CHAPTER XX.
LUCILLE MAKES A NEW FRIEND.
The sun shone on the lovers’ journey. It was almost the happiest day in the lives of either; certainly the happiest day these two had ever spent together. To Lucille, after perpetual imprisonment in the Shadrack-road, those green fields and autumnal woods seemed unutterably beautiful—the winding river—the changing shadows on the hill-side—the villages nestling in verdant hollows.
‘How can any one live in London!’ she exclaimed, with natural wonder, the only London she knew being so dreary and dingy a scene.
The judicious administration of half-a-crown on Lucius’s part had procured the lovers a compartment to themselves. He was anxious to ask those questions which he had meant to ask last night, when the conversation had taken so unexpected a turn.
‘Lucille,’ he began, plunging at once to the heart of his subject, ‘I want you to grant that request I made last night. I am not going to speak of Ferdinand Sivewright; put him out of your thoughts altogether, as some one who has no further influence upon your fate. I want you to tell me your first impressions of life, before you went to Bond-street. Forgive me, dearest, if I ask you to recall memories that may pain you. I have a strong reason for wishing you to answer me.’
‘You might tell me the reason, Lucius.’
‘I will tell you some day.’
‘I suppose I must be content with that,’ she said; and then went on thoughtfully, ‘My first memories, my first impressions? I think my first recollection is of the sea.’
‘You lived within sight of the sea, then?’
‘Yes. I can just remember—almost as faintly as if it were a dream—being lifted up in my nurse’s arms, in an orchard on a hill, to look at the sea. There it lay before us, wide and blue and bright. I wanted to fly to it.’
‘Can you remember your nurse?’
‘I know she wore a high white cap and no bonnet, and spoke a language that I never heard after I came to Bond-street—a language with a curious twang. I daresay it was some French _patois_.’
‘Very likely. And your mother, Lucille? Have you no recollection of her?’
‘No recollection!’ cried the girl, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Why, I have cherished the memory of her face all my life; it was something too sacred to speak of, even to you. She is the sweetest memory of those happy days—a face that bent over my bed every morning when I awoke—a face that watched me every night when I fell asleep; and I never remember falling asleep except in her arms. It is all dim and dreamlike now, but so sweet, so sweet!’
‘Is that anything like the face?’ asked Lucius, showing her the miniature.
‘Yes, it is the very face!’ she cried, tearfully kissing it. ‘Where did you get this portrait, Lucius?’
‘Your grandfather gave it me.’
‘Yes, I remember his showing me this miniature a long time ago. But of late he has refused to let me see it.’
‘He may have feared to awaken sorrowful memories.’
‘As if they had ever slept. Will you give me this picture, Lucius?’
‘Not yet, dearest. I have a reason for wishing to retain it a little while longer; but I fully recognise your right to possess it.’
‘It is a double miniature,’ said Lucille, turning it round. ‘Whose is the other portrait?’
‘Have you no recollection of that face?’
‘No; I can recall no face but my mother’s—not even my nurse’s. I only remember her tall white cap, and her big rough hands.’
‘You remember no gentleman in that home by the sea?’
‘Not distinctly. There was some one who was always taking mamma out in a carriage, leaving me to cry for her. That gentleman must have been my father, I suppose, yet my vague recollection of the face seems different. I remember being told to kiss him one night, and refusing because he always took mamma away from me.’
‘Were you happy?’
‘O yes, very happy, though I cried when mamma left me. My nurse was kind. I remember long sunny days in the orchard on that hill, with the bright blue sea before us, and a house with a thatched verandah, and a parlour full of all kinds of pretty things—boxes and baskets and picture-books—and mamma’s guitar. She used to sing every night to the accompaniment of the guitar. We lived near the top of a high hill—very high and steep—higher than any hills we have passed to-day.’
‘Is that all you can tell me, Lucille?’
‘I think so. The life seemed to melt away like a dream. I can’t remember the end of it. If my mother died in that house on the hill, I can remember no circumstance connected with her death—no illness, no funeral. My last recollection of her is being clasped in her arms—feeling her tears and kisses on my face. Then came a long, long journey with my father. I was very tired, but he was kind to me, and held me in his arms while I slept; and one morning I woke to find myself in the gloomy-looking bedroom in Bond-street. I began to cry, and Mrs. Wincher came to me; and soon after that some one told me that my mother was dead. I think it was grandpapa.’
‘Poor child! poor lonely deserted child!’ said Lucius.
‘Not deserted, Lucius. My mother would never have abandoned me while she lived.’
‘Enough, dearest! You have told me much that may help me to a discovery I am anxious to make.’
‘What discovery?’
‘I must ask you to be patient, dear. You shall know all before long.’
‘I have had some practice in patience, Lucius, and to-day I am too happy to complain. Do you think your sister will like me?’
‘It is not possible she can do otherwise. I sent her a telegram this morning telling her to expect us.’
‘She will be at the station to meet us, perhaps,’ said Lucille with an alarmed look.
‘It is just possible that she may.’
‘O Lucius, I begin to feel nervous. Is your sister a person who takes violent likings and dislikings at first sight?’
‘No, dear. My sister has some claim to be considered sensible.’
‘But she is not dreadfully sensible, I hope; for in that case she might think me foolish and emptyheaded.’
‘I will answer for her thinking no such thing.’
‘Can you really, Lucius? But is she like you?’
‘She is much better-looking than I am.’
‘As if that were possible,’ said Lucille archly.
‘In your eyes of course it is not.’
‘Mrs. Bertram is a widow, is she not?’ asked Lucille. ‘Pray don’t think me inquisitive; only you have told me so little, and I might make some awkward mistake in talking to your sister.’
‘She is not a widow; but she is separated from her husband, who is a scoundrel.’
‘I am so sorry.’
‘Yes, dear; her life, since girlhood, has been a sad one. She made that one fatal mistake by which a woman can mar her existence—an unhappy marriage.’
‘I shall be careful never to mention Mr. Bertram. Indeed, we shall have an inexhaustible subject of conversation in you.’
‘You will soon wear that topic threadbare. After all, there is not often much interest in the childhood of great men. Here we are at the station.’
‘How short the journey has seemed!’ said Lucille.
‘And yet we have been three hours on the road. Think of it as typical of our life journey, dearest, which will seem only too brief if we but travel together.’
The station was the most insignificant place in the world; yet all the great folks who went to Mardenholme had to alight here. Foxley-road was the name of the station, but Foxley itself was a long way off, so far that the designation seemed intended to deceive. There was a stunted omnibus to meet the train, labelled Mardenholme and Foxley—Foxley was the name of that obscure spot where Geoffrey Hossack had found his lost love—but not in the stunted omnibus was Lucille to travel to her destination. Janet and Janet’s little girl were there to meet her in a wagonette borrowed for the occasion, and driven by an ancient man in knee-breeches, whose garments, though clean and tidy, diffused a faint odour of pigs.
Before Lucille had time to wonder how Janet would receive her, she found herself in Janet’s arms.
‘I am prepared to love you very dearly, for my brother’s sake and for your own,’ said Janet with a calm protecting air, kissing the poor little pale face. ‘I thought you’d like me to be here to meet you and Lucille, Lucius; so I borrowed a neighbour’s wagonette and a neighbour’s coachman.’
The piggy man grinned at the allusion. It was not often society dignified him with the name of coachman; and he knew that his master returned him in the tax-paper as an out-of-door labourer.
Little Flossie was next kissed and admired, and introduced to her future aunt.
‘May I call you aunt Lucille, at once?’ she asked.
‘Of course you may, darling.’
Lucille’s portmanteau was deposited by the side of the piggy man, and they all mounted the wagonette, and drove off through lanes still gay with wild flowers and rich with balmy odours even in the very death of summer. Lucille was delighted with everything.
‘You can’t imagine what a quiet corner of the earth you are coming to,’ said Janet. ‘I’m afraid you’ll find it very dull.’
‘Not duller than Cedar House,’ interjected Lucius.
‘And that you’ll soon grow tired of the place and of me.’
‘Dull with you! tired of you!’ exclaimed Lucille, putting her little hand into Janet’s, ‘when I have been longing to know you.’
Half-an-hour’s drive in the jolting old wagonette brought them to Foxley, the cluster of thatched cottages in the green hollow where Geoffrey had discovered his lost love. Dahlias now bloomed in gaudy variety to extinguish the few pale roses that lingered behind their mates of the garden, like dissipated young beauties who stay latest at a ball. There were even here and there early blooming china-asters, and the Virginian creeper glowed redly on some cottage walls. Yet, despite these evidences of advancing autumn, the spot was hardly less fair than when Geoffrey had first seen it. There was that air of repose about the scene, that soothing influence of placid dispassionate nature, which is almost sweeter than actual beauty. No wide glory of landscape made the traveller exclaim, no vast and various amphitheatre of wood and hill startled him into wondering admiration; but the settled peacefulness of the scene crept into his heart, and comforted his griefs.
To the eyes of Lucille, fresh from the grimy barrenness of the Cedar House garden, the spot seemed simply exquisite. What a perfume of clove carnations in the garden! what a sweet scent of lavender in the little white-curtained bedroom! And then how genial the welcome of the old nurse, with her benevolent-looking mob-cap and starched white apron; and what an interesting personage she appeared to Lucille!
‘And you really remember Mr. Davoren when he was quite a little boy?’ said Lucille, as the dame waited on her while she took off her bonnet.
‘Remember him! I should think I did indeed, miss,’ exclaimed the dame. ‘I remember him so well as a boy, that it’s as much as I can do to believe he can have growed into a man. “Can it really be him,” I says to myself when I sees him come in at that gate just now, “him as I remember in holland pinafores, two fresh ones every day, and never clean half an hour after they were put on?”’
‘Did he make his pinafores very dirty?’ asked Lucille with a slight revulsion of feeling. Lucius ought to have been an ideal boy, and spotless as to his pinafores.
‘There never was such a pickle, miss; but so kind and loving with it all, and so bold and open. Never no fibbing with him. And many a pound he’s sent me since I’ve lived here; though I don’t suppose he’s got too many of ’em for hisself, bless his kind heart.’
Lucille rewarded the lips that praised her lover with a kiss.
‘What a dear good soul you are!’ she said. ‘I’m so happy to have come here.’
‘Yes, you’ll be happy with our Miss Janet, begging her pardon; but, never having seen Mr. Bertram, I haven’t got him in my mind like when I think of her. You’re sure to take to Miss Janet. She’s a little proud and high in her ways to strangers, but she has as good a heart as her brother.’
A nice little dinner had been prepared for the travellers. Lucius would have only just time to dine, and then return to the station, in order to be back in time for the Newhaven train from London-bridge. It would be a hard day’s work for him altogether; but what was that when weighed against the pleasure of having brought these two together thus—the sister he loved and had once deemed lost, and the girl who was to be his wife.
The parting cost them all a pang, though he promised to come back in a week, if all went well with him, and fetch Lucille.
‘I could not stay away from my grandfather longer than that, Lucius,’ she said; ‘and,’ in a lower tone, ‘it will seem a very long time to be separated from you.’
Book the Last.