Under the Mendips Part 19

A mocking laugh from Lord Maythorne was his only response, and Gratian left the room saying:

"Adieu! I hope to find you in a better temper at supper, Gilbert," which was scarcely less irritating.

Gilbert followed her, and left his mother and her brother together.

Lord Maythorne was an utterly selfish man of the world; he was the son of his father's second marriage, and therefore much younger than Mrs.

Arundel. He was of the type very common in those days, of an openly avowed scoffer at all that was good. Handsome, and with gentleman-like manners when it suited him, he was unscrupulous as to truth, and could send the shafts of his satire, dipped in gall, with a smiling face of indifference. He took a strange pleasure in entrapping the weak and the foolish, and as we know, poor Melville Falconer had not escaped.

Gilbert had been roused to indignation against his uncle, and pity for his victim, and he had done his best to open Melville's eyes, and had not altogether failed.

The straightforward manliness of Gilbert had an attraction for many besides Melville, and without any pretension or a.s.sumption of superiority, or many words about religion, he showed the Power that was in him was sufficient for him. His hot temper was governed, and a torrent of angry words was often checked; while he did his best to trample out the dislike it was impossible not to feel for his uncle.

When Mrs. Arundel was left alone with her brother, he threw himself carelessly on a sofa, and again drew out his snuff-box.

"So you have quite decided on the law for that boy," he said.

"Yes; this seems a good beginning here, and I have been able to article him to a most respectable firm of solicitors."

"They are a dirty lot generally; however, I am glad that young fellow is really going to earn his living, and make his own way in the world. It would be a pity if he trusted to us."

"It is very unlikely he would trust to you," Mrs. Arundel said.

"It would be leaning on a broken reed, you think; well, I will not contradict you, Annabella. In fact, I am a little short of cash, ready cash, just now. I suppose you do not happen to have a hundred pounds you don't know what to do with?"

"Certainly not; I cannot imagine, Maythorne, how you can think of such a thing."

"Well, I know you send a lot to convert the n.i.g.g.e.rs and Hindoos, and that you subscribe to a society for the flinging about of Bibles, which no one reads."

"Stop, please, Maythorne; I could not listen to any more conversation like this; I will not take part in it. I can lend you no money; but once more, for our father's sake, I cannot help begging, entreating you to turn from the ways of sin."

"No cant, please, Annabella; it makes me savage, and I don't want to affront you."

"I do not care whether you are affronted or not," Mrs. Arundel said, earnestly. "I cannot help feeling that we are of the same blood, and that if you were a worthy successor of my father you might be a joy and support to me. Instead of this, I have to try to keep my son from your influence, and dread that even by hearing your irreverent way of treating sacred things, he may grow accustomed to what is wrong. Oh! it is not too late; you are still a young man, still in your prime; let me entreat you to break off the chains which bind you, or rather, turn to G.o.d to free you from the bondage of sin--the _slavery_ of sin--for it is slavery, Maythorne."

"I am very much obliged to you, Annabella, for your kindly interest, but I rather prefer deeds to words. Maythornes is pretty well stripped of trees now, and I have all but exhausted the possibility of raising money on it; but _laisser aller_ is my motto, and I am not the one to mourn over a dark, old-fas.h.i.+oned house, and lands which yield no produce; if possible, I shall cut the whole concern. Well, ta-ta, till to-morrow. I have promised to hire horses and trot out Gratian over the Downs."

Mrs. Arundel felt that to say anything more would be worse than useless, and yet, as she watched her brother lounge across the road and stand on the slope looking over the river, her eyes filled with tears.

"To think what he _might_ have been. May G.o.d guard my boy from men like him."

Gilbert had gone quickly away from Sion Hill, and found himself on the lower Downs--then not skirted by handsome houses, but with glades and gra.s.sy slopes covered with hawthorn bushes, whitened in May-time with blossoms like snow, and covered in autumn with feathery ma.s.ses of the wild clematis, or traveller's joy.

Gilbert found the place suited his mood, and he gave himself up to thoughts of Joyce, and forgot the late encounter with his uncle.

How delightful it was to build castles for the future--to think of a home near all this loveliness, where Joyce would reign in all her sweet beauty as his wife. The time had been when Gilbert had admired his cousin Gratian Anson, who was the daughter of his mother's aunt, and therefore his cousin only in the second degree. Now her free, bold bearing, her ringing voice, her fas.h.i.+onable dress and banter, jarred on him. Her laugh was like the rattle of a noisy brook over innumerable stones, when compared to Joyce's musical ripple, which was so real, and so entirely the outcome of her own happiness. Then how charming was her unconsciousness, and how her beauty was enhanced by the absence of all affectation; how pretty was her affection for her father and Piers, and how gracefully and simply she did all the little household duties which her mother expected from her! Some words of a favourite poet of his mother's recurred to him, as he pictured Joyce in her little, short, lilac frock, with an ap.r.o.n, as he had seen her one morning, and her round white arms bare, as she came out of the dairy, and said she had made up twenty pats of b.u.t.ter while he had been asleep. Surely George Herbert's words were verified.

The action was made fine by the spirit, which was done as a loving token of obedience to the will of another.

"Mother wished me to do it, so I got up an hour earlier," she had said, as she cut a slice from one of the rolls made for breakfast and offered it to him, spread with the b.u.t.ter she had made, with a cup of milk, before it had been skimmed.

Dreams of first love are very sweet; and Gilbert wondered if he had been wise to leave Fair Acres without getting a definite answer from Joyce herself.

Honourable and straightforward, he determined not to return to Fair Acres unless prepared to ask her father's permission to lay all he had at her feet. He was conscious that at present that _all_ did not imply much, and besides, he had his mother to think of, and he must not marry till he was really in a position to support a wife in that station of life to which he had been called. He could wait for seven years, like Jacob of old--waiting for Joyce was worth any sacrifice. But what if, when she emerged from her retirement and went to Barley Wood, some one else might set his heart on the prize and win it. Then he recalled her words, spoken in answer to his question as he carried her towards home the evening before:

"No; I will not forget you."

They seemed to possess a double meaning as he repeated them again and again, as he retraced his steps over the observatory towards Sion Hill.

They were heard in the late voices of the thrushes in the woods across the river--those dark, mysterious Leigh woods which, in the dim and fading light, clothed the opposite heights with dim and motionless ma.s.ses; they were heard in the call of the sailor boys from the full river below St. Vincent's Rock, on whose summit he stood; they seemed to wrap him round with a certainty that the giant rock, from which he looked over the fading landscape lying to his left, encircled by a line of hills, on which the fine tower of Dundry stood like a black sentinel against the clear sky, was not more steadfast than would Joyce's heart be, were it once given to him.

There were then no railings to protect pa.s.sers-by from approaching too near the edge of the precipice which falls sheer down from this point a distance of three hundred feet, and Gilbert was startled from his dream by a voice near:

"You are perilously near the edge, unless you wish to go over!"

He turned with a sudden gesture, and, to his surprise, saw Gratian.

"I saw you wander over here from my window," she said. "Look! there are our houses, and I came to look after you."

"That was very obliging," Gilbert said, a little satirically.

"Now, don't be so high and mighty. I wish to be your friend, as I have always been, Gilbert. I was very sorry for you when you were so shamefully teazed by your young uncle; he does not like to be called _old_. I hope you noticed that."

"Oh! it is over now. I had no right to get into a rage."

"I think you had every right," Gratian said. "He is too provoking; worse, since he has been so much in London, and welcomed, so we hear, by some boon companions of His Majesty. But do not let us talk of him; let us talk of you. No; I don't choose to walk so near the edge of the rocks, if you do. Tell me about the people where you have been;--tell me about the place. Is it a fine house, or a nice big farm? Fair Acres is a pretty name, and are there no fair maidens as well as acres? Come, Gilbert, you were not always so cross to me." This was said with a gentle pressure on his arm.

"I don't mean to be cross; but there is nothing at Fair Acres that would interest you. You know about poor Melville already."

"I have heard of him," she said, "and of your taking upon yourself to reform him. Well, who are the others?"

"There are two fine boys, who want to be sailors, but they are too old, I am afraid, for the navy; they are thirteen."

"They--both thirteen!"

"Yes, they are twins. Then there is a lame boy, Piers, a year younger.

And oh, I forgot! a quiet, silent fellow, Ralph, he is sixteen."

"And does the great Melville, come next to him?"

"Two little girls died. But there is a daughter of seventeen."

"Ah!" exclaimed Gratian; "I knew there was a daughter. Did I not tell you I knew you were in love? Tell me her name. Come! We are such old friends. Surely you might tell me."

"Really, Gratian, I will tell you Miss Falconer's name if you so particularly wish to hear it. I--"

"I will guess it. Let me see. I love my love with an A, because she is amiable, and I took her to the sign of the Archer, and fed her with apples, and her name is Angela. Not right? Well, I will go through the alphabet, and I must surely be right at last. I love my love with a B----."

"Pray stop," Gilbert said. "I don't feel in a jesting mood, somehow."

"Not ready to wear a cap and bells? Poor Gilbert. You feel more like sitting under a willow tree and singing 'Poor Mary Anne.'"