That Stick ...

Mr. Rollstone was Eden’s great solace.  They discovered that they had once been staying in the same country-house, and had a great number of common acquaintances in the upper-servant world, and they entirely agreed in their estimate of Mrs. Morton and Ida, whom Mr. Rollstone pronounced to be neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, though as for Miss Constance, she was a lady all over, and always had been, and there might have been hopes for Mr. Herbert, if only he could have got into the army.

To sit with Mr. Rollstone, whom the last winter’s rheumatics had left very infirm, was Eden’s chief afternoon employment, as she could not follow her charge’s wanderings on the beach, but had to leave him to the nursery-maid, Ellen.  The old butler wanted much to show ‘Miss Eden’ his daughter, who took advantage of Whit-Sunday and the Bank-holiday to run down and see her parents, though at the next quarter she was coming home for good, extremely sorry to leave her advantages in London, and the friends she had made there, but feeling that her parents needed her so much that she must pursue her employment at home.

They were all very anxious on that Whit-Sunday, and Rose carried with her something of Constance’s feeling, as with tears in her eyes she looked at the p. 213little fellow at the children’s service, standing by his nurse, with wide open, inquiring eyes, chiefly fixed upon Willie Lincoln in satisfaction whenever an answer proceeded from that object of his unrequited attachment.  With the young maiden’s love of revelling in supposed grief, Rose already pitied the fair-faced, unconscious child as fatherless, and weighted with heavy responsibilities.

Another pair of eyes looked at the boy, not with pity, but indignant impatience.

Perhaps even already that little pretender was the only obstacle between Herbert and the coronet that was his by right, between Ida herself and—

Ida had walked from the school to the church with Mr. Deyncourt, and he had talked so gently and pitifully of the family distress, and assumed so much grief on her part, that his sympathy made her heart throb; above all, when he told her that his two sisters were coming to stay with him, Mrs. Rollstone had contrived to make room for them, and they would show her, better than he could, some of the plans he wished to have carried out with the little children.

So he wished to introduce her to his sisters!  What did that mean?  If the Deyncourts were ever so high they could not sneer at Lord Northmoor’s sisters.

Then she thought of many a novel, and in real life, of what she believed respecting that lost lover of Miss Morton’s.  And later in the day Tom Brady lounged up to Northmoor Cottage, and leaning with one elbow on the window-sill, while the other arm held away the pipe he had just taken from his lips, p. 214he asked if they would give him a cup of tea, the whole harbour was so full of such beastly, staring cads that there was no peace there.  One ought to give such places a wide berth at Whitsuntide.

‘I wonder you did not,’ said Ida, as she hastened to compound the tea.

‘Forgot it,’ he lazily droned, ‘forgot it.  Attractions, you know,’ and, as she brought the cup to the window, with a lump of sugar in the tongs, ‘when sugar fingers are—’ and the speech ended in a demonstration at the fingers that made Ida laugh, blush, and say, ‘Oh, for shame, Mr. Brady!’

‘You had better come in, Mr. Brady,’ called Mrs. Morton.  ‘You can’t drink it comfortably there, and you’ll be upsetting it.  We are down in the dining-room to-day, because—’

The cause, necessary to her gentility, was lost, as Ida proceeded to let him in at the front door, and he presently deposited himself on the sofa, grumbling complacently at the bore of holidays, especially bank holidays.  His crew would have been ready to strike, he declared, if he had taken them out of harbour, or he would have asked the ladies to come on a cruise out of the way of it all.

‘Why, thank you very much, Mr. Brady, but, really in my poor brother, Lord Northmoor’s state, I don’t know that it would be etiquette.’

‘Ah, yes.  By the bye, how’s the governor?’

‘Very sad, strength failing.  I hardly expect to hear he is alive to-morrow,’ and Mrs. Morton’s handkerchief was raised.

‘Oh ay, sad enough, you know!  I say, will it make any difference to you?’

p. 215‘My poor, dear brother!  Well, it ought, you know.  Indeed it would if it had not been for that dear little boy.  My poor Herbert!’

‘It must have been an awful sell for him.’

‘Yes,’ said Ida, ‘and some people think there was something very odd about it all—the child being born out in the Dolomites, with nobody there!’

‘Don’t, Ida, I can’t have you talk so,’ protested her mother.

‘Supposititious, by all that’s lucky!  I should strangle him!’ and Mr. Brady put back his head and laughed a loud and hearty laugh, by no means elegant, but without much sound of truculent intentions.

p. 216CHAPTER XXXII

A SHOCK