My Little Lady Part 40

Graham stood silent. He felt so keenly for her; he had so dreaded for her the time when this knowledge of her father's true character must come home to her. In his wide sympathy with everything connected with her, he had regrets of that poor father also, dead years ago, who in his last hours had so plainly foreseen some such moment as this, and yet not quite, either.

"Monsieur Horace," Madelon went on wildly, "I did so love papa, and he loved me--ah, you cannot imagine how much! When I think of it now, when I see other fathers with their children, how little they seem to care for them in comparison, I wonder at his love for me. He nursed me, he played with me, he took such care of me, he made me so happy. I think sometimes if I could only hear his voice once more, and see him smiling at me as he used to smile--and I must not speak of him, I must not even mention him. It is unjust, it is cruel. I do not want to live with people who will not let me think of my father."

"You may speak of him to me, Madelon----"

"To you?" she said, interrupting him; "ah, you knew him--you know how he loved me. But Aunt Barbara--she will not let me even mention his name."

"Then she is very wrong and very foolish," Graham answered hastily. "Listen to me, Madelon. You are making yourself miserable for nothing. To begin with, if everybody in the room to-night knew who your father was, and all about him, I don't suppose it would make the least difference; and as for the rest, you have no occasion to concern or distress yourself about anything in your father's life, except what relates to yourself. Whatever he may have been to others, he was the kindest and most loving of fathers to you, and that is all you need think about."

"But Aunt Barbara----"

"Never mind Aunt Barbara. If she chooses to do what you and I think foolish we will not follow her example. You may talk to me, Madelon, as much as ever you please. I should like to hear about your father, for I know how often you think of him. Now, will you go back to the ball-room? I give you leave to dance now," he added, smiling.

She did not move nor answer, but she looked up at him with a sudden change in her face, and he saw that she was trembling.

"What is it now, Madelon?" he said.

"You are so good," she said. "When I am unhappy, you always comfort me--it has always been so----"

"Do I comfort you?" said Graham--"why, that is good news, Madelon."

"Ah! yes," she cried, in her impulsive way, "you have always been good to me--how can I forget it? That night when papa died, and I was so unhappy all alone--and since then, how often--"

Graham turned away, and walked twice up and down the room.

There was a distant sound of music, and footsteps, and voices, but people had drifted away into the ball-room again, and they were alone. He came back to where Madelon was sitting.

"If you think so, indeed, Madelon," he said, "will you not let it be so always? Do you think you can trust me enough to let me always take care of you? I can ask for nothing dearer in life."

"What do you mean?" she cried, glancing up at him startled.

"Do you not understand?" he said, looking at her, and taking one her little hands in his--"do you not understand that one may have a secret hidden away for years, and never suspected even by oneself, perhaps, till all at once one discovers it? I think I must have had some such secret, Madelon, and that I never guessed at it till a few months since, when I found a little girl that I knew years ago, grown up into somebody that I love better than all the world----"

"Ah! stop!" she cried, jumping up, and pulling her hand away.

"You are good and kind, but it is not possible that you--ah!

Monsieur Horace, I am not worthy!"

"Not worthy! Good heavens, Madelon, you not worthy!" He paused for a moment. "What is not possible?" he went on. "Perhaps I am asking too much. I am but a battered old fellow in these days, I know, and if, indeed, you cannot care enough for me----"

He held out his hand again with a very kind smile. She looked up at him.

"Monsieur Horace," she said, "I--I do--"

And then she put both hands into his with her old, childish gesture, and I daresay the little weary spirit thought it had found its rest at last.

CHAPTER VI.

Mrs. Treherne's Forgiveness.

Mrs. Treherne was sitting in the drawing-room of her London house. The window was open to the hot dusty street, long shadows lay upon the deserted pavement, the opposite houses were all closed, and no sound disturbed the stillness of the September evening but the shouts of the children, as they played up and down the steps, and under the porticoes of the houses, and the bells of the Westminster clocks chiming one quarter after another. Through the half-drawn curtains that hung between the two drawing-rooms she could see Graham and Madelon sitting together, looking out upon the Park, as they talked in low tones, and a sudden sadness filled her heart.

They were to be married next week, and go abroad at once, whilst she returned to Cornwall; and the even current of a lonely life, that had been stirred and altered in its course five years ago, would return to its original channel, to be disturbed, perhaps, no more.

It was of these five years that Mrs. Treherne was thinking now, and of others, perhaps, beyond them again, when she too had been young, and beloved, and happy. There are some lives which, in their even tenour of mild happiness, seem to glide smoothly from one scattered sorrow to another, so that to the very end some of the hopefulness and buoyancy of youth are retained; but there are others in which are concentrated in one brief s.p.a.ce those keen joys and keener sorrows that no one quite survives, which, in pa.s.sing over us take from us our strongest vitality, our young capacity for happiness and suffering alike. Such a life had been Mrs. Treherne's. She had been a woman of deep affections and pa.s.sions, and they all lay buried in those early years that had taken from her husband, and children, and friend, and it was only a dim shadow of her former self that moved, and spoke, and lived in these latter days.

It was an old story with her now, however. She did not envy these two happy people who were talking together in the next room. It was of Madelon she was thinking most, thinking sadly enough that in all these years she had not been able to win the girl's heart. When she had first seen the child of the friend who in all the world had been most dear to her, she had promised herself that, for Magdalen's sake, she would take her home and bring her up as her own daughter; and she had kept her promise, but she had failed in making her happy. She knew it now, when she contrasted the Madelon of to-day, going about with the light in her eyes, and the glad ring in her voice, with the Madelon of six months ago. She had not been able to make her happy, and she would leave her without a regret; and the thought gave Mrs. Treherne a sharper pang than she had felt for many a day.

And meanwhile this was what Madelon was saying,--

"In another month, Madelon," Graham had said to her, "we shall be at L----, and you will be looking out on the blue skies that you have so often longed for."

"Yes," she replied, "and then perhaps I shall be thinking of the grey ones I have left behind; I shall be sorry to leave England after all. I will pay your country so much of a compliment as that, Monsieur Horace, or rather I shall be sorry to leave some of the English people--Aunt Barbara, I do not like to think of her alone; she will miss me, she says."

"I should not wonder if she did, Madelon."

"I do not know why she should; I think I have been ungrateful to her; she has been so good, so kind to me, why have I not been able to love her more? Where should I have been if she had not taken care of me? and such care! If I lived to be a hundred I could never repay all she has done, and now I am going away to be happy, and she will be lonely and sad."

"We will ask her to come and see us, some day, at L----. I saw a house when I was there, that would suit us exactly, and it has a room, which shall be sometimes for Aunt Barbara, sometimes for Madge. It has an open gallery, and an outside staircase leading down to the garden, which will delight Madge's small mind."

"Like my room at Le Trooz," cried Madelon. "Ah! how glad I am that you can go there first, and that I shall see Jeanne-Marie again; if only we do not find her ill--it is so long since I have heard from her, and she used to write so regularly."

"For my part," said Graham, "I wish to see the hotel at Chaudfontaine, where I first met a small person who was very rude to me, I remember."

"And your wish will not be gratified, sir, for the season will be over by next month and the hotel closed for the winter. I am sorry for that, but I wonder you can wish to see a place where any one was rude to you--now with me of course it is different."

"In what way, Madelon?"

"Ah! that I will not tell you--but we will go to the convent at Liege, Monsieur Horace; I would like to see Soeur Lucie again.

Poor Soeur Lucie--but it is sad to think that she is always there making her confitures--there are so many other things to be done in the world."

"For example?"

"Joining a marching regiment," she said, looking at him half- laughing, half-shyly. "Monsieur Horace, where will you go when you are tired of L----? You will be tired of it some day, I know, and so shall I. Where will you go next?"

"I don't know," he answered; "you see, Madelon, in taking a wife, I undertake a certain responsibility; I can't go marching about the world as if I were a single man."

"You don't mean that!" she cried, "if I thought you meant that, I--I--ah, why do you tease me?" she added, as Graham could not help laughing, "you know you promised me I should go with you everywhere. I am very strong, I love travelling, I want to see the world. Where will you go? To America again? I will adopt the customs and manners of any country; I will dress in furs with a seal-skin cap, and eat blubber like an Esquimau, or turn myself into an Indian squaw; would you like to have me for a squaw, Monsieur Horace? I would lean all their duties; I believe they carry their husband's game, and never speak till they are spoken to. My ideas are very vague. But I would learn--ah, yes, I could learn anything."

Mrs. Treherne was still sitting, thinking her sad thoughts when she felt an arm pa.s.sed round her neck, and turning round, saw Madelon kneeling at her side. "Horace has gone out," she said; "we have been talking over our plans, Aunt Barbara; we have settled quite now that we will first go to Liege and Le Trooz, and see Jeanne-Marie, and then go on to the south. It is good of Monsieur Horace to go to Liege, for it is all to please me, and it is quite out of his way."

"And you go on to L---- afterwards? You will be glad to find yourself abroad again, Madeleine."

"Yes," she said, hesitating; "but I shall be sorry to leave you, Aunt Barbara."

"Will you, my dear? I am afraid, Madeleine, that I have not made you very happy, though I have only found it out in these last few weeks."

"Aunt Barbara, how can you say such a thing?" cried Madelon.

"What have you not done for me? Why, I could never, never thank you for it all; it is for that--because it is so much-- that I cannot say more. One cannot use the same words that one does for ordinary things."