The Lady of the Forest: A Story for Girls

“Somehow, Phil, I thought you would remember,” she said at last, turning to her little companion and speaking in a broken voice.

“Why, of course we all remembered,” said Phil. “We were all more sorry about you than I can say; and as to Rachel, she has been crying like anything. It seems a pity, Clementina, it really does, you know – ” And then he stopped.

“What seems a pity, Phil?”

“That you should be so obstinate. You know you were; and you were rude, too, for you should not have taken Rachel’s horse. It seems to me a great pity that people should try to pretend – everybody’s always trying to pretend; and what is the use of it? Now, if you had not tried to pretend that you could ride as well or better than Rachel, you wouldn’t have got into this trouble and we wouldn’t have been so terribly sorry. Where was the use of it, Clementina?” added Phil, gazing hard at the abashed and astonished young lady; “for nobody could expect you to ride as well as Rachel, who is a country girl and has been on horseback such a lot, you know.”

Phil delivered his lecture in the most innocent way, and Clementina received it with much humility, wondering all the time why she was not furiously angry; for surely this was the strangest way to speak to a girl who had been for three seasons under Captain Delacourt.

She made no reply to Phil’s harangue and rode on for some time without speaking.

Suddenly a little sigh from the boy, who kept so bravely at her side, reached her ears. She turned and looked at him. It was quite a new sensation for Clementina to observe any face critically except her own; but she did notice now the weariness round the lips and the way the slight little figure drooped forward.

“You’re tired, Phil,” she said. “You have tired yourself out to find me.”

“I am tired,” he replied. “We rode very fast, and my side aches, but it will be better by and by.”

“You can scarcely sit on your horse,” said Clementina in a tone of real feeling. “Could not your groom – Robert, I think, you call him – mount the horse and put you in front of him? He could put his arm round you and you would be nicely rested.”

“That’s a good thought, miss,” said Robert, with sudden heartiness. “And, to be sure, Master Philip do look but poorly. It’s wonderful what affliction does for them sort of characters,” he muttered under his breath as he complied with this suggestion.

When the little party got near home, Phil, who had been lying against Robert and looking more dead than alive, roused himself and whispered something to the groom. Robert nodded in reply and immediately after lifted the boy to the ground.

“I’m going to rest. Please, Clementina, don’t say I am tired,” he said; and then he disappeared down a little glade and was soon out of sight.

“Where is he going?” asked Clementina of Robert.

“To a little nest as he has made for hisself, miss, just where the trees grow thickest up there. He and me, we made it together, and it’s always dry and warm, and nobody knows of it but our two selves. He often and often goes there when he can’t bear up no longer. I beg your pardon, miss, but I expect I have no right to tell. You won’t mention what I have said to any of the family, miss?”

“No,” said Clementina; “but I feel very sorry for Phil, and I cannot understand why there should be any mystery made about his getting tired like other people.”

“Well, miss, you ask his lady mother. Perhaps she can tell you, for certain sure no one else can.”

Clementina went into the house, where she was received with much excitement and very considerable rejoicing. She presented a very sorry plight, her habit being absolutely coated with mud, her hair in disorder, and even her face bruised and discolored. But it is certain that Rachel had never admired her so much as when she came up to her and, coloring crimson, tried to take her hand.

“Phil said I was rude to you, Rachel, and I am sorry,” she muttered.

“Oh, never mind,” answered Rachel, whose own little face was quite swollen with crying. “I was so dreadfully, dreadfully unhappy, for I was afraid Ruby had killed you, Clementina.”

Clementina was now hurried away to her own room, where she had a hot bath and was put to bed, and where her mother fussed over her and grumbled bitterly at having ever been so silly as to come to such an outlandish part of the country as Avonsyde.

“I might have lost you, my precious,” she said to her daughter. “It was nothing short of madness my trusting you to those wild young Lovels.”

“Oh, mother, they aren’t a bit to blame, and I think they are rather nice, particularly Phil.”

“Yes, the boy seems a harmless, delicate little creature. I wonder if the old ladies will really make him their heir.”

“I hope they will, mother, for he is really very nice.”

In the course of the evening, as Clementina was lying on her pillows, thinking of a great many things and wondering if Phil was yet rested enough to leave his nest in the forest, there came a tap at her door, and to her surprise Phil’s mother entered. In some ways Mrs. Lovel bore a slight resemblance to Clementina; for she also was vain and self-conscious and she also was vastly taken up with self. Under these circumstances it was extremely natural that the girl and the woman should feel a strong antipathy the one to the other, and Clementina felt annoyed and the softened expression left her face as Mrs. Lovel took a chair by her bedside.

“How are you now, my dear – better, I hope?”

“Thank you, I am quite well,” answered Clementina.

“You had a wonderful escape. Ruby is not half broken in. No one attempts to ride him except Rachel.”

Clementina felt the old sullen feeling surging up in her heart.

“Such a horse should not be taken on a riding-party,” she said shortly. “I have had lessons from Captain Delacourt. I can manage almost any horse.”

“You can doubtless manage quiet horses,” said Mrs. Lovel. “Well, you have had a wonderful escape and ought to be thankful.”

“How is Phil? questioned Clementina after a pause.

“Phil? He is quite well, of course. He is in the armory with the other children.”

“He was not well when I saw him last. He looked deadly tired.”

“That was his color, my dear. He is a remarkably strong boy.”

Clementina gave a bitter little laugh.

“You must be very blind,” she said, “or perhaps you don’t wish to see. It was not just because he was pale that he could not keep his seat on horseback this afternoon. He looked almost as if he would die. You must be a very blind mother – very blind.”

Mrs. Level’s own face had turned white. She was about to make a hasty rejoinder, when the door was again opened and Miss Griselda and Miss Katharine came in.

“Not a word, my dear! I will explain to you another time – another time,” she whispered to the girl. And then she stole out of the room.

CHAPTER XXI. – WHAT THE HEIR OUGHT TO BE

A few days after these exciting events the Marmadukes went away. Unless a sense of relief, they left no particular impression behind them. The grown-up people had not made themselves interesting to the old ladies; the lady’s-maid and the parrot alike had disturbed Newbolt’s equanimity; and the children of Avonsyde had certainly not learned to love the Marmaduke children. Clementina had been humbled and improved by her accident, but even an improved Clementina could not help snubbing Rachel every hour of the day, and Rachel did not care to be snubbed. On the day they left Phil did remark, looking wistfully round him: “It seems rather lonely without the Marmadukes.” But no one else echoed the sentiment, and in a day or two these people, who were so important in their own eyes, were almost forgotten at Avonsyde.

On one person, however, this visit had made a permanent impression: that person was poor Mrs. Lovel. She was made terribly uneasy by Clementina’s words. If Clementina, an ignorant and decidedly selfish girl, could notice that Phil was not strong, could assure her, in that positive, unpleasant way she had, that Phil was very far from strong, surely Miss Griselda, who noticed him so closely and watched all he did and said with such solicitude, could not fail to observe this fact also. Poor Mrs. Lovel trembled and feared and wondered, now that the tankard was lost and now that Phil’s delicacy was becoming day by day more apparent, if there was any hope of that great passionate desire of hers being fulfilled.

Just at present, as far as Miss Griselda was concerned, she had no real cause for alarm.

Miss Griselda had quite made up her mind, and where she led Miss Katharine was sure to follow. Miss Griselda was certain that Phil was the heir. Slowly the conviction grew upon her that this little white-faced, fragile boy was indeed the lineal descendant of Rupert Lovel. She had looked so often at his face that she even imagined she saw a likeness to the dark-eyed, dark-browed, stern-looking man whose portrait hung in the picture-gallery. This disinherited Rupert had become more or less of a hero in Miss Griselda’s eyes. From her earliest years she had taken his part; from her earliest years she had despised that sickly younger line from which she herself had sprung. Like most women, Miss Griselda invested her long-dead hero with many imaginary charms. He was brave and great in soul. He was as strong in mind as he was in physique. When she began to see a likeness between Phil’s face and the face of her old-time hero, and when she began also to discover that the little boy was generous and brave, that he was one of those plucky little creatures who shrink from neither pain nor hardship, had Phil’s mother but known it, his cause was won. Miss Griselda began to love the boy. It was beginning to be delightful to her to feel that after she was dead and gone little Phil would have the old house and the lands, that he should reign as a worthy squire of Avonsyde. Already she began to drill the little boy with regard to his future duties, and often when he and she took walks together she spoke to him about what he was to do.

“All this portion of the forest belongs to us, Phil,” she said to him one day. “My father often talked of having a roadway made through it, but he never did so, nor will Katharine and I. We leave that as part of your work.”

“Would the poor people like it?” asked Phil, raising his eyes with their queer expression to her face. “That’s the principal thing to think about, isn’t it – if the poor people would like it?”

Miss Griselda frowned.

“I don’t agree with you,” she said. “The first and principal thing to consider is what is best for the lord of Avonsyde. A private road just through these lands would be a great acquisition, and therefore for that reason you will have to undertake the work by and by.”

Phil’s eyes still looked grave and anxious.

“Do you think, then – are you quite sure that I am really the heir, Aunt Griselda?” he said.

Miss Griselda smiled and patted his cheek.

“Well, my boy, you ought to know best,” she said. “Your mother assures me that you are.”

“Oh, yes – poor mother!” answered Phil. “Aunt Griselda,” he continued suddenly, “if you were picturing an heir to yourself, you wouldn’t think of a boy like me, would you?”

“I don’t know, Phil. I do picture you in that position very often. Your Aunt Katharine and I have had a weary search, but at last you have come, and I may say that, on the whole, I am satisfied. My dear boy, we have been employed for six years over this search, and sometimes I will own that I have almost despaired. Katharine never did; but then she is romantic and believes in the old rhyme.”

“What old rhyme?” asked Phil.

“Have you not heard it? It is part and parcel of our house and runs in different couplets, but the meaning is always the same:

“‘Come what may come, tyde what may tyde,Lovel shall dwell at Avonsyde.’”

“Is that really true?” asked Phil, his eyes shining. “I like the words very much. They sound like a kind of speech that the beautiful green lady of the forest would have made; but, Aunt Griselda, I must say it – I am sorry.”

“What about, dear?”

“That you are satisfied with me as an heir.”

“My dear little Phil, what a queer speech to make. Why should not I be satisfied with a nice, good little boy like you?”

“Oh, yes, you might like me for myself,” said Phil; “but as the heir – that is quite a different thing. I’d never picture myself as an heir – never!”

“What do you mean, Phil?”

“I know what I mean, Aunt Griselda, but it’s a secret, and I mustn’t say. I have a lovely picture in my mind of what the heir ought to be. Perhaps there is no harm in telling you what my picture is like. Oh, if you only could see him!”

“See whom, Philip?”

“My picture. He is tall and strong and very broad, and he has a look of Rachel, and his cheeks are brown, and his hair is black, and his arms are full of muscle, and his shoulders are perfectly square, and he holds himself up so erect, just as if he was drilled. He is strong beyond anybody else I know, and yet he is kind; he wouldn’t hurt even a fly. Oh, if you only knew him. He’s my picture of an heir!”

Phil’s face flushed and his lovely eyes shone. Aunt Griselda stooped down and kissed him.

“You are a queer boy,” she said. “You have described your ancestor, Rupert Lovel, to the life. Well, child, may you too have the brave and kindly soul. Phil, after the summer, when all is decided, you are to go to a preparatory school for Eton and then to Eton itself. All the men of our house have been educated there. Afterward I suppose you must go to Oxford. Your responsibilities will be great, little man, and you must be educated to take them up properly.”

“Mother will be pleased with all this,” said Phil; “only I do wish – yes, I can’t help saying it – that my picture was the heir. Oh, Aunt Grizel, do, do look at that lovely spider!”

“I believe the boy is more interested in those wretched spiders and caterpillars than he is in all the position and wealth which lies before him,” thought Miss Griselda.

Late on that same day she said to Miss Katharine:

“Phil this morning drew a perfect picture, both mental and physical, of our ancestor, Katharine.”

“Oh,” said Miss Katharine; “I suppose he was studying the portrait. Griselda, I see plainly that you mean to give the boy the place.”

“Provided his mother can prove his descent,” answered Miss Griselda in a gentle, satisfied tone. “But of that,” she added, “I have not, of course, the smallest doubt.”

“Does it occur to you, Griselda, to remember that on the 5th of May Rachel’s and Kitty’s mother comes here to claim her children?”

“If she is alive,” said Miss Griselda. “I have my doubts on that head. We have not had a line from her all these years.”

“You told her she was not to write.”

“Yes, but is it likely a woman of that class would keep her word?”

“Griselda, you will be shocked with me for saying so, but the young woman who came here on the day our father died was a lady.”

“Katharine! she served in a shop.”

“No matter, she was a lady; her word to her would be sacred. I don’t believe she is dead. I am sure she will come here on the 5th of May.”

CHAPTER XXII. – RIGHT IS RIGHT

When Rupert Lovel and his boy left the gloomy lodgings where Rachel’s and Kitty’s mother was spending a few days, they went home in absolute silence. The minds of both were so absorbed that they did not care to speak. Young Rupert was a precocious lad, old and manly beyond his years. Little Phil scarcely exaggerated when he drew glowing pictures of this fine lad. The boy was naturally brave, naturally strong, and all the circumstances of his bringing-up had fostered these qualities. His had been no easy, bread-and-butter existence. He had scarcely known poverty, for his father had been well off almost from his birth; but he had often come in contact with danger, and latterly sorrow had met him. He loved his mother passionately; even now he could scarcely speak of her without a perceptible faltering in his voice, without a dimness softening the light of his bright eagle eyes. Rupert at fifteen was in all respects some years older than an English boy of the same age. It would have struck any parent or guardian as rather ridiculous to send this active, clever, well-informed lad to school. The fact was, he had been to Nature’s school to some purpose, and had learned deeply from this most wonderful of all teachers.

When Rupert and his father reached the hotel in Jermyn Street where they were staying, the boy looked the man full in the face and broke the silence with these words:

“Now, father, is it worth it?”

“Is it worth what, my son?”

“You know, father. After hearing that lady talk I don’t want Avonsyde.”

The elder Lovel frowned. He was silent for a moment; then he laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Look me in the face, lad, and answer me a question.”

“Yes, father.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Why, of course. Can you doubt it?”

“Then go to bed and to sleep, and believe that nothing shall be done which in the slightest degree shall tarnish your honor. Go to bed, boy, and sleep peacefully, but just put one thought under your pillow. Right is right and wrong is wrong. It sometimes so happens, Rupert, that it is not the right and best thing to be simply magnanimous.”

Rupert smiled.

“I am quite certain you will decide as my mother would have liked best, sir,” he said, and then he took his candle and left the room.

The greater part of the night the elder Lovel sat up. Early the next morning he paid the family lawyers a visit.

“I have made up my mind, Mr. Baring,” he said to the younger of these gentlemen. “For the next few months I shall remain in England, but I shall not bring my son forward as an heir to the Avonsyde property until I can claim for him unbroken and direct descent. As I told you yesterday, there are two unexpected obstacles in my way. I have sustained a loss – I don’t know how. An old tankard and a parcel of valuable letters cannot be found. I am not leaving a stone unturned to recover them. When I can lay my hand on the tankard and when, even more important, I can produce the letters, I can show you by an unbroken chain of evidence that my boy is the eldest son of the eldest son in direct descent. I make no claim until I make all claim, Mr. Baring.”

“I have to-day had a letter from the old ladies at Avonsyde,” answered Mr. Baring. “They seem pleased with the boy who is at present claiming the property. From the tone of Miss Griselda’s letter, I should judge that if your boy does not put in his appearance the child who is at present at Avonsyde will be publicly recognized as the heir. Even a public recognition does not really interfere with your son if you can prove his title; but undoubtedly it will be best for all parties that you should make your claim before the other child is put into a false position.”

“When do you anticipate that the old ladies will absolutely decide?”

“They name a date – the 5th of May.”

“I think I can promise one thing: after the 5th of May neither Rupert nor I will interfere. We make claim before or on that date, not afterward. The fact is, we know something of the child who is now at Avonsyde.”

Mr. Lovel, after enjoining absolute secrecy on the lawyers, went his way, and that evening had a long interview with Mrs. Lovel.

“I fear,” he said in conclusion, “that in no case would your girls come into the place, except indeed under certain conditions.”

“What are they?” asked Mrs. Lovel.

“That we find neither tankard nor letters and in consequence do not make our claim, and that little Philip Lovel dies.”

“Is he so ill as that?”

“He is physically unsound. The best doctors in Melbourne have examined him and do not believe he will live to manhood. His mother comes of an unhealthy family, and the boy takes after her physically – not mentally, thank God!”

“Poor little Phil! He has a wonderfully sweet face.”

“He has the bravest nature I ever met. My boy and girls would almost die for Phil. The fact is, all this is most complicated and difficult, and much of the mischief would have been avoided if only that wretched sister-in-law of mine had been above-board.”

“Yes,” answered Mrs. Lovel; “but even her stealing a march on you does not give you back the tankard nor the letter.”

“True; and I don’t suppose even she could have stolen them. Well, Rachel, we must all hope for the best.”

“If there is a thing that worries me,” said Nancy White to herself – “if there is a thing that keeps coming and coming into my dreams and getting that fantastic and that queer in shape – one time being big enough to hold quarts and quarts of water, and another time so small that you’d think it would melt before your very eyes – it’s this wretched silver can. It’s in my mind all day long and it’s in my dreams all night long. There! I wonder if the bit of a thing is bright enough now.”

As Nancy spoke to herself she rubbed and polished and turned round and round and tenderly dusted the lost tankard of the house of Lovel until it really shone like a mirror.

“It takes a deal of trouble, and I’m sure it isn’t worth it,” she said to herself. “I just kept it more out of a bit of mischief than anything else in the beginning; but it just seems to me now as if I hated it, and yet I couldn’t part with it. I believe it’s a bit of a haunted thing, or it wouldn’t come into my dreams after this fashion.”

Nancy kept the tankard up in her bedroom. After giving it a last fond rub and looking at it queerly with an expression half of admiration, half of fear, she locked it up in a little cupboard in the wall and tripped downstairs to attend to her mistress’ comforts.

Mrs. Lovel kept no secrets from her old servant, and Nancy knew about her mistress’ adventures in London and her unexpected meeting with the friend of her early days, Rupert Lovel. Still, Nancy had a shrewd suspicion that not quite all was told her; she had a kind of idea that there was something in the background.

“It comes over me,” she said to herself – “it comes over me that unless I, Nancy White, am as sharp as sharp and as cunning as cunning, my missus and my young ladies will be done. What is it that the missus is keeping in the back of her head to make her look that dreamy, and that wistful, and that despairing, and yet that hopeful? My word, if I haven’t seen her smile as if she was almost glad once or twice. Poor dear! maybe she knows as that little delicate chap can’t be the heir; and as to the others – the old gentleman and the fine young lad from the other side of the earth – why, if they have a claim to make, why don’t they make it? And if they don’t make it, then, say I, it’s because they can’t. Well, now, anything is better than suspense, and I’ll question my missus on that very point straight away.”

Accordingly, when Nancy had arranged the tea-tray in the most tempting position and stirred the fire into the cheeriest blaze, she knelt down before it and began to make some crisp and delicious toast. Nancy knew that Mrs. Lovel had a weakness for the toast she made, and she also knew that such an employment was very favorable to confidential conversation.

“Well, ma’am,” she said suddenly, having coughed once or twice and gone through one or two other little maneuvers to attract attention – “well, ma’am, I wants to have my mind eased on a certain point. Is it, ma’am, or is it not the case that the old gentleman from Australia means to do you a mischief?”

“What do you mean, Nancy?” exclaimed Mrs. Lovel, laying down the lace which she was embroidering and gazing at her old servant in some astonishment. “The old gentleman from Australia? Why, Rupert Lovel cannot be more than forty. He is a man in his prime, splendidly strong; and as to his doing me a mischief, I believe, you silly old woman, that he is one of my best friends.”

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” snorted Nancy. “You’ll excuse me, ma’am, but I’d like to prove that by his actions. He means that young son of his to get possession of Avonsyde – don’t he, ma’am?”

“His son is the real heir, Nancy. Dear Nancy, I wish to say something. I must not be covetous for my little girls. If the real and lawful heir turns up I have not a word to say. Nay, more, I think if I can be glad on this subject I am glad that he should turn out to be the son of my early and oldest friend.”

“Oh, yes, ma’am, I’m not a bit surprised about you. Bother that toast, how it will burn! It’s just like you, ma’am, to give up everything for six blessed years, and to have your heart well-nigh broke and your poor eyes dimmed with crying, and then in the end, when the cup that you have been so longing for is almost to your lips, to give up everything again and to be glad into the bargain. That’s just like you, ma’am; but, you’ll excuse me, it ain’t like Nancy White, and if you can be glad in the prospect of seeing your children beggared, I can’t; so there!”