CHAPTER IX

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AN IMPOSSIBLE FRIENDSHIP.

"Earlier in the evening I had taken the opportunity of being alone with Esther to tell her of our discovery. She heard me quietly, though her eyes looked startled.

"But it ought to make no difference, Hilda," she said, when I had finished. "It is not his fault that he is Sir Rupert's grandson."

"No, indeed," I assented, "and I am sure no one would ever suppose it. Still, Aline seems to think that we ought not to let him get into our lives, so to speak, since it will probably be impossible to keep him there."

"To get into our lives!" Esther repeated slowly; "but he only came such a little while ago! One does not make a stranger part of one's life quite so soon."

I thought it might have been said as much to reassure herself as me; but then, again, she might have spoken quite in good faith.

"No," I answered her, "only we have so few friends that it is hard to feel we must be on our guard against a new one."

For a day or two we all tried hard to obey Aline's injunctions, and, without being inhospitable in any way, to leave Mr. De Lacy to his own devices more than we had been doing. This was comparatively easy, as he was getting stronger daily, and could read for himself by this time.

But we had reckoned without our guest.

The second or third time that Aline came to his sofa with her inquiries, into which she had infused a little shadow of formality,--for she rather repented her emotion that first day,--he put a detaining hand on her arm when she would have turned away.

"Miss Brandon," he cried entreatingly, "why are you leaving me out in the cold? Why? I was so happy before, and I have had nothing for two whole days but cold politeness. What have I done?"

"Nothing," said Aline. "We want you to be happy while you are here, but--"

"But what?"

"We are near neighbours, Mr. De Lacy, and your grandfather would tell you that friendship between the De Lacys and the Brandons is impossible. We shall have to be strangers when you leave us, for I don't think we shall ever be enemies."

"But why is friendship impossible between us? What barrier is there? I acknowledge none, whatever my grandfather may say."

He spoke peremptorily, and Aline sighed.

"It is a long story, but I have time to tell it to you this afternoon. Let me sit down, however," she said, for he still clutched her sleeve.

He let her go with an apology, and Aline, drawing over one of the chairs that were embroidered by dead-and-gone Brandons, told him the story, only suppressing any accusation of foul play against Sir Rupert. The men who had been friends had become rivals and enemies. Sir Rupert had acquired part of Brandon, and had become wealthy by means of it, while Brandon had gone steadily to the dogs. She left out all the darker shades in the story; but, despite her kindly caution, her listener filled them in for himself. As she went on, he blushed and grew pale alternately.

When she had finished there was silence for a few minutes. Then young De Lacy said passionately:

"I see you have good reason to hate me and mine."

"To hate you! Oh, no! How could we hate you who are quite innocent? And then one does not usually hate--"

She paused, and he took up the sentence:

"Those one has done good to. But that is Christian forgiveness, Miss Brandon, and I ask for more than that. Listen; whatever fraud, whatever foul play my grandfather used against yours, I abhor a thousand times more than you do. I want none of his ill-gotten wealth. He can do with it what he will. If it were mine I should only strive by hook or by crook to restore it to its rightful owners. Because he has done such things, am I to be cut off from gratitude, from affection, from lasting friendship to those who have nursed and sheltered me? I am not. When I leave these doors you may shut them against me if you will, but you cannot forbid my waiting and watching till they shall open again."

He spoke with a boyish impetuosity that swept Aline off her feet.

"My dear boy," she said, "why, I only wish that we might be friends. Don't you see that it is because we mustn't be friends that I try to keep our liking and intimacy from taking too strong a hold upon us."

"You are not likely to like me too much," he said bitterly. "The kin of the lamb do not love overmuch the wolf that devoured it."

"We could like you very well," said Aline simply, "but we must not."

He turned away his head disconsolately.

"I will take myself off as soon as I can, Miss Brandon," he said with a coldness which did not serve to hide his pain. "I dare say Dr. Rivers will let me go to-morrow. I have been a trouble to you too long."

All Aline's tender sympathies swung round to him sharply.

"Oh, no!" she said; "you will stay till the doctor thinks you are quite able to go, and that will not be to-morrow, or for many to-morrows."

"I shall go," he said obstinately, "unless you can treat me as you did up to the day before yesterday. Don't you see that I can't accept your goodness and endure your coldness. I should go, if it meant my death."

"There, there," said Aline soothingly. "I shall not be cold to you, and you must stay till you are quite well able to go. I don't suppose Castle Angry would be quite the best place for an invalid."

She said it with a deprecating smile.

"No," he answered seriously, "I don't think at all that I should get well there. But when I leave here it must be for Castle Angry all the same."

So it came that our precautions were set at nought. Aline had told the younger ones who our visitor was, but it had not seemed to impress them very much. We had no hereditary hatred in our veins; and the boys, who listened with delight to his spirited accounts of big football and cricket matches, of the life of a public school, and such things, pronounced him no end of a jolly good fellow, quite irrespective of the fact of his being a De Lacy. The little girls, too, usually so shy and strange, had made friends with him, and played interminable games of dominoes and chess beside his sofa, evening after evening.

As he grew stronger and was able to stay up later, his sofa grew to be, in a way, the centre of things in the big drawing-room. We could not very well be at one end and he at the other, and of course we all converged towards the fire, near which his sofa was drawn. There was no doubt at all that he had very attractive ways, gentle, well-bred, and gracious; and we all grew to like him very much indeed.

But there were no more of these readings of poetry. I took care of that. I noticed, too, that Esther seemed now to be the one he had least to say to, which pleased me well. After all, that look I had caught that day I read _Maud_ might have meant nothing, or only the strong admiration which Esther must awaken in the breast of anyone with a feeling for beauty. Daily she grew more beautiful. She seemed to glow in the shadowy corners which she always selected for herself, like a deep damask rose half-hidden in leaves. I seemed never to have understood my sister's beauty before.

At last Dr. Rivers pronounced our visitor fit to leave us. He had known for some time who the young fellow was, and having, like all the country-side, heard strange stories of Angry, was much pleased that we gave him the freedom of Brandon so long.

No word was sent to Sir Rupert of his heir's illness or return.

"He has not shown so much solicitude," said the boy, reddening, "that we need consider him in the matter, nor is he likely to find the joy of my return too great a shock."

The boys did not seem to understand at all that with their friend's going the pleasant friendship must come to an end. Aline postponed telling them so till he should be gone, and there was a sadness in hearing them make their plans for the future which should include him. At such times he would say nothing, only look his pitiful appeal at Aline, who would refuse to answer his eyes.

At the last he made a last appeal that we should not exclude him.

"You could only come by concealing it from Sir Rupert," she made answer. "Don't you see that we couldn't endure that?"

A spark of hope leaped into his eyes.

"But if my grandfather were willing?"

"You don't know him," said Aline, "or you would not think it possible."

He went off in the station fly one day, with his beautiful Red Rover following, led by Lanty M'Goldrick from the village. As we turned into the house after watching him till the last glimpse faded in the long line of the avenue, we felt as sad as if someone had died. Only the boys still thought they were to keep their friend.

Aline told them afterwards, and at first they were sulky and inclined to be rebellious. Presently they saw she was right, and came back to their own sunny selves.

"Why, after all," said Hugh hopefully, "the old duffer won't live for ever."

"Any night," added Donald, "he and James Gaskin might burn up old Angry and themselves together."

"Donald!" cried Aline, shocked.

"I mean, of course, after Harry had had time to get out," said the culprit innocently.

The twins didn't say anything; it wasn't their way; but I think they missed their friend very much. They went about for some days, a forlorn-looking little pair, with their hands clasped tighter than ever. They were not quite consoled till a day came that brought a beautiful box of games, and a pair of most ingenious sister-dolls, which could only be from Mr. De Lacy. Hugh got a new gun and Donald a fishing-rod on the same momentous day. They wanted to write and thank their friend, but Aline thought it better not, as she was not sure of the letter reaching the right hands. He had said he would expect no answer, in the brief note he had written to Aline from Angry, and which had ended: "Tell Miss Hilda and Miss Esther that I shall never forget them."

After that there was silence.

We often wondered how things were going with him, and if he were getting well in that gray old house that frowned ever blacker and blacker in the gorge of the mountain. But we had no means of knowing, and our lives gradually went back to their old uneventfulness.

I often laughed at myself about my fear as to Esther's heart. Why, she of the whole family missed young De Lacy least. She never, like the rest of us, wondered what he was doing, or if he had forgotten us. But this would not have set my mind at rest, only that the strange beauty which had come to her of late seemed to ripen and glow more, day by day. With her plainly it was no case of

Only my Love's away, I'd as lief the blue were gray.

In the spring I took a cold, and was for a time more or less kept to the house. Esther as usual took her walks abroad, and would bring me home primroses from the wood, or wild anemones, daffodils, and violets from the cloisters of the old abbey. She was everything that was sweet to me, as always, yet I noticed that she was less dependent on me than of old. In the old days, if I could not be with her she, too, kept the house. But I could not grudge her her walks, seeing how she came in from them full of life and vigour, and would lay her cold, fresh cheek to mine with such compassion for my house-bound state.

Then something happened that put Harry De Lacy for the time out of all our minds, for with us Brandons blood is thicker than water in a truer sense than it is of most families.

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