The Lady of the Forest: A Story for Girls

“I don’t want to break any one’s heart,” said Rachel, turning pale. “What very queer things you say. I don’t want to break any one’s heart. I think I’ll go home now.”

“Not until you have promised me first, Miss Lovel – not until you have promised me true and faithful.”

“Oh, I’ll only tell Kitty and my aunties. I never care to talk to strangers about things. There’s a new little boy come to Avonsyde – a new little boy and his mother. Of course I won’t say anything to either of them, but I never keep secrets from Kitty – never!”

“Very well, miss; then my lady will have to go away. She is very tired and not strong, and she has just settled down in this little house, where she wants to rest and to be near – to be in the forest; and if you tell those aunts of yours and your little sister – if you tell anybody in all the wide world – she will have to go away again. We must pack up to night and we will be off in the morning. We’ll have to wander once more, and she’ll be sad and ill and lonely; but of course you won’t care.”

“What a cruel old woman you are!” said Rachel. “Of course I don’t want anybody to be sad and lonely. I don’t want to injure the forest lady, although I cannot make out why she should have to live so secret here. Is she a wicked lady and has she committed a crime?”

“Wicked?” said the old woman, her eyes flashing. “Ah, missy, that such words should drop from your lips, and about her! Are the angels in heaven wicked? Oh, my dear, good, brave lady! No, missy. She has to keep her secret, but it is because of a cruel sin and injustice done to her, not because of any wrong done by her. Well, good-night, miss. I’ll say no more. We must be off, we two, in the morning.”

“No, don’t go!” called out Rachel. “Of course I won’t tell. If she’s such a dear, good lady, I’ll respect her and love her and keep her secret; only I should like to see her and to know her name.”

“All in good time, my dear little missy. Thank God, you will be faithful to this good and wronged lady.”

“Yes, I’ll be very faithful,” said Rachel. “Not even to Kitty will I breathe one word. And now I must really go home.”

“God bless you, dear little miss – eh, but you’re a bonny child. And is the one you call Kitty as fair to look at?”

“As fair to look at?” laughed Rachel. “Why, I’m as brown as a nut and Kitty is dazzling. Kitty is pink and white, and if you only saw her hair! It’s like threads of gold.”

“And the little gentleman, dear? – you spoke of a little gentleman as well. Is he your brother, love?”

“My brother?” laughed Rachel. “I have no one but Kitty. I have a mother living somewhere – she’s lost, my mother is, and I’m going all round the world to look for her when I’m old enough; but I have no brother – I wish I had. Philip Lovel is a little new, strange boy who is going to be heir of Avonsyde. He came to-day with his mother. I don’t much like his mother. Now good-night, old woman. I’ll keep the good lady’s secret most faithfully.”

Rachel blew a kiss to the anxious-looking old servant, then ran gayly back to where she had left Surefoot. In the excitement of the last half-hour she had quite forgotten her withered bluebells. Mounting her pony, she galloped as fast as she could in the direction of Avonsyde. It was very late when she got back, but, strange to say, the old aunts were so much interested in Mrs. Lovel and in Mrs. Lovel’s boy that they forgot to scold her or to remark her absence. She longed intensely to tell Kitty all about the thrilling and romantic adventure she had just gone through, but she was a loyal child, and having once passed her word, nothing would induce her to break it. Kitty, too, was taken up with Philip Lovel, and Rachel, finding she was not wanted, ran up to her bedroom and lost herself in the charms of a fairy tale.

CHAPTER VI. – THE TOWER BEDROOM

Avonsyde was a very old property. The fair lands had been bestowed by William Rufus on a certain Rupert Lovel who was fortunate enough to earn the gratitude of this most tyrannical and capricious of monarchs. Rupert Lovel had laid the first stone of the present house and had lived there until his death. He was succeeded by many wild and lawless descendants. As time went on they added to the old house, and gained, whether wrongly or rightly no one could say, more of the forest lands as their own. Avonsyde was a large property in the olden days, and the old squires ruled those under them by what was considered at that period the only safe and wholesome rule – that of terror. They were a proud, self-confident, headstrong race, very sure of one thing – that whatever happened Avonsyde would never cease to be theirs. An old prophecy was handed down from father to son to this effect. It had been put into a couplet by a rhymer as great in his way as Thomas of border celebrity:

“Tyde what may betyde,Lovel shall dwell at Avonsyde.”

These words were taken as the motto of the house, and could be deciphered in very quaint lettering just over the arch which supported a certain portion of the tower. The tower was almost if not quite seven hundred years old, and was another source of great pride and interest to the family.

Miss Griselda and Miss Katharine could not have done little Philip Lovel a greater honor than when they arranged the tower bedroom for his reception. In their opinion, and in the opinion of every retainer of the family, they indeed showed respect to the child and the child’s claim when they got this gloomy apartment into order for him and his mother; but when Mrs. Lovel, a timid and nervous woman, saw the room, she scarcely appreciated the honor conferred upon her and hers.

Avonsyde was a house which represented many periods; each addition was a little more comfortable than its predecessor. For instance, the new wing, with the beautiful drawing-rooms and spacious library, was all that was luxurious; the cozy bedrooms where Rachel and Kitty slept, with their thick walls and mullioned windows and deep old-fashioned cupboards, were both cheerful and convenient; but in the days when the tower was built ladies did without many things which are now considered essential, and Mrs. Lovel had to confess to herself that she did not like her room. In the first place, the tower rooms were completely isolated from the rest of the house; they were entered by a door at one side of the broad hall; this door was of oak of immense thickness, and when it was shut no sound from the tower could possibly penetrate to the rest of the house. At the other side of the oak door was a winding stone staircase, very much worn and hollowed out by the steps of many generations. The stairs wound up and up in the fashion of a corkscrew; they had no rail and were very steep, and the person who ascended, if at all timid, was very glad to lay hold of a slack rope which was loosely run through iron rings at intervals in the wall.

After a great many of these steps had been climbed a very narrow stone landing was discovered; three or four steps had then to be gone down, and Mrs. Lovel found herself in an octagon-shaped room with a very low ceiling and very narrow windows. The furniture was not only old-fashioned, but shabby; the room was small; the bed was that monstrosity, a four-poster; the curtains of velvet were black and rusty with age and wear. In short, the one and only cheerful object which poor Mrs. Lovel found in the apartment was the little white bed in one corner which had been prepared for Philip’s reception.

“Dear, dear, what remarkably steep stairs; and what a small – I mean not a very large room! Are all the bedrooms of Avonsyde as small as this?” she continued, interrogating Newbolt, who, starched and prim, but with a comely fresh face, stood beside her.

“This is the tower bedroom, mem,” answered the servant in a thin voice. “The heir has always slept in this room, and the ladies has the two over. That has always been the fashion at Avonsyde – the heir has this room and the reigning ladies sleep overhead. This room is seven hundred years old, mem.”

Mrs. Lovel shivered.

“Very antiquated and interesting,” she began, “but isn’t it just a little cold and just a little gloomy? I thought the other part of the house so much more cheerful.”

Newbolt raised her eyebrows and gazed at Mrs. Lovel as if she were talking the rankest heresy.

“For them as don’t value the antique there’s rooms spacious and cheerful and abundantly furnished with modern vanities in the new part of the house,” she replied. “Miss Rachel and Miss Kitty, for instance; their bedroom isn’t built more than three hundred years – a big room enough and with a lot of sunlight, but terrible modern, and not to be made no ’count of at Avonsyde; and then there are two new bedrooms over the drawing-rooms, where we put strangers. Very large they are and quite flooded with sunlight; but of course for antiquity there are no rooms to be compared with this one and the two where the ladies sleep. I am sorry the room don’t take your fancy, mem. I suppose, not being of the blood of the family, you can’t appreciate it. Shall I speak to the ladies on the subject?”

“Oh! by no means, my good creature,” replied poor Mrs. Lovel in alarm. “The room of course is most interesting and wonderfully antiquated. I’ve never seen such a room. And do your ladies really sleep higher up than this? They must have wonderfully strong hearts to be able to mount any more of those steep – I mean curious stairs.”

Newbolt did not deign to make any comment with regard to the sound condition of Miss Griselda’s and Miss Katharine’s physical hearts. She favored the new-comer with a not-too-appreciative glance, and having arranged matters as comfortably as she could for her in the dismal chamber, left her to the peace and the solitude of a most solitary room.

The poor lady quite trembled when she found herself alone; the knowledge that the room was so old filled her with a kind of mysterious awe. After her experiences in the New World, she even considered the drawing-rooms at Avonsyde by no means to be despised on the score of youth. Those juvenile bedrooms of two hundred or three hundred years’ standing where Rachel and Kitty reposed were, in Mrs. Level’s opinion, hoary and weighted with age; but as to this tower-room, surely such an apartment should only be visited at noon on a sunny day and in the company of a large party!

“I’m glad the old ladies do sleep overhead,” she said to herself. “What truly awful attics theirs must be! I never saw such a terribly depressing room as this. I’m certain it is haunted; I’m convinced there must be a ghost here. If Philip were not sleeping here I should certainly die. Oh, dear! what a risk I am running for the sake of Philip. Much of this life would kill me! I find, too, that I am not very good at keeping in my feelings, and I’ll have to act – act all the time I am here, and pretend I’m just in raptures with everything, when I am not. That dreadful Newbolt saw through me about this room. Oh, dear! I am a bad actor. Well, at any rate I am a good mother to Philip; it’s a splendid chance for Philip. But if he speaks about that pain in his side we are lost! Poor Phil! these steep stairs are extremely bad for him.”

There was plenty of daylight at present, and Mrs. Lovel could move about her ancient chamber without any undue fear of being overtaken by the terrors of the night. She took off her traveling bonnet and mantle, arranged her hair afresh before a mirror which caused her to squint and distorted every feature, and finally, being quite certain that she could never lie down and rest alone on that bed, was about to descend the stone stairs and to return to the more cheerful part of the house, when gay, quick footsteps, accompanied by childish laughter, were heard ascending, and Philip, accompanied by Kitty, bounded without any ceremony into the apartment.

“Oh, mother, things are so delightful here,” began the little boy, “and Kitty fishes nearly as well as Rupert. And Kitty has got a pony and I’m to have one; Aunt Grizel says so – one of the forest ponies, mother. Do you know that the forest is full of ponies? and they are so rough and jolly. And there are squirrels in the forest – hundreds of squirrels – and all kinds of birds, and beetles and spiders, and ants and lizards! Mother, the forest is such a lovely place! Is this our bedroom, mother? What a jolly room! I say, wouldn’t Rupert like it just?”

“If you’re quick, Phil,” began Kitty – “if you’re very quick washing your hands and brushing your hair, we can go back through the armory – that’s the next oldest part to the tower. I steal into the armory sometimes in the dusk, for I do so hope some of the chain-armor will rattle. Do you believe in ghosts, Phil? I do and so does Rachel.”

“No, I’m not such a silly,” replied Phil. “Mother, dear, how white you are! Don’t you like our jolly, jolly bedroom? Oh! I do, and wouldn’t Rupert love to be here?”

Mrs. Lovel’s face had grown whiter and whiter.

“Phil,” she said, “I must speak to you alone. Kitty, your little cousin will meet you downstairs presently. Oh, Phil, my dear,” continued the poor lady when Kitty had succeeded in banging herself noisily and unwillingly out of the room – “Phil, why, why will you spoil everything?”

“Spoil everything, mother?”

“Yes; you have spoken of Rupert – you have spoken twice of Rupert. Oh, we had better go away again at once!”

“Dear Rupert!” said little Phil, with a sigh; “darling, brave Rupert! Mother, how I wish he was here!”

“You will spoil everything,” repeated the poor lady, wringing her hands in despair. “You know what Rupert is – so strong and manly and beautiful as a picture; and you know what the will says – that the strong one, whether he be eldest or youngest, shall be heir. Oh, Phil, if those old ladies know about Rupert we are lost!”

Phil had a most comical little face; a plain face decidedly – pale, with freckles, and a slightly upturned nose. To those who knew it well it had many charms. It was without doubt an expressive and speaking face; in the course of a few minutes it could look sad to pathos, or so brimful of mirth that to glance at it was to feel gay. The sad look now filled the beautiful brown eyes; the little mouth drooped; the boy went up and laid his head on his mother’s shoulder.

“Do you know,” he said, “I must say it, even though it hurts you. I want Rupert to have everything. I love Rupert very dearly, and I think it would be splendid for him to come here, and to own a lot of the wild ponies, and to fish in that funny little river which Kitty calls the Avon. Rupert would let me live with him perhaps, and maybe he’d give me a pony, and I could find squirrels and spiders and ants in the forest – oh! and caterpillars; I expect there are splendid specimens of caterpillars here. Mother, when my heart is full of Rupert how can I help speaking about him?”

Mrs. Lovel pressed her hand to her brow in a bewildered manner.

“We must go away then, Philip,” she said. “As you love Rupert so well, better even than your mother, we must go away. It was a pity you did not tell me something of this before now, for I have broken into my last – yes, my very last £20 to come here. We have not enough money to take us back to Australia and to Rupert; still, we must go away, for the old ladies will look upon us as impostors, and I could not bear that for anything in the world.”

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