficient for his needs. He had outlived his relish for the society of young men--young men of business, at least--the middle-aged had withdrawn into domestic life, and he found himself a good deal alone.

The mention of Selby's name stirred old a.s.sociations which time and adventure had long deprived of bitterness; and now he looked back with only a plaintive yearning to the happiness which might have been, if he had had his way, and pitied himself in his solitary estate. If he had married, what wealth of love was his to have bestowed! And how he could have enjoyed being cosseted and purred to by a wife of his own, instead of depending on hirelings whose servile smile betrayed the hollowness of their attentions. The smoking-room at his club, and his own rooms at the hotel rose before his eye in their dull solid unsatisfying comfort, and he could not but compare them with the clean, unsmoky freshness and brightness of the woman's world around him, and confess the two as different and apart as the close warm stuffiness of a winter sick-room, from the clear keen day out of doors in early spring.

"What ails you, gineral? You look that glum you might have been hearing of your brother's death," said Martha, making room for him on the garden seat where she sat.

"I am well, madam. I heard you allude just now to a Mr. Selby as having married the sister of Mrs. Bunce. Are you acquainted with the lady?"

"To be sure I am. She is Ralph's aunt. A dear good soul as ever lived, but real sorrowful-like and sickly now--she that used to be as peart and blooming as the flowers in May. It's heart-breaking to see her.

She has never got over the loss of her child ten years ago, and it has fairly broke her up. Her hair is white like a woman of sixty. She might be older than Judy, there; and yet she is just one age with Ralph--not forty yet."

"I recollect her very distinctly in her brother Gerald's lifetime--a beautiful young lady. That was before the war; the first time I was in Canada."

"Were you in Canady then? But to be sure you were! You were Gerald's friend, and are a trustee of his property. Ah, yes! I recollect. And you were----"

But she did not say any more; only she looked in his face with a new interest, and what would have been a kind and sympathizing smile if good manners had not restrained the manifestation. Nothing awakens the interest of a good woman so warmly as a story of true enduring love.

If the love have been unrequited, its constancy seems but the more rarely and touchingly beautiful. It is something to be dealt with delicately, and spoken to in low, soft, ambiguous words that may soothe but will not flutter the tender thing. It was such love that Martha dreamed of in her youth, and humbly hoped for; and when Ralph, young, eager and impetuous, found her in the New England homestead, she dreamed the divine influence had descended to stir the hushed and waiting waters of her life. She cheerfully left home and kindred to dwell with the man who loved her, and she had been his true and devoted wife. Yet often when she recalled the enthusiasm of that early time it seemed to her that the love-feast had been but a Barmecide's banquet after all, or like the husks with which another adventurer had to stay his hunger when he left the shelter of the paternal home. She lavished the wealth of her own affection, but the return had seemed but slender and humdrum to her high-wrought expectations. The young couple went to housekeeping, which is something quite different from the life of the hummingbirds among the flowers: Love's dainty fare of sighs and kisses gave place to the grosser nourishment of bread and beef. The bread had to be earned, the house had to be kept, and very soon the pair of Arcadians found themselves toilers like the rest of the world. He toiled with a will, nay with a relish; it was what he was better fitted for than the fantastic joys of feeling; and she did her part at least without repining. It was what she had promised, and she did it loyally, if wearily at times, in the colourless greyness of daily life, when she recalled the rosy dawn of maiden love, with the heavens above all shining and the world sparkling with dew. So Eve, mayhap, looked back on Paradise when she was sent forth with her lord into common life, and doubtless she would sigh at times to remember it, even with her boys growing up around her. And so with Martha in her prosperity, to fancy Considine cherishing the ashes of a blighted love, stirred feelings not dead, but long since grown to be a mere luxurious pain--a poignancy of plaintive delight.

"Yes," said Considine, after allowing time for the completion of Martha's interrupted sentence, "yes, I believe it was to Miss Mary's adherence to her own choice in the matter of a husband that I owe my a.s.sociation with Jordan as trustee under that eccentric will. People cannot control their likings, I suppose, and I do think the young lady was hardly dealt with. I hope the marriage she was so set on has turned out well. Is she in good circ.u.mstances?"

"They are very comfortable; but not rich, of course. People do not make fortunes in Selby's profession; but when a woman throws away one fortune she has no right to expect another. However they'd have done well enough if it had not been for losing the child. That has fairly broke them up. They live retired, and don't care to see anybody. Mary keeps her room half the time, and if it was not for Susan, who lives with them since Judy married, I don't know what they would do. But it gives me the dumps to think of them. Is this not a nice place, gineral? And how do you like the ladies? Seems to me Miss Matildy is just too altogether awful nice for anything."

And so she ran on, good soul. She was bent on withdrawing Considine from what she considered his "just too beautiful" contemplation of an ancient grief, and resolved to find him a suitable consoler. The consoler, indeed, was already fixed upon in her own mind, and ere she went home that afternoon, she had already begun to depict the interesting bachelor in colours which, but for the incipient baldness above his temples, the s.h.a.ggy moustache, and the absence of wings, might have stood for the Cupid on an old-fashioned valentine.

Her auditor was quite interested, in a pleasant heart-whole way, and much as she might have been over a new variety of Brahmah or other fowl; for besides her lively sensibility, Matilda had a considerable fund of sober sense, though she was scarcely herself aware of it.

Nevertheless, it _was_ interesting to hear of the vanquished hero.

Martha dwelt much on his warlike exploits, and his cherishing through years and battles the memory of his old attachment. Captain Lorrimer--who knew?--might have done the same, and Matilda still thought kindly of him, though she had never read his name in any list of killed or wounded, and she had seen or heard nothing of him since he marched his men on board the steamer to the strains of "The girl I left behind me," amid the waving handkerchiefs of the ladies on the wharf; and henceforth Matilda felt very friendly and exerted herself to be pleasant whenever she found herself in Considine's company.

CHAPTER XIII.

ON ACCOUNT OF STRAWBERRIES.

The tea-table was set on the lawn where the lengthening shadows inscribed themselves map-wise in islands and peninsulas of coolness; and within the opened windows on the verandah were other refreshments, whither the gentlemen were invited to bend their steps, while the ladies with their ices remained out of doors. Muriel looking up, saw Pierre disappearing among the bushes along the approach.

"Auntie," she whispered to Matilda, "give me a big heaped-up plate of strawberries and ice-cream for poor Pierre. See, there he goes away home, all by himself. How lonely he must feel! and hot, and thirsty, to see us all sitting out here eating nice things. Quick! Tilly, dear, or he will be through the gate, and at his own door before I can catch him; and then I may meet Annette, who is never nice to me. I don't like Annette."

The plate was speedily filled and heaped up, and away she ran.

To Pierre, trudging along the gravel in his heavy boots, the light footsteps in pursuit were inaudible; and it was not till pa.s.sing the gate, he stopped to close it behind him, that he heard his name called, and looking up, saw Muriel running towards him. Of course he stopped, and of course, too, being French, and a civil lad, he pulled off his cap and waited. An English lad would probably have turned back to meet the young mistress; but Pierre was apt to grow confused when Muriel appeared suddenly, she was so airy and different from his own heavy lumbering self. So there he stood, stock still like Jack stepping off his bean-stalk, when the fairy tripping down the meadow from the giant's castle, accosted him.

"Here, Pierre, I have brought you these. I wish I had seen you to give them sooner. You could have eaten them in the garden then, which would have been nicer."

"Oh! mademoiselle ees too kind," mumbled Pierre, reddening to the roots of his hair and looking sheepishly grateful. "Too moosh of trouble to give mademoiselle," and the burning black eyes looked out from under their lashes as if they would have spoken things forbidden to the stammering tongue. But there came a shrill call up the road just then, "Pier-r-re!" which quenched their l.u.s.tre in a moment, and brought a faint frown of impatience even to Muriel's sunny brow.

"Your mother is calling you, Pierre. Good night. _Bon appet.i.t_.

"Ah! _coquin!_ What is it thou dost there?" was the greeting which met him as he drew near, from his mother standing in the road before the door. "_Cochon! Bete!_ And thou lingerest at the gate with the _donzelle_, forsooth. Thou!--Deny it not! Undutiful! And I have beaten thee for it when thou wert small, till my poor heart ached more than the bruises on thy little skin. And still thou wilt persist. I pray the heavenly queen upon my knees, and all the saints, to let thee die sooner than come to love her. 'Twere mortal sin."

"My mother? Calm yourself It was only that the demoiselle ran after me to give this plate of fruit. Will you not taste it?"

"Taste gift of hers? _Enfante fausse!_" and she pushed aside the offered strawberries which rolled plentifully from the plate and were scattered on the ground.

"Ah, no, my mother! Not false! The youngest angel in heaven is not more true and good than Mademoiselle Muriel. But you will not think so--I remind me often how you beat me for her sake. Beat me again, my mother, if so it please you; but she is good and very beautiful."

"_Sacr-re!_" she ground out from between her clenched teeth, with flashing eyes glancing up and down the road; and then she started with a sob of afright, and a tremor ran through her frame as she composed herself to speak quite calmly. "I see thy father coming home. He must not know of what we have spoken, if thou would'st have thy mother's blessing when I die. Pick up thy berries. It was a heedless gesture of my arm which upset them. Thou can'st say so much." And she went indoors, leaving Pierre in bewilderment to gather the fruit.

That his mother, so gentle and fond, so sober, industrious and sensible, should break out like one beside herself, if their ladies'

niece were but named, was unaccountable. A mystery, and one he dared not even try to solve. She had threatened to curse him if he did but inquire. And yet it was only before himself that she betrayed her feeling. In his father's presence she showed no sign, but would discuss the niece of their mistresses with him with the same composure as their horses, sheep or cattle. And yet mademoiseile was so sweet!

And as he thought of her the bewilderment vanished in his mind like mist before the morning sun, and he forgot even to pick up his strawberries scattered around, while he knelt on the threshold.

"Heh, Pierre! On thy knees before sundown? Will the rosary not keep till bedtime?" said Jean, the father, stepping past him into the house.

"I am picking up some strawberries I let fall just now. Mademoiselle Muriel brought me them as I went home."

"She is an angel of considerateness and kindness--never forgets the poor for the sake of the rich--just like monsieur the general, her grandfather, if so please the ladies, and the demoiselles his daughters. A family most generous, even if they are not French and good Catholics;" and he crammed half-a-dozen large strawberries into his mouth at once, and gave them a crunch as though to drink the family's health in a b.u.mper of strawberry wine.

Annette looked up from the baby she was nursing, and there was a gleam of red and smothered fire lurking in her eye, and she set her teeth tight to hold back the struggling wish that the girl's gift might choke him; while sire and son seated themselves on the door-sill to consume the collation, the elder, at least, utterly unconscious that aught was amiss.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 1: All right. First used by an auditor of accounts in Kentucky, who it was believed meant the letters to stand for Oll Kreck (all correct).]