Barbara shook her head ominously.

"But ill, forsooth?" pursued her sister.

"Marry, an' you ask at him, he is alway well; but--I carry mine eyes, Marian."

Barbara's theory of educating children was to keep them entirely ignorant of the affairs of their elders. To secure this end, she adopted a vague, misty style of language, of which she fondly imagined that Clare did not understand a word. The result was unfortunate, as it usually is. Clare understood detached bits of her nurse's conversation, over which she brooded silently in her own little mind, until she evolved a whole story--a long way off the truth. It would have done much less harm to tell her the whole truth at once; for the fact of a mystery being made provoked her curiosity, and her imaginations were far more extreme than the facts.

"Ah, he feeleth the lack of my mistress his wife, I reckon," said Marian pityingly. "She must be soothly a sad miss every whither."

"Thou mayest well say so," a.s.sented Barbara. "Dear heart! 'tis nigh upon five good years now, and I have not grown used to the lack of her even yet. Thou seest, moreover, he hath had sorrow upon sorrow. 'Twas but the year afore that Master Walter [a fict.i.tious person] and Mistress Frances did depart [die]; and then, two years gone, Mistress Kate, [a fict.i.tious person]. Ah, well-a-day! we be all mortal."

"Thank we G.o.d therefore, good Bab," said Marian quietly. "For we shall see them again the sooner. But if so be, Bab, that aught befel the Master, what should come of yonder rosebud?"

And Marian cast a significant look at Clare, who sat apparently engrossed with a mug full of syllabub.

"Humph! an' I had the reins, I had driven my nag down another road,"

returned Barbara. "Who but Master Robin [a fict.i.tious person] and Mistress Thekla [a fict.i.tious person] were meetest, trow? But lo! you!

what doth Mistress Walter but indite a letter unto the Master, to note that whereas she hath never set eyes on the jewel--and whose fault was that, prithee?--so, an' it liked Him above to do the thing thou wottest, she must needs have the floweret sent thither. And a cruel deal of fair words, how she loved and pined to see her, and more foolery belike.

Marry La'kin! ere I had given her her will, I had seen her alongside of King Pharaoh at bottom o' the Red Sea. But the Master, what did he, but write back and say that it should be even as she would. Happy woman be her dole, say I!"

And Barbara set down the milk-jug with a rough determinate air that must have hurt its feelings, had it possessed any.

"Mistress Walter! that is, the Lady--" [Note 3.]

"Ay--she," said Barbara hastily, before the name could follow.

"Well, Bab, after all, methinks 'tis but like she should ask it. And if Master Robin be parson of that very same parish wherein she dwelleth, of a surety ye could never send the little one to him, away from her own mother?"

"Poor little soul! she is well mothered!" said Barbara ironically.

"Never to set eyes on the child for six long years; and then, when Mistress Avery, dear heart! writ unto her how sweet and _debonnaire_ [pretty, pleasing] the lily-bud grew, to mewl forth that it was so great a way, and her health so pitiful, that she must needs endure to bereave her of the happiness to come and see the same. Marry La'kin! call yon a mother!"

"But it is a great way, Bab."

"Wherefore went she so far off, then?" returned Barbara quickly enough.

"And lo! you! she can journey thence all the way to York or Chester when she would get her the new fashions,--over land, too!--yet cannot she take boat to Bideford, which were less travail by half. An' yonder jewel had been mine, Marian, I would not have left it lie in the case for six years, trow!"

"Maybe not, Bab," answered Marian in her quiet way. "Yet 'tis ill judging of our neighbour. And if the lady's health be in very deed so pitiful--"

"Neighbour! she is no neighbour of mine, dwelling up by Marton Moss!"

interrupted Barbara, as satirically as before. "And in regard to her pitiful health--why, Marian, I have dwelt in the same house with her for a year and a half, and I never knew yet her evil health let [hinder] her from a junketing. Good lack! it stood alway in the road when somewhat was in hand the which misliked her. Go to church in the rain,--nay, by 'r Lady!--and 'twas too cold in the winter to help string the apples, and too hot in the summer to help conserve the fruits: to be sure! But let there be an even's revelling at Sir Christopher Marres his house, and she bidden,--why, it might rain enough to drench you, but her cloak was thick then, and her boots were strong enough, and her cough was not to any hurt--bless her!"

The tone of Barbara's exclamation somewhat belied the words.

"Have a care, Bab, lest--" and Marian's glance at Clare explained her meaning.

"Not she!" returned Barbara, looking in her turn at the child, whose attention was apparently concentrated on one of Marian's kittens, which she was stroking on her lap, while the mother cat walked uneasily round and round her chair. "I have alway a care to speak above yon head."

"Is there not a little sister?" asked Marian in a low tone.

"Ay," said Barbara, dropping her voice. "Blanche, the babe's name is [a fict.i.tious character.] Like Mrs Walter--never content with plain Nell and Nan. Her childre must have names like so many queens. And I dare say the maid shall be bred up like one."

The conversation gradually pa.s.sed to other topics, and the subject was not again touched upon by either sister.

How much of it had Clare heard, and how much of that did she understand?

A good deal more of either than Barbara imagined. She knew that Walter had been her father's name, and she was well aware that "Mistress Walter" from Barbara's lips, indicated her mother. She knew that her mother had married again, and that she lived a long way off. She knew also that this mother of hers was no favourite with Barbara. And from this conversation she gathered, that in the event of something happening--but what that was she did not realise--she was to go and live with her mother. Clare was an imaginative child, and the topic of all her dreams was this mysterious mother whom she had never seen. Many a time, when Barbara only saw that she was quietly dressing or hushing her doll, Clare's mind was at work, puzzling over the incomprehensible reason of Barbara's evident dislike to her absent mother. What shocking thing could she have done, thought Clare, to make Bab angry with her?

Had she poisoned her sister, or drowned the cat, or stolen the big crown off the Queen's head? For the romance of a little child is always incongruous and sensational.

In truth, there was nothing sensational, and little that was not commonplace, about the character and history of little Clare's mother, whose maiden name was Orige Williams. She had been the spoilt child of a wealthy old Cornish gentleman,--the pretty pet on whom he lavished all his love and bounty, never crossing her will from the cradle. And she repaid him, as children thus trained often do, by crossing his will in the only matter concerning which he much cared. He had set his heart on her marrying a rich knight whose estate lay contiguous to his own: while she, entirely self-centred, chose to make a runaway match with young Lieutenant Avery, whose whole year's income was about equal to one week of her father's rent-roll. Bitterly disappointed, Mr Williams declared that "As she had made her bed, so she should lie on it;" for not one penny would he ever bestow on her while he lived, and he would bequeath the bulk of his property to his nephew. In consequence of this threat, which reached, her ears, Orige, romantic and high-flown, fancied herself at once a heroine and a martyr, when there was not in her the capacity for either. In the sort of language in which she delighted, she spoke of herself as a friendless orphan, a sacrifice to love, truth, and honour. It never seemed to occur to her that in deceiving her father-- for she had led him to believe until the last moment that she intended to conform to his wishes--she had acted both untruthfully and dishonourably; while as to love, she was callous to every shape of it except love of self.

For about eighteen months Walter and Orige Avery lived at Bradmond, during which time Clare was born. She was only a few weeks old when the summons came for her father to rejoin his ship. He had been gone two months, when news reached Bradmond of a naval skirmish with the Spaniards off the Scilly Isles, in which great havoc had been made among the Queen's forces, and in the list of the dead was Lieutenant Walter Avery.

Now Orige's romance took a new turn. She pictured herself as a widowed nightingale, love-lorn and desolate, leaning her bleeding breast upon a thorn, and moaning forth her melancholy lay. As others have done since, she fancied herself poetical when she was only silly. And Barbara took grim notice that her handkerchief was perpetually going up to tearless eyes, and that she was not a whit less particular than usual to know what there was for supper.

For six whole months this state of things lasted. Orige arrayed herself in the deepest sables; she spoke of herself as a wretched widow who could never taste hope again; and of her baby as a poor hapless orphan, as yet unwitting of its misery. She declined to see any visitors, and persisted in being miserable and disconsolate, and in taking lonely walks to brood over her wretchedness. And at the end of that time she electrified her husband's family--all but one--by the announcement that she was about to marry again. Not for love this time, of course; no, indeed!--but she thought it was her duty. Sir Thomas Enville--a widower with three children--had been very kind; and he would make such a good father for Clare. He had a beautiful estate in the North. It would be a thousand pities to let the opportunity slip. Once for all, she thought it her duty; and she begged that no one would worry her with opposition, as everything was already settled.

Kate Avery, Walter's elder and only surviving sister, was exceedingly indignant. Her gentle, unsuspicious mother was astonished and puzzled.

But Mr Avery, after a momentary look of surprise, only smiled.

"Nay, but this pa.s.seth!" [surpa.s.ses belief] cried Kate.

"Even as I looked for it," quietly said her father. "I did but think it should maybe have been somewhat later of coming."

"Her duty!" broke out indignant Kate. "Her duty to whom?"

"To herself, I take it," said he. "To Clare, as she counteth. Methinks she is one of those deceivers that do begin with deceiving of themselves."

"To Clare!" repeated Kate. "But, Father, she riddeth her of Clare. The babe is to 'bide here until such time as it may please my good Lady to send for her."

"So much the better for Clare," quietly returned Mr Avery.

And thus it happened that Clare was six years old, and her mother was still an utter stranger to her.

The family at Bradmond, however, were not without tidings of Lady Enville. It so happened that Mr Avery's adopted son, Robert Tremayne, was Rector of the very parish in which Sir Thomas Enville lived; and a close correspondence--for Elizabethan days--was kept up between Bradmond and the Rectory. In this manner they came to know, as time went on, that Clare had a little sister, whose name was Blanche; that Lady Enville was apparently quite happy; that Sir Thomas was very kind to her, after his fashion, though that was not the devoted fashion of Walter Avery. Sir Thomas liked to adorn his pretty plaything with fine dresses and rich jewellery; he surrounded her with every comfort; he allowed her to go to every party within ten miles, and to spend as much money as she pleased. And this was precisely Orige's beau ideal of happiness. Her small cup seemed full--but evidently Clare was no necessary ingredient in the compound.

If any one had taken the trouble to weigh, sort, and label the prejudices of Barbara Polwhele, it would have been found that the heaviest of all had for its object "Papistry,"--the second, dirt,--and the third, "Mistress Walter." Lieutenant Avery had been Barbara's darling from his cradle, and she considered that his widow had outraged his memory, by marrying again so short a time after his death. For this, above all her other provocations, Barbara never heartily forgave her. And a great struggle it was to her to keep her own feelings as much as possible in the background, from the conscientious motive that she ought not to instil into Clare's baby mind the faintest feeling of aversion towards her mother. The idea of the child being permanently sent to Enville Court was intensely distasteful to her. Yet wherever Clare went, Barbara must go also.

She had promised Mrs Avery, Clare's grandmother, on her dying bed, never to leave the child by her own free will so long as her childhood lasted, and rather than break her word, she would have gone to Siberia-- or to Enville Court. In Barbara's eyes, there would have been very little choice between the two places. Enville Court lay on the sea-coast, and Barbara abhorred the sea, on which her only brother and Walter Avery had died: it was in Lancashire, which she looked upon as a den of witches, and an arid desert bare of all the comforts of life; it was a long way from any large town, and Barbara had been used to live within an easy walk of one; she felt, in short, as though she were being sent into banishment.

And there was no help for it. Within the last few weeks, a letter had come from Lady Enville,--not very considerately worded--requesting that if what she had heard was true, that Mr Avery's health was feeble, and he was not likely to live long--in the event of his death, Clare should be sent to her.

In fact, there was nowhere else to send her. Walter's two sisters, Kate and Frances, were both dead,--Kate unmarried, Frances van Barnevelt leaving a daughter, but far away in Holland. The only other person who could reasonably have claimed the child was Mr Tremayne; and with what show of justice could he do so, when his house lay only a stone's throw from the park gates of Enville Court? Fate seemed to determine that Clare should go to her mother. But while John Avery lived, there was to be a respite.

It was a respite shorter than any one antic.i.p.ated--except, perhaps, the old man himself. There came an evening three weeks after these events, when Barbara noticed that her master, contrary to his usual custom, instead of returning to his turret-chamber after supper, sat still by the hall fire, shading his eyes from the lamp, and almost entirely silent. When Clare's bed-time came, and she lifted her little face for a good-night kiss, John Avery, after giving it, laid his hands upon her head and blessed her.

"The G.o.d that fed me all my life long, the Angel that redeemed me from all evil, bless the maid! The peace of G.o.d, which pa.s.seth all understanding, keep thy heart and mind, through Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessing of G.o.d Almighty,--the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost--be upon thee, and remain with thee always!"

So he "let her depart with this blessing." Let her depart--to walk the th.o.r.n.y path of which he had reached the end, to climb the painful steeps of which he stood at the summit, to labour along the weary road which he would tread no more. Let her depart! The G.o.d who had fed him had manna in store for her,--the Angel who had redeemed him was strong, enough, and tender enough, to carry this lamb in His bosom.