The Heir of Redclyffe

‘Ah, my fine fellow!’ muttered Dr. Mayerne to himself one day, when Philip and his uncle had left the room, just after a discourse of this kind, ‘I see you have not forgotten you are the next heir.’

Laura coloured with indignation, exclaimed, ‘Oh!’ then checked herself, as if such an aspersion was not worthy of her taking the trouble to refute it.

‘Ah! Miss Edmonstone, I did not know you were there.’

‘Yes, you were talking to yourself, just as if you were at home,’ said Charlotte, who was specially pert to the old doctor, because she knew herself to be a great pet. ‘You were telling some home truths to make Laura angry.’

‘Well, he would make a very good use of it if he had it,’ said the doctor.

‘Now you’ll make me angry,’ said Charlotte; ‘and you have not mended matters with Laura. She thinks nothing short of four-syllabled words good enough for Philip.’

‘Hush! nonsense, Charlotte!’ said Laura, much annoyed.

‘There Charlotte, she is avenging herself on you because she can’t scold me’ said the doctor, pretending to whisper.

‘Charlotte is only growing more wild than ever for want of mamma,’ said Laura, trying to laugh it off, but there was so much annoyance evident about her, that Dr. Mayerne said,—

‘Seriously, I must apologize for my unlucky soliloquy; not that I thought I was saying much harm, for I did not by any means say or think the Captain wished Sir Guy any ill, and few men who stood next in succession to such a property would be likely to forget it.’

‘Yes, but Philip is not like other men,’ said Charlotte, who, at fourteen, had caught much of her brother’s power of repartee, and could be quite as provoking, when unrestrained by any one whom she cared to obey.

Laura felt it was more for her dignity not to notice this, and replied, with an effort for a laugh,—

‘It must be your guilty conscience that sets you apologizing, for you said no harm, as you observe.’

‘Yes,’ said Dr. Mayerne, good-humouredly. ‘He does very well without it, and no doubt he would be one of the first men in the country if he had it; but it is in very good hands now, on the whole. I don’t think, even if the lad has been tempted into a little folly just now, that he can ever go very far wrong.’

‘No, indeed,’ said Charlotte; ‘but Charlie and I don’t believe he has done anything wrong.’

She spoke in a little surly decided tone, as if her opinion put an end to the matter, and Philip’s return closed the discussion.

Divided as the party were between up-stairs and down-stairs, and in the absence of Charles’s shrewd observation, Philip and Laura had more opportunity of intercourse than usual, and now that his departure would put an end to suspicion, they ventured on more openly seeking each other. It never could be the perfect freedom that they had enjoyed before the avowal of their sentiments, but they had many brief conversations, giving Laura feverish, but exquisite, delight at each renewal of his rare expressions of tenderness.

‘What are you going to do to-day?’ he asked, on the last morning before he was to leave Hollywell. ‘I must see you alone before I go.’

She looked down, and he kept his eyes fixed on her rather sternly, for he had never before made a clandestine appointment, and he did not like feeling ashamed of it. At last she said,—

‘I go to East-hill School this afternoon. I shall come away at half-past three.’

Mary Ross was still absent; her six nephews and nieces having taken advantage of her visit to have the measles, not like reasonable children, all at once, so as to be one trouble, but one after the other, so as to keep Aunt Mary with them as long as possible; and Mr. Ross did not know what would have become of the female department of his parish but for Laura, who worked at school-keeping indefatigably.

Laura had some difficulty in shaking off Charlotte’s company this afternoon, and was obliged to make the most of the probability of rain, and the dreadful dirt of the roads. Indeed, she represented it as so formidable, that Mrs. Edmonstone, who had hardly time to look out of window, much less to go out of doors, strongly advised her to stay at home herself; and Charlotte grew all the more eager for the fun. Luckily, however, for Laura, Dr. Mayerne came in, laughing at the reports of the weather; and as he was wanted to prescribe for a poor old man in an opposite direction, he took Charlotte with him to show the way, and she was much better pleased to have him for a companion than the grave Laura.

Philip, in the meantime, had walked all the way to Broadstone, timing his return exactly, that he might meet Laura as she came out of the school, and feel as if it had been by chance. It was a gray, misty November day, and the leaves of the elm-trees came floating round them, yellow and damp.

‘You have had a wet walk,’ said Laura, as they met.

‘It is not quite raining,’ he answered; and they proceeded for some minutes in silence, until he said,—‘It is time we should come to an understanding.’

She looked at him in alarm, and his voice was immediately gentler; indeed, at times it was almost inaudible from his strong emotion. ‘I believe that no affection has ever been stronger or truer than ours.’

‘Has been!’ repeated Laura, in a wondering, bewildered voice.

‘And is, if you are satisfied to leave things as they are.’

‘I must be, if you are.’

‘I will not say I am satisfied with what must be, as I am situated; but I felt it due to you to set the true state of the case before you. Few would venture their love as I do mine with you, bound in reality, though not formally, with no promise sought or given; yet I am not more assured that I stand here than I am that our love is for ever.’

‘I am sure it is!’ she repeated fervently. ‘O Philip, there never was a time I did not love you: and since that day on Ashen Down, I have loved you with my whole heart. I am sometimes afraid it has left no proper room for the rest, when I find how much more I think of your going away than of poor Charles.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you have understood me as none but you would have done, through coldness and reserve, apparently, even towards yourself, and when to others I have seemed grave and severe beyond my years. You have never doubted, you have recognized the warmth within; you have trusted your happiness to me, and it shall be safe in my keeping, for, Laura, it is all mine.’

‘There is only one thing,’ said Laura, timidly; ‘would it not be better if mamma knew?’

‘Laura, I have considered that, but remember you are not bound; I have never asked you to bind yourself. You might marry to-morrow, and I should have no right to complain. There is nothing to prevent you.’

She exclaimed, as if with pain.

‘True,’ he answered; ‘you could not, and that certainty suffices me. I ask no more without your parents’ consent; but it would be giving them and you useless distress and perplexity to ask it now. They would object to my poverty, and we should gain nothing; for I would never be so selfish as to wish to expose you to such a life as that of the wife of a poor officer; and an open engagement could not add to our confidence in each other. We must be content to wait for my promotion. By that time’—he smiled gravely—‘our attachment will have lasted so many years as to give it a claim to respect.’

‘It is no new thing.’

‘No newer than our lives; but remember, my Laura, that you are but twenty.’

‘You have made me feel much older,’ sighed Laura, ‘not that I would be a thoughtless child again. That cannot last long, not even for poor little Amy’

‘No one would wish to part with the deeper feelings of elder years to regain the carelessness of childhood, even to be exempted from the suffering that has brought them.’

‘No, indeed.’

‘For instance, these two years have scarcely been a time of great happiness to you.’

‘Sometimes,’ whispered Laura, ‘sometimes beyond all words, but often dreary and oppressive.’

‘Heaven knows how unwillingly I have rendered it so. Rather than dim the brightness of your life, I would have repressed my own sentiments for ever.’

‘But, then, where would have been my brightness?’

‘I would, I say, but for a peril to you. I see my fears were unfounded. You were safe; but in my desire to guard you from what has come on poor Amy, my feelings, though not wont to overpower me, carried me further than I intended.’

‘Did they?’

‘Do not suppose I regret it. No, no, Laura; those were the most precious moments in my life, when I drew from you those words and looks which have been blessed in remembrance ever since; and doubly, knowing, as I do, that you also prize that day.’

‘Yes—yes;—’

‘In the midst of much that was adverse, and with a necessity for a trust and self-control of which scarce a woman but yourself would have been capable, you have endured nobly—’

‘I could bear anything, if you were not going so far away,’

‘You will bear that too, Laura, and bravely. It will not be for ever.’

‘How long do you think?’

‘I cannot tell. Several years may pass before I have my promotion. It may be that I shall not see that cheek in its fresh bloom again, but I shall find the same Laura that I left, the same in love, and strength, and trust.’

‘Ah; I shall grow faded and gray, and you will be a sun-burnt old soldier,’ said Laura, smiling, and looking, half sadly, half proudly, up to his noble features; ‘but hearts don’t change like faces!’

After they came near the house, they walked up and down the lane for a long time, for Philip avoided a less public path, in order to keep up his delusion that he was doing nothing in an underhand way. It grew dark, and the fog thickened, straightening Laura’s auburn ringlets, and hanging in dew-drops on Philip’s rough coat, but little recked they; it was such an hour as they had never enjoyed before. Philip had never so laid himself open, or assured her so earnestly of the force of his affection; and her thrills of ecstasy overcame the desolate expectation of his departure, and made her sensible of strength to bear seven, ten, twenty years of loneliness and apparent neglect. She knew him, and he would never fail her.

Yet, when at last they went in-doors, and Amy followed her to her room, wondering to find her so wet, and so late, who could have seen the two sisters without reading greater peace and serenity in the face of the younger.

Philip felt an elder brother’s interest for poor little Amy. He did not see much of her; but he compassionated her as a victim to her mother’s imprudence, hoping she would soon be weaned from her attachment. He thought her a good, patient little thing, so soft and gentle as probably not to have the strength and depth that would make the love incurable; and the better he liked her, the more unfit he thought her for Guy. It would have been uniting a dove and a tiger; and his only fear was, that when he was no longer at hand, Mr. Edmonstone’s weak good-nature might be prevailed on to sacrifice her. He did his best for her protection, by making his uncle express a resolution never to admit Guy into his family again, unless the accusation of gambling was completely disproved.

The last morning came, and Philip went to take leave of Charles. Poor Charles was feebler by this time, and too much subdued by pain and languor to receive him as at first, but the spirit was the same; and when Philip wished him good-bye, saying he hoped soon to hear he was better, he returned for answer,

‘Good-bye, Philip, I hope soon to hear you are better. I had rather have my hip than your mind.’

He was in no condition to be answered, and Philip repeated his good-bye, little thinking how they were to meet again.

The others were assembled in the hall. His aunt’s eyes were full of tears, for she loved him dearly, her brother’s only son, early left motherless, whom she had regarded like her own child, and who had so nobly fulfilled all the fondest hopes. All his overbearing ways and uncalled-for interference were forgotten, and her voice gave way as she embraced him, saying,

‘God bless you, Philip, wherever you may be. We shall miss you very much!’

Little Amy’s hand was put into his, and he squeezed it kindly; but she could hardly speak her ‘good-bye,’ for the tears that came, because she was grieved not to feel more sorry that her highly-esteemed cousin, so kind and condescending to her, was going away for so very long a time.

‘Good-bye, Philip,’ said Charlotte; ‘I shall be quite grown up by the time you come home.’

‘Don’t make such uncivil auguries, Puss,’ said her father; but Philip heard her not, for he was holding Laura’s hand in a grasp that seemed as if it never would unclose.

CHAPTER 21

     I will sing, for I am sad,     For many my misdeeds;     It is my sadness makes me glad,     For love for sorrow pleads.—WILLIAMS.

After his last interview with Philip, Guy returned to his rooms to force himself into occupation till his cousin should come to acknowledge that here, at least, there was nothing amiss. He trusted that when it was proved all was right in this quarter, the prejudice with regard to the other might be diminished, though his hopes were lower since he had found out the real grounds of the accusation, reflecting that he should never be able to explain without betraying his uncle.

He waited in vain. The hour passed at which Philip’s coming was possible; Guy was disappointed, but looked for a letter; but post after post failed to bring him one. Perhaps Philip would write from Hollywell, or else Mr. Edmonstone would write, or at least he was sure that Charles would write—Charles, whose confidence and sympathy, expressed in almost daily letters, had been such a comfort. But not a line came. He reviewed in memory his last letter to Charles, wondering whether it could have offended him; but it did not seem possible; he thought over all that Philip could have learnt in his visit, to see if it could by any means have been turned to his disadvantage. But he knew he had done nothing to which blame could be attached; he had never infringed the rules of college discipline; and though still backward, and unlikely to distinguish himself, he believed that was the worst likely to have been said of him. He only wished his true character was as good as what would be reported of him.

As he thought and wondered, he grew more and more restless and unhappy. He could imagine no reason for the silence, unless Mr. Edmonstone had absolutely forbidden any intercourse, and it did not seem probable that he would issue any commands in a manner to bind a grown-up son, more especially as there had been no attempt at communication with Amy. It was terrible thus, without warning, to be cut off from her, and all besides that he loved. As long as Charles wrote, he fancied her sitting by, perhaps sealing the letter, and he could even tell by the kind of paper and envelope, whether they were sitting in the dressing-room or down-stairs; but now there was nothing, no assurance of sympathy, no word of kindness; they might all have given him up; those unhappy words were like a barrier, cutting him off for ever from the happiness of which he had once had a glimpse. Was the Redclyffe doom of sin and sorrow really closing in upon him?

If it had not been for chapel and study, he hardly knew how he should have got through that term; but as the end of it approached, a feverish impatience seized on him whenever the post came in, for a letter, if only to tell him not to come to Hollywell. None came, and he saw nothing for it but to go to Redclyffe; and if he dreaded seeing it in its altered state when his spirits were high and unbroken, how did he shrink from it now! He did, however, make up his mind, for he felt that his reluctance almost wronged his own beloved home. Harry Graham wanted to persuade him to come and spend Christmas at his home, with his lively family, but Guy felt as if gaiety was not for him, even if he could enjoy it. He did not wish to drown his present feelings, and steadily, though gratefully, refused this as well as one or two other friendly invitations.

After lingering in vain till the last day of term, he wrote to desire that his own room and the library might be made ready for him, and that ‘something’ might be sent to meet him at Moorworth.

Railroads had come a step nearer, even to his remote corner of the world, in the course of the last three years; but there was still thirty miles of coach beyond, and these lay through a part of the country he had never seen before. It was for the most part bleak, dreary moor, such as, under the cold gray wintry sky, presented nothing to rouse him from his musings on the welcome he might have been at that very moment receiving at Hollywell.

A sudden, dip in the high ground made it necessary for the coach to put on the drag, and thus it slowly entered a village, which attracted attention from its wretched appearance. The cottages, of the rough stone of the country, were little better than hovels; slates were torn off, windows broken. Wild-looking uncombed women, in garments of universal dirt colour, stood at the doors; ragged children ran and shrieked after the coach, the church had a hole in the roof, and stood tottering in spite of rude repairs; the churchyard was trodden down by cattle, and the whole place only resembled the pictures of Irish dilapidation.

‘What miserable place is this?’ asked a passenger. ‘Yes, that’s what all gentlemen ask,’ replied the coachman; ‘and well you may. There’s not a more noted place for thieves and vagabonds. They call it Coombe Prior.’

Guy well knew the name, though he had never been there. It was a distant offset of his own property, and a horrible sense of responsibility for all the crime and misery there came over him.

‘Is there no one to look; after it?’ continued the traveller. ‘No squire, no clergyman?’

‘A fox-hunting parson,’ answered the coachman; ‘who lives half-a-dozen miles off, and gallops over for the service.’

Guy knew that the last presentation had been sold in the days of his grandfather’s extravagance, and beheld another effect of ancestral sin.

‘Do you know who is the owner of the place?’

‘Yes, sir; ‘tis Sir Guy Morville. You have heard tell of the old Sir Guy Morville, for he made a deal of noise in the world.’

‘What! The noted—’

‘I ought not to allow you to finish your sentence,’ said Guy, very courteously, ‘without telling you that I am his grandson.’

‘I beg your pardon!’ exclaimed the traveller.

‘Nay,’ said Guy, with a smile; ‘I only thought it was fair to tell you.’

‘Sir Guy himself!’ said the coachman, turning round, and touching his hat, anxious to do the honours of his coach. ‘I have not seen you on this road before, sir, for I never forget a face; I hope you’ll often be this way.’

After a few more civilities, Guy was at liberty to attend to the fresh influx of sad musings on thoughtless waste affecting not only the destiny of the individual himself, but whole generations besides. How many souls might it not have ruined? ‘These sheep, what had they done!’ His grandfather had repented, but who was to preach repentance unto these? He did not wonder now that his own hopes of happiness had been blighted; he only marvelled that a bright present or future had ever been his—

        While souls were wandering far and wide,        And curses swarmed on every side.

The traveller was, meanwhile, observing the heir of Redclyffe, possessor of wealth and wide lands. Little did he guess how that bright-eyed youth looked upon his riches.

Miles were passed in one long melancholy musing, till Guy was roused by the sight of familiar scenes, and found himself rattling over the stones of the little borough of Moorworth, with the gray, large-windowed, old-fashioned houses, on each side, looking at him with friendly eyes. There, behind those limes cut out in arches, was the commercial school, where he had spent many an hour in construing with patient Mr. Potts; and though he had now a juster appreciation of his old master’s erudition, which he had once thought so vast, he recollected with veneration his long and patient submission to an irksome, uncongenial life. Rumbling on, the coach was in the square market-place, the odd-looking octagon market-house in the middle, and the inn—the respectable old ‘George’—with its long rank of stables and out-buildings forming one side. It was at this inn that Guy had been born, and the mistress having been the first person who had him in her arms, considered herself privileged to have a great affection for him, and had delighted in the greetings he always exchanged with her when he put up his pony at her stable, and went to his tutor.

There was a certainty of welcome here that cheered him, as he swung himself from the roof of the coach, lifted Bustle down, and called out to the barmaid that he hoped Mrs. Lavers was well.

The next moment Mrs. Lavers was at the door herself, with her broad, good-humoured face, close cap, bright shawl, and black gown, just as Guy always recollected, and might, if he could, have recollected, when he was born. If she had any more guests she neither saw nor cared for them; her welcome was all for him; and he could not but smile and look cheerful, if only that he might not disappoint her, feeling, in very truth, cheered and gratified by her cordiality. If he was in a hurry, he would not show it; and he allowed her to seat him in her own peculiar abode, behind the glass-cases of tongue and cold chicken, told her he came from Oxford, admired her good fire, and warmed his hands over it, before he even asked if the ‘something’ had arrived which was to take him home. It was coming to the door at the moment, and proved to be Mr. Markham’s tall, high-wheeled gig, drawn by the old white-faced chestnut, and driven by Markham himself—a short, sturdy, brown-red, honest-faced old man, with frosted hair and whiskers, an air more of a yeoman than of a lawyer; and though not precisely gentlemanlike, yet not ungentlemanlike, as there was no pretension about him.

Guy darted out to meet him, and was warmly shaken by the hand, though the meeting was gruff.

‘So, Sir Guy! how d’ye do? I wonder what brings you here on such short notice? Good morning, Mrs. Lavers. Bad roads this winter.’

‘Good morning, Mr. Markham. It is a treat, indeed, to have Sir Guy here once more; so grown, too.’

‘Grown—hum!’ said Markham, surveying him; ‘I don’t see it. He’ll never be as tall as his father. Have you got your things, Sir Guy? Ay, that’s the way,—care for nothing but the dog. Gone on by the coach, most likely.’

They might have been, for aught Guy knew to the contrary, but Boots had been more attentive, and they were right. Mrs. Lavers begged he would walk in, and warm himself; but Markham answered,—

‘What do you say, Sir Guy? The road is shocking, and it will be as dark as a pit by the time we get home.’

‘Very well; we won’t keep old Whiteface standing,’ said Guy. ‘Good-bye, Mrs. Lavers thank you. I shall see you again before long.’

Before Markham had finished a short private growl on the shocking state of the Moorworth pavement, and a protest that somebody should be called over the coals, Guy began,—’

‘What a horrible place Coombe Prior is!’

‘I only know I wish you had more such tenants as Todd,’ was Markham’s answer. ‘Pays his rent to a day, and improves his land.’

‘But what sort of man is he?’

‘A capital farmer. A regular screw, I believe; but that is no concern of mine.’

‘There are all the cottages tumbling down.’

‘Ay? Are they? I shouldn’t wonder, for they are all in his lease; and he would not lay out an unproductive farthing. And a precious bad lot they are there, too! There were actually three of them poaching in Cliffstone hanger this autumn; but we have them in jail. A pretty pass of impudence to be coming that distance to poach.’

Guy used to be kindled into great wrath by the most distant hint of poachers; but now he cared for men, not for game; and instead of asking, as Markham expected, the particulars of their apprehension, continued—

‘The clergyman is that Halroyd, is he not?’

‘Yes; every one knows what he is. I declare it went against me to take his offer for the living; but it could not be helped. Money must be had; but there! least said, soonest mended.’

‘We must mend it,’ said Guy, so decidedly, that Markham looked at him with surprise.

‘I don’t see what’s to be done till Halroyd dies; and then you may give the living to whom you please. He lives so hard he can’t last long, that is one comfort.’