Heartsease; Or, The Brother's Wife Part 83

Meantime the child was presenting a golden opportunity; fixed in rapt contemplation of his father, and gazing motionless, with one little foot doubled under him, and one tiny white arm drooping over the crimson sofa cushion. Miss Piper sketched as if for her life. Theodora directed Arthur's attention to his little son. He spoke to him, and was surprised and pleased at the plainness of the reply, and the animated spring of gladness. In another minute he was sitting on the floor, most successfully entertaining the child, while Miss Piper could hardly help drawing that handsome black head in contrast with the small, white creature, whose morsels of hands were coaxing his brown red cheeks; and Theodora looked on, amused to see how papa succeeded in drawing out those pretty, hesitating smiles, so embellishing to the little face, that had generally more than the usual amount of baby gravity.

They were in full debate whether he should be represented smiling or grave; the aunt wishing the latter as the habitual expression, the father declaring that 'the fellow was only fit to be seen smiling like his mother;' when suddenly there was an announcement--

'Lady Lucy Delaval and Lord St. Erme.'

Arthur hardly had time to start up from the ground, his colour deepening with discomfiture as he glanced at the disarray of the room, littered with playthings, displaced cushions, newspapers, with which he had been playing bo-peep, drawing materials, all in as much confusion as the hair, which, in an unguarded moment, he had placed at the mercy of Johnnie's fingers.

Theodora comprehended the sharp click with which he rang the nursery bell, and the half frown with which he watched in dread of a cry, while Lady Lucy tried to make friends with Johnnie.

The drawing was brought under discussion, but he held aloof after one look, which Theodora perceived to be disapproving, though she did not know that the reason was that the smile, somewhat overdone by Miss Piper, had brought out one of old Mr. Moss's blandest looks. Meantime Lord St. Erme talked to the little artist, giving her some valuable hints, which she seized with avidity, and then quietly retreated.

Arthur tried to talk to Lady Lucy; but she was very young, not yet come out, timid, and, apparently, afraid of something that she had to say, watching Miss Martindale as earnestly as she dared; while Lord St. Erme spoke eagerly, yet as if he hardly knew what he was saying, of art, music, books, striving in vain to obtain one of the looks of yesterday.

It warmed Theodora's heart to feel herself the object of such enthusiastic admiration, but she preserved her look of rigid indifference. It was a long visit; but at last the brother made the move, looking at his sister, as if to remind her of something.

'Oh, Miss Martindale,' said she, with an effort, 'we thought you must be staying in a great deal. Would you be so kind, now and then, as to walk with me?'

This was an alarming request, and not very easy to refuse. Theodora said something of seeing about it, and hoping--

'It would be such a treat,' said Lady Lucy, growing bolder, as the two gentlemen were speaking to each other. 'My aunt is gone to her brother's little parsonage, where there is no room for me, and my governess had to go home, luckily, so that we are quite alone together; and St. Erme said perhaps you would be so kind sometimes as to walk with me--'

Theodora smiled. 'I hope we may meet sometimes,' said she. 'If my sister was down-stairs perhaps we might; but I am engaged to her.'

Thus ended the visit, and Arthur, hastily throwing the cushions back into their places, demanded, 'What on earth could possess those folks to come here now!'

'It was an inconvenient time,' said Theodora.

'Dawdling and loitering here!--a man with nothing better to do with his time!'

'Nay,' said Theodora, touched by the injustice; 'Lord St. Erme is no man not to know how to dispose of his time.'

'Whew!' whistled Arthur; 'is the wind gone round to that quarter? Well, I thought better of you than that you would like a fellow that can do nothing but draw, never shoots over his own moors, and looks like a German singer! But do put the room tidy; and if you must have the nursery down here, put it into the back room, for mercy sake!'

He went away, having thus stirred her feelings in the St. Erme direction, and he left them to take their chance for the rest of the day. She took a solitary walk; on her return saw a hat in the hall, and asking whether Mr. Harding was there, was told no, but that Mr. Gardner was with Captain Martindale. And after long waiting till Arthur should come to dinner, he only put in his head, saying, 'Oh, Theodora, are you waiting? I beg your pardon, I am going out to dinner. You can sit with Violet; and if she should want me, which she won't, James knows where to find me.'

Theodora scorned to inquire of the servant whither his master was gone; but her appet.i.te forsook her at the sight of the empty chair, and the recollection of the warning against Mark Gardner.

This was not her last solitary dinner. Arthur had engagements almost every day, or else went to his club; and when at home, if he was not with Violet, he sat in his own room, and would never again a.s.sist at the sittings, which were completed under less favourable auspices, soon enough to allow time for the framing before the mamma should come down-stairs. Her recovery proceeded prosperously; and Theodora was quite sufficiently in request in her room to be satisfied, and to make it difficult to find a spare afternoon to go and order one of her favourite oak frames.

However, she was at length able to make the expedition; and she was busy in giving directions as to the width of margin, when from the interior of the shop there came forward no other than the Earl of St. Erme.

They shook hands, and she sent her excuses to Lady Lucy for having been too much occupied to call, asking whether she was still in town.

'Only till Thursday,' he said, 'when I take her to join my aunt, who is to show her the Rhine.'

'Do not you go with them?'

'I have not decided. It depends upon circ.u.mstances. Did not I hear something of your family visiting Germany?'

'Perhaps they may,' said Theodora, dryly. He began to study the portrait, and saw some likeness, but was distressed by something in the drawing of the mouth.

'Yes,' said Theodora, 'I know it is wrong; but Miss Piper could not see it as I did, and her alterations only made it worse, till I longed to be able to draw.'

'I wonder if I might venture,' said Lord St. Erme, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his eye, and walking round the picture. 'I am sure, with your artist eye, you must know what it is not to be able to keep your hands off.'

'Not I,' said Theodora, smiling. 'Pencils are useless tools to me. But it would be a great benefit to the picture, and Miss Piper will fancy it all her own.'

'You trust me, then?' and he turned to ask for a piece of chalk, adding, 'But is it not too bold a measure without the subject?'

'He is in the carriage, with his nurse;' and Theodora, unable to resist so material an improvement to her gift, brought him in, and set him up on the counter opposite to a flaming picture of a gentleman in a red coat, which he was pleased to call papa, and which caused his face to a.s.sume a look that was conveyed to the portrait by Lord St. Erme, and rendered it the individual Johnnie Martindale, instead of merely a pale boy in a red sash.

Theodora was too much gratified not to declare it frankly, and to say how much charmed his mother would be; and she was pleased by a remark of Lord St. Erme, that showed that his poet mind comprehended that wistful intelligence that gave a peculiar beauty to Johnnie's thin white face.

She thought to pay off her obligations by an immediate visit to his sister, while she knew him to be safe out of the way; and, driving to Mrs. Delaval's, she sent her nephew home, intending to walk back.

Lady Lucy was alone, and she found her a gentle, simple-hearted girl, with one sole affection, namely, for the brother, who was the whole world to her; and taking Miss Martindale, on his word, as an object of reverence and admiration. It was impossible not to thaw towards her: and when Theodora spoke of the embellishment of the portrait, she needed no more to make her spring up, and fetch a portfolio to exhibit her brother's drawings. Admirable they were; sketches of foreign scenery, many portraits, in different styles, of Lady Lucy herself, and the especial treasure was a copy of Tennyson, interleaved with ill.u.s.trations in the German style, very fanciful and beautiful. Theodora was, however, struck by the numerous traces she saw of the Lalla Rookh portrait. It was there as the dark-eyed Isabel; again as Judith, in the Vision of Fair Women; it slept as the Beauty in the Wood; and even in sweet St.

Agnes, she met it refined and purified; so that at last she observed, 'It is strange how like this is to my mother.'

'I think it must be,' said Lady Lucy; 'for I was quite struck by your likeness to St. Erme's ideal sketches.'

Rather annoyed, Theodora laughed, and turning from the portfolio, asked if she did not also draw?

'A little; but mine are too bad to be looked at.'

Theodora insisted, and the drawings were produced: all the best had been done under Lord St. Erme's instruction. The affection between the brother and sister touched her, and thinking herself neglectful of a good little girl, she offered to take the desired walk at once. While Lady Lucy was preparing, however, the brother came home, and oh! the inconvenient satisfaction of his blushing looks.

Yet Theodora pardoned these, when he thanked her for being kind to his sister; speaking with a sort of parental fondness and anxiety of his wish to have Lucy with him, and of his desire that she should form friendships that would benefit her.

Never had he spoken with so much reality, nor appeared to so much advantage; and it was in his favour, too, that Theodora contrasted this warm solicitude for his young sister with the indifference of her own eldest brother. There was evidently none of the cold distance that was the grievance of her home.

'Lady Lucy is almost out of the school-room,' she said. 'You will soon be able to have her with you in the country.'

'There are certainly some considerations that might make me resolve on an English winter,' said Lord St. Erme.

'Every consideration, I should think.'

'Fogs and frosts, and clouds, that hang like a weight on the whole frame,' said Lord St. Erme, shivering.

'Healthy, freshening mists, and honest vigorous frosts to brace one for service,' said Theodora, smiling.

'O, Miss Martindale!' cried Lady Lucy, entering, 'are you persuading St.

Erme to stay all the year in England? I do so wish he would.'

'Then you ought to make him,' said Theodora.

'If Miss Martindale were to express a wish or opinion--'

She saw it was time to cut him short. 'Every one's opinion must be the same,' she said.