The Three Brides

“Miles is far removed from the conventional sailor.”

“Then it is reduced to the grave Raymond.”

“I wish I had betrayed nothing.”

“Now you may as well proceed to betray the rest, instead of leaving me to exercise my fancy.”

“It is no secret, only such things are best not brought up again.  Camilla Vivian was poor Raymond’s grande passion, and you may imagine what a grief that was to my mother, especially as the poor brother was then living—one of the most fascinating, dangerous men I ever saw; and the whole tone of the place was ultra gay and thoughtless, the most reckless extravagance.  However, he was set upon it, and my mother was forced to consent to the engagement.  She seemed equally devoted to him, till she met Lord Tyrrell at some country house, and then a quarrel was picked, either by her mother or herself, about my mother retaining the headship of her own house.  It was a palpable excuse, but it served to break the affair off, and Raymond was cruelly cut up.  My mother made herself everything to him from that moment, gave up all her former habits to be with him, sent the little boys to school, and fairly dragged him through the trouble!”

“How long ago was it?”

“Ten years—yes, ten years.  So far as ceasing to care a straw for a heartless woman like that, he has got over it, no doubt; but it has made a graver man of him for life, and I doubt whether, but for my mother’s accident, he ever would have married.”

“Did you marry for your mother’s sake, Julius, or only tell her so?”

“For shame, my Lady Mischief!”

“And do you think the fair Camilla returned with plans that she finds disconcerted?”

“How can I tell?  I have not seen her since I was a lad of eighteen.—Ah! how d’ye do, Betty?” in a tone of relief; “you’ve not seen my wife.”

This was the first of a long series of introductions.  Compton Poynsett was a straggling village, with the church, schools, and Rectory, ten minutes’ walk from the park gates.  It had not been neglected, so that Julius had not the doubtful satisfaction of coming like a missionary or reformer.  The church, though not exactly as with his present lights he would have made it, was in respectable order, and contained hardly anything obnoxious to his taste; the schools were well built, properly officered, and the children under such discipline that Rosamond declared she could no more meddle with them than with her father’s regiment.

The Rectory was at that moment level with the ground, and Julius explaining the plans, when up came the senior curate.  Mr. Bindon, whom she, as well as Julius, greeted as an old friend, was the typical modern priest, full of his work, and caring for nothing besides, except a Swiss mountain once a year; a slight, spare, small, sallow man, but with an enormous power of untiring energy.

Scarcely had Rosamond shaken hands with him, standing where her drawing-room rug was to be in future days, when a merry whistle came near, and over the wall from the churchyard leapt first a black retriever, secondly a Skye terrier, thirdly a bull ditto, fourthly a young man, or rather an enormous boy, who for a moment stood amazed and disconcerted at the unexpectedly worshipful society into which he had jumped!

“Ha!  Herbert! is that you?” laughed Julius.

“I beg your pardon!” he breathlessly exclaimed.  “I was just taking the short cut!  I had no idea—Here, Mungo, you ruffian!” as the Skye was investigating Lady Rosamond’s boot.

“Oh, I like him of all things!  I am glad to welcome you to our future house!” as she held out her hand to the Reverend Herbert Bowater, the junior curate, a deacon of a fortnight’s standing, whose round open happy blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, merry lips, and curly light hair, did not seem in keeping with the rigidly straight collar and waistcoat, and the long black coat, at present plentifully streaked with green tree-moss, while his boots and trousers looked as if they had partaken of the mud-bath which his dogs had evidently been wallowing in.

“Off! off!” were his words, as he shook hands with his rectoress.  “Get away, Rollo!” with an energetic shove of the foot to the big dog, who was about to shake his dripping coat for the ladies’ special benefit.  “I saw you arrive last evening,” he said, in the conversational tone of a gentlemanly school-boy; “didn’t you find it very cold?”

“Not very.  I did not see you, though.”

“He was organizing the cheers,” said Mr. Bindon.  “You shone in that, Bowater.  They kept such good time.”

“You were very good to cheer us at all,” said Julius, “coming in the wake of the Squire as we did.”

“The best of it was,” said the junior, “that Charlie was so awfully afraid that he and poor Miles’s wife would be taken for the Squire, that he dashed in on his way to warn me to choke them off.  If she hadn’t been ill, I must have set the boys on for a lark!  How is she, though?” he asked in a really kind tone.

“She looks very ill, poor thing,” said Julius.

Here the bull terrier became assiduous in his attentions to Rosamond; and between his master’s calls and apologies, and her caresses and excuses, not much more was heard, till Julius asked with mock gravity, “And are these all you’ve brought over, Herbert?”

“Yes, all; I’d half a mind to bring the two greyhounds, but my father thought they would get into trouble in the preserves, and there isn’t room at Mrs. Hornblower’s place,” he answered, with apologetic simplicity.

“What a pity Durham has been reduced!” said Mr. Bindon, dryly.  “It would have been the right preferment for Bowater.  The Bishop was obliged by statute to keep a pack of hounds.”

“But, sir,” expostulated the deacon, turning to the Rector, colouring all over his honest rosy face, “you don’t object!  You know, of course, I’ve given up sport,” he added ruefully; “but only just as companions!—Ain’t you, Rollo?” he added, almost with tears in his eyes, and a hand on the smooth black head, belonging to such a wise benignant face, that Rosamond was tempted to pronounce the dog the more clerical looking of the two.

“You are very welcome,” said Julius, laughing, “provided you can manage with the old women’s cats.  I should find such companions rather awkward in pastoral visits.”

“I’ll teach them, sir!  You may depend on it!  We did have a little flare-up yesterday, but I showed them the sense of it.  You might teach those dogs anything!—Ha! what then, Tartar!  Halloo, Mungo!  Rats, rats, rats!”

A prodigious scratching and snorting was audible in what had been a cellar of the quondam Rectory; and Rollo, becoming excited, dashed up to the scene of action, with a deep bass war-cry, while, to Rosamond’s great amusement, “rats” was no less a peal to Rector and senior; and for the next quarter of an hour the three clergymen moved bricks, poked with their sticks, and cheered on the chase till the church clock struck one, the masons began to return from dinner, and the sounds of the bell at the Hall recalled the party to order.

“There, Rose!  Our first day!” said Julius, aghast.

“You’d better come to lunch at my rooms,” said the young curate, eagerly.  “Do!  Mother has brought the jolliest hamper!  Game-pie, and preserved magnum-bonums, and pears off the old jargonelle.—Come, Lady Rosamond, do.—Come along, Bindon!  There’s such a dish of damson-cheese!  Do!”

That “do,” between insinuation and heartiness, was so boyish, that it was quite irresistible to the lady, who consented eagerly, while Julius wrote a word or two on a card, which he despatched to the Hall by the first child he encountered.  In a few minutes they reached the nice clean bay-windowed room over the village shop, comically like an undergraduate’s, in spite of the mother’s and sister’s recent touches.

There ensued a resolute quieting of the dogs, and a vigorous exertion of hospitality, necessitating some striding up and down stairs, and much shouting to Mrs. Hornblower and her little niece, who rejoiced in the peculiar name of Dilemma; while Rosamond petted Tartar upon her lap, and the two elder clergymen, each with an elbow against the window-frame and a knee on the seat, held council, based on the Rector’s old knowledge of the territory and the curate’s recent observations during his five weeks’ sojourn.

The plans to be put in force next week were arranged during the meal, and the junior observed that he would walk home to-night and back on Saturday evening, since after that he should be tied pretty fast.

And he started with Julius and Rosamond on their further progress, soon, however, tumbling over another stone wall with all his dogs, and being only heard hallooing to them as they yelped after the larks.

“That is a delicious boy!” said Rosamond, laughing merrily.  “A nice fellow—but we mustn’t make it a custom to be always going in to partake of his hampers, or we shall prey inordinately on Mrs. Bowater’s preserves.”

“He was just like the hero of

“Oh, I have a plum-cake,And a rare feast I’ll make.”

I do like a boy with a sweet tooth!”

“Like him!  Of course I do.  The Bowaters are like one’s own kindred!  I only hope I shall not spoil him.”

“Hasn’t his mother done that for you?”

“I wish he had spent a year or two at Cuddesdon!  I ought to have seen him before consenting to give him a title at once, but his father and Jenny wished it so much.  Ah! come in here.  Bindon said Lucy Martin was a case for a lady.”

Rosamond’s hearty good-nature was much more at ease among ailing old women than prim school-children, and she gave great satisfaction in the cottages.

Julius did not of course come as a stranger, and had a general impression as to names and families; but he had been absent, except on short visits, for five years, so that Rosamond declared that this was a staple of his conversation: “Then it was Tom Deane—no, it was John Deane that married Blake’s son—no, it was Blake’s daughter that died who is living in the next house.”

They finished with a long and miry lane, lying along the valley, and leading to the cottages of a little clan, the chief of whom seemed to be a large-boned lively-eyed old dame, who, after minute inquiries after “the Lady Poynsett,” went on, “And be it true, Master Julius, as that young gentleman of Squire Bowater’s is one of your passons?”

Julius admitted the fact.

“And be ye going to put he up in the pulpit to preach to we?  ’Pon my word of honour, says I to Sally when her telled I, we shall have little Dick out of the infant-school next!”

“We’re all young, Betty!  Can’t you put up with any one that is not older than yourself!  I’m afraid he would hardly be able to get up the pulpit stair.”

The Rector’s reply delighted Betty; but she returned to the charge.  “No, no, sir, I be coming to hear ye next Sunday.  Sally have turned my black bonnet a purpose.  It be one of the Lady Poynsett’s, as her gave I when my old gentleman was took two years after the Squire—when bonnets was bonnets, you know, ma’am.  Now tell me true, be ye to preach morning or arternoon, sir?”

“In the morning, I hope, Betty.”

“Then I’ll be there, Master Julius, to the third seat from the front; but it ain’t becoming for a woman of my age, seventy-nine come Christmas, to sit under a slip of a lad as hasn’t got the taste of the birch off his back.”

“That’s too bad, Betty,” broke in Rosamond, speaking out of conviction.  “Mr. Bowater isn’t so young as he looks, and he was too good a boy ever to need the birch.”

“All the wuss for he,” retorted the undaunted Betty.  “Spare the rod, and spile the child.”

The village wit was left triumphant, and Julius proposed to return by a cross-road leading into the plantations.  Suddenly a scud of rain mixed with whirling yellow leaves sent them hurrying into a cart-shed, where, with a sudden start, they found themselves rushing in on some one.  Who was it?  A girl—a young lady.  That was evident, as Rosamond panted out, “I beg your pardon!” and the next moment there was the exclamation, “Mr. Julius Charnock!  You don’t remember me?  Eleonora Vivian!”

“Miss Vivian! you have the advantage of me,” said Julius, a little stiffly.  “Let me introduce my wife.”

The hands met, and Rosamond perceived in the failing light a very fine-looking maiden, with a superbly carried head and neck, simply dressed in gray cloth.  “Are you sheltering here, or are you sketching?” she asked, seeing some paper and drawing materials.

“I was giving a lesson.  See,” exhibiting some bold outlines on large paper.  “Does not my pupil do me credit?”

“Very spirited,” said Rosamond.  “Where is she?”

“He is gone to fetch me his grandmother’s umbrella.  He is the little Gurth of these parts.”

“Of whom you are making a Giotto?” asked Julius, thawing a little.

“Exactly; I found him drawing on a barn-door with such zeal and spirit, that I could not help offering him some lessons.  Only see, does he not get on?  I wish I could get him to the school of design.”

“May I ask what becomes of his pigs?” demanded Julius.

“Don’t you hear?” as sundry grunts and squeals of those eminently conversational animals were audible through the walls.  “They are driven home to this rick-yard, so here I meet the boy.”

“Who is he?” asked the Rector.

“I only know that he answers to the name of Joe.  And here he comes,” as a boy about ten years old came lumbering up in big boots, with a heavy plaid shawl on one arm, and an immense green umbrella in the other.

“Thank you, Joe.  Make your bow to the lady and gentleman.”

This was a pull of the flaxen forelock; for Joe was a slender, pretty, fair boy, of that delicately-complexioned English type which is not roughened till after many years of exposure.

“That’s right, my man,” said Julius, kindly.  “What is your name?”

“Please, sir, Joshua Reynolds.”

“Instinct,” whispered Rosamond.

“Or influence of a name,” returned Miss Vivian.

“Are you one of Dan Reynolds’s boys, or Tim’s?” proceeded “No, I bides with granny.”

Julius made no further attempt at disentangling the pedigree but inquired about his employments.  Did he go to school?

“When there ain’t nothing to be done.”

“And what can be done by such a mite?” asked Rosamond.

“Tell the lady,” said the Rector; “what work can you do?”

“Bird-starving.”

“Well!”

“And stoon-picking, and cow-herding, and odd jobs up at Farmer Light’s; but they won’t take I on for a carter-boy not yet ’cause I bean’t not so lusty as some on ’em.”

“Have you learnt to read?”

“Oh yes, very nicely,” interposed Miss Vivian.

“Did you teach him?” said Rosamond.

“No!  He could read well before I came to the place.  I have only been at home six weeks, you know, and I did not know I was poaching on your manor,” she added sotto voce to Julius, who could not but answer with warm thanks.

It was discovered that the rain had set in for the night, and an amicable contest ensued between the ladies as to shawl and umbrella, each declaring her dress unspoilable, till it ended in Eleonora having the shawl, and both agreeing to share the umbrella as far as the Sirenwood lodge.

However, the umbrella refused to open, and had to be given to the boy, who set his teeth into an extraordinary grin, and so dealt with the brazen gear as to expand a magnificent green vault, with a lesser leathern arctic zone round the pole; but when he had handed it to Miss Vivian, and she had linked her arm in Lady Rosamond’s, it proved too mighty for her, tugged like a restive horse, and would fairly have run away with her, but for Rosamond’s holding her fast.

“Lost!” they cried.  “Two ladies carried away by an umbrella!”

“Here, Julius, no one can grapple with it but you,” called Rosamond.

“I really think it’s alive!” panted Eleonora, drawn up to her tip-toes before she could hand it to Julius, who, with both clinging to his arm, conducted them at last to the lodge, where Julius could only come in as far as it would let him, since it could neither be let down nor left to itself to fly to unknown regions.

A keeper with a more manageable article undertook to convey Miss Vivian home across the park; and with a pleasant farewell, husband and wife plodded their way home, along paths the mud of which could not be seen, only heard and felt; and when Rosamond, in the light of the hall, discovered the extent of the splashes, she had to leave Julius still contending with the umbrella; and when, in spite of the united efforts of the butler and footman, it still refused to come down, it was consigned to an empty coach-house, with orders that little Joe should have a shilling to bring it down and fetch it home in the morning!

CHAPTER IV

Shades In Sunshine

My friends would be angered,My minnie be mad.—Scots Song

“Whom do you think we met, mother?” said Julius, coming into her room, so soon as he had made his evening toilette, and finding there only his two younger brothers.  “No other than Miss Vivian.”

“Ah! then,” broke in Charlie, “you saw what Jenkins calls the perfect picture of a woman.”

“She is very handsome,” soberly returned Julius.  “Rose is quite delighted with her.  Do you know anything of her?”

“Jenny Bowater was very fond of poor Emily,” rejoined the mother.  “I believe that she had a very good governess, but I wish she were in better hands now.”

“I cannot think why there should be a universal prejudice for the sake of one early offence!” exclaimed Frank.

“Oh, indeed!” said Julius, amazed at such a tone to his mother.

“I only meant—mother, I beg your pardon—but you are only going by hearsay,” answered Frank, in some confusion.

“Then you have not seen her?” said Julius.

“I!  I’m the last person she is likely to seek, if you mean Camilla.”

“She inquired a great deal after you, mother,” interposed Frank, “and said she longed to call, only she did not know if you could see her.  I do hope you will, when she calls on Cecil.  I am sure you would think differently.  Promise me, mother!”

“If she asks for me, I will, my boy,” said Mrs. Poynsett, “but let me look!  You aren’t dressed for dinner!  What will Mistress Cecil say to you!  Ah! it is time you had ladies about the house again.”

The two youths retreated; and Julius remained, looking anxiously and expressively at his mother.

“I am afraid so,” she said; “but I had almost rather he were honestly smitten with the young one than that he believed in Camilla.”

“I should think no one could long do that,” said Julius.

“I don’t know.  He met them when he was nursing that poor young Scotsman at Rockpier, and got fascinated.  He has never been quite the same since that time!” said the mother anxiously.  “I don’t blame him, poor fellow!” she added eagerly, “or mean that he has been a bit less satisfactory—oh no!  Indeed, it may be my fault for expressing my objection too’ plainly; he has always been reserved with me since, and I never lost the confidence of one of my boys before!”

That Julius knew full well, for he—as the next eldest at home—had been the recipient of all his mother’s perplexities at the time of Raymond’s courtship.  Mrs. Poynsett had not been a woman of intimate female friends.  Her sons had served the purpose, and this was perhaps one great element in her almost unbounded influence with them.  Julius was deeply concerned to see her eyes glistening with tears as she spoke of the cloud that had risen between her and Frank.

“There is great hope that this younger one may be worthy,” he said.  “She has had a very different bringing up from her sister, and I did not tell you what I found her doing.  She was teaching a little pig-herd boy to draw.”

“Ah!  I heard Lady Tyrrell was taking to the education of the people line.”

“I want to know who the boy is,” said Julius.  “He called himself Reynolds, and said he lived with granny, but was not a son of Daniel’s or Timothy’s.  He seemed about ten years old.”

“Reynolds?  Then I know who he must be.  Don’t you remember a pretty-looking girl we had in the nursery in Charlie’s time?  His ‘Fan-fan’ he used to call her.”

“Ah, yes, I remember; she was a Reynolds, for both the little boys could be excited to fury if we assumed that she was a fox.  You don’t mean that she went wrong?”

“Not till after she had left us, and seemed to be doing well in another place; but unfortunately she was allowed to have a holiday in the race week, and a day at the course seems to have done the mischief.  Susan can tell you all about it, if you want to know.  She was as broken-hearted as if Fanny had been her own child—much more than the old mother herself, I fear.”

“What has become of the girl?”

“Gone from bad to worse.  Alas!  I heard a report that she had been seen with some of the people who appear on the race-course with those gambling shooting-galleries, or something of that sort.”

“Ah! those miserable races!  They are the bane of the country.  I wish no one would go near them.”

“They are a very pleasant county gathering.”

“To you, mother, and such as you; but you could have your county meeting without doing quite so much harm.  If Raymond would only withdraw his subscription.”

“It would be as much as his seat is worth!  Those races are the one great event of Wil’sbro’ and Backsworth, the harvest of all the tradespeople.  Besides, you know what is said of their expedience as far as horses are concerned.”

“I would sacrifice the breed of horses to prevent the evils,” said Julius.

“You would, but—My boy, I suppose this is the right view for a clergyman, but it will never do to force it here.  You will lose all influence if you are over-strained.”

“Was St. Chrysostom over-strained about the hippodrome?” said Julius, thoughtfully.

Mrs. Poynsett looked at him as he leant upon the chimney-piece.  Here was another son gone, in a different way, beyond her reach.  She had seen comparatively little of him since his University days; and though always a good and conscientious person, there had been nothing to draw her out of secular modes of thought; nor had she any connection with the clerical world, so that she had not, as it were, gone along with the tone of mind that she had perceived in him.

He did not return to the subject, and they were soon joined by his elder brother.  At the first opportunity after dinner, Frank got Rosamond up into a corner with a would-be indifferent “So you met Miss Vivian.  What did you think of her?”

Rosamond’s intuition saw what she was required to think, and being experienced in raving brothers, she praised the fine face and figure so as to find the way to his heart.

“I am so glad you met her in that way.  Even Julius must be convinced.  Was not he delighted?”

“I think she grew upon him.”

“And now neither of you will be warped.  It is so very strange in my mother, generally the kindest, most open-hearted woman in the world, to distrust and bear a grudge against them all for the son’s dissipation—just as if that affected the ladies of a family!”

“I did not think it was entirely on his account,” said Rosamond.

“Old stories of flirtation!” said Frank, scornfully; “but what are they to be cast up against a woman in her widowhood?  It is so utterly unlike mother, I can’t understand it.”

“Would not the natural conclusion be that she knew more, and had her reasons?”

“I tell you, Rosamond, I know them infinitely better than she does.  She never saw them since Lady Tyrrell’s marriage, when Eleonora was a mere child; now I saw a great deal of them at Rockpier last year.  There was poor Jamie Armstrong sent down to spend the winter on the south coast; and as none of his own people could be with him, we—his Oxford friends, I mean—took turns to come to him; and as I had just gone up for my degree, I had the most time.  The Vivians had been living there ever since they went on poor Emily’s account.  They did not like to leave the place where she died you see; and Lady Tyrrell had joined them after her husband’s death.  Such a pleasant house! no regular gaieties, of course, but a few friends in a quiet way—music and charades, and so forth.  Every one knew everybody there; not a bit of our stiff county ways, but meeting all day long in the most sociable manner.”

“Oh yes, I know the style of place.”

“One gets better acquainted in a week than one does in seven years in a place like this,” proceeded Frank.  “And you may tell Julius to ask any of the clerics if Lenore was not a perfect darling with the Vicar and his wife, and her sister too; and Rockpier is a regular tip-top place for Church, you know.  I’m sure it was enough to make a fellow good for life, just to see Eleonora walking up the aisle with that sweet face of hers, looking more like heaven than earth.”