Constance might really have liked to read more tales than she allowed herself. _The House on the Marsh_ tempted her, but she was true to the advice she had received, and Rose Rollstone upheld her in her resolution.

Ida thought it rather 'low' in Herbert and Constance to care for the old butler's daughter, but their mother had a warm spot in the bottom of her heart, and liked a gossip with Mrs. Rollstone too much to forbid the house to her daughter, besides that she shrank from inflicting on her so much distress.

So during the fortnight that Rose spent at home the girls were together most of the morning. After Constance, well wrapped up, had practised in the cold drawing-room, where economy forbade fires till the afternoon, she sped across to Rose in the little stuffy parlour where Mr. Rollstone liked to doze over his newspaper to the lullaby of their low-voiced chatter. Often they walked together, and were sometimes joined by Herbert, who on these occasions always showed that he knew how to behave like a gentleman.

Herbert was faithfully keeping his promise not to bet, though, as he observed, he had not expected to be in for it so long. But it was satisfactory to hear that his present fellow-pupils did not go in for that sort of thing, and Constance felt sure that her uncle and aunt would be pleased with him and think him much improved.

CHAPTER XXIV THE REVENGE OF SORDID SPIRITS

'I am quite convinced,' said Ida Morton, 'it is quite plain why we are not invited.'

'My dear, you see what your aunt says; that Mrs. Bury's daughter's husband is ordered to India, and that having the whole family to stay at Northmoor gives them the only chance of being all together for a little while, and after their obligations to Mrs. Bury--'

'Ma, how can you be so green? Obligations, indeed! It is all a mere excuse to say there is not room for us in that great house. I see through it all. It is just to prevent us from being able to ask inconvenient questions of the German nurse and Mrs. Bury and all!'

'Now, Ida, I wish you would put away that fancy. Your uncle and aunt were always such good people! And there was Mrs. Bury--'

'Mother, you will never understand the revenge of sordid souls,' said Ida tragically, quoting from _The Unconscious Impostor_.

'Revenge! What can you mean?'

'Of course, you know, Mrs. Bury never forgave Herbert's taking her for a tramp, and you know how nasty uncle was about that white rook and the bets. Oh, it is quite plain. He was to be deprived of his rights, and so this journey was contrived, and they got into this out-of-the-way, inaccessible place, and sent poor Conny away, and then had no doctor or nurse--exactly as people always do.'

'Oh, Ida, only in stories! Your novels are turning your head.'

'Novels are transcripts of life,' again said Ida, solemnly quoting.

'I don't believe it if they put such things into your head,' said her mother. 'Asking Herbert to be G.o.dfather too! Such a compliment!'

'An empty compliment, to hoodwink us and the poor boy,' said Ida. 'No, no, ma, the keeping you away settles it in my mind, and it shall be the business of my life to unmask that!'

So spoke Ida, conscious of being a future heroine.

It was quite true that Herbert had been asked to stand G.o.dfather to his little cousin's admission into the Church, after, of course, a very good report had been received from his tutor. 'You are the little fellow's nearest kinsman,' wrote Lord Northmoor, 'and I trust to you to influence him for good.' Herbert wriggled, blushed, thought he hated it, was glad it had been written instead of spoken, but was really touched.

His uncle had justly thought responsibility would be wholesome, and besides, Herbert represented to him his brother, for whom he had a very tender feeling.

It was quite true that Northmoor was as full as it would hold. Mrs.

Bury's eldest daughter was going out to India, and another had a husband in the Civil Service; the third lived in Ireland, and the only way of having the whole family together for their last fortnight was to gather them at Northmoor, as soon as its lord and lady returned, nor had they been able to escape from their Dolomite ravine till the beginning of May, for the roads were always dangerous, often impa.s.sable, so that there had been weeks when they were secluded from even the post, and had had difficulties as to food and fire.

However, it had done them no harm, and was often looked back upon as, metaphorically as well as literally, the brightest and whitest time in their lives. Frank had walked and climbed both with Mrs. Bury and on his own account, and had drunk in the wild glories of the mountain winter, and the fantastic splendours of snow and ice on those wondrous peaks.

And, with that new joy and delight to be found in the queer wooden cradle, his heart was free to bound as perhaps it had never done before, in exulting thankfulness, as he looked up to those foretastes of the Great White Throne.

Never had he had such a rest before from toil, care, and anxiety as in those months in the dry, bracing air, and it was the universal remark that Lord Northmoor came back years younger and twice the man he had been before, with a spirit of cheerfulness and enterprise such as had always been wanting; while as to his wife, she was less strong than before, but there was a certain peaceful, yet exulting happiness about her, and her face had gained wonderfully in sweetness and expression.

The child was a fine plump little fellow, old enough to laugh and respond to loving faces and gestures. Mary had feared the sight might be painful to Lady Adela, and was gratified to find her too true a baby-lover and too generous a spirit not to worship him almost as devotedly as did Constance.

Perhaps the heads of the family had never seen or partic.i.p.ated in anything like the domestic mirth and enjoyment of that fortnight's visit; Bertha was with Lady Adela, and the intimacy and confidence in which Frank and Mary had lived with Mrs. Bury had demolished many barriers of shyness, and made them hosts who could be as one with their guests--guests with whom the shadow of parting made the last sunshine seem the more bright.

'I did not know what I was letting you in for,' said Bertha, in apology to Mrs. Bury.

'My dear, I would not have been without the experience on any account. I never saw such a refreshing pair of people.'

'Surely it must have been awfully slow--regular penal servitude!'

'You confuse absence of small talk with absence of soul, Birdie. When we had once grown intimate enough to hold our tongues if we had nothing to say, we got on perfectly.'

'And what you had to say was about Master Michael?'

'Not entirely; though I must say the mingled reverence and curiosity with which they regard the little monster, and their own fear of not bringing up their treasure properly, were a very interesting study.'

'More so than your snowy peaks! Ah, if the proper study of mankind is man, the proper study of womankind is babe.'

'Well, it was not at all an unsatisfactory study, in this case. And let me tell you, Miss Birdie, it is no bad thing to be shut in for a few months with a few good books and a couple of thoroughly simple-hearted people, who have thought a good deal in their quiet humdrum way.'

'Why, Lettice, you must have been quite an education to them!'

'I hope they were an education to me.'

'I hope your conscience is not going to be such a rampant and obstructive thing as that which they possess in common,' said Bertha.

'I wish it had been,' said Mrs. Bury gravely.

'At any rate, the deadly lively time has brisked you all up,' said Bertha, laughing.

Constance, on her Sat.u.r.days and Sundays, looked on with a kind of wonder.

She was not exactly of either set. The children were all so young as to look on her as a grown-up person, though willing to let her play with them; and she was outside the group of young married people, and could not enter into their family fun; but this kind of playfulness and merriment was quite a revelation to her. She had never before seen mirth, except, of course, childish and schoolgirl play, that had not in it something that hurt her taste and jarred on her feeling as much as did Ida's screeching laughter in comparison with the soft ripplings of these young matrons.

Still, little Michael was her chief delight, and she could hardly be detached from him. She refreshed her colloquial German (or rather Austrian) with his nurse, who had much to say of the goodness of _die Gnadigen Frauen_. Poor thing, she was the youthful widow of a guide, and the efforts of the two Frauen had been in vain to keep alive her only child, after whose death she had found some consolation in taking charge of Lady Northmoor's baby on the way home. Constance hoped Ida might never hear this fact.

Some degree of prosperity was greeting the little heir. A bit of moorland, hitherto regarded as worthless, had first been crossed by a branch line, and the primary growth of a station had been followed by the discovery of good building stone, and the erection of a crop of houses of all degrees, which promised to set the Northmoor finances on a better footing than had been theirs for years, and set their conscientious landlord to work at once on providing church room and schools.

All this, and that most precious possession at home, combined to give Lord Northmoor an amount of spirit and life that enabled him to take his place in the county, emanc.i.p.ate himself from the squire, show an opinion of his own, and open his mouth occasionally. As Bertha observed, no one would ever have called him a stick if he had begun like this. To people like these, humbled and depressed in early life, a little happiness was a great stimulus.

CHAPTER XXV THE LOVE

It was not till Christmas that Ida had the opportunity of making her observations. By that time 'Mite,' as he was supposed to have named himself, had found the use of his feet, and was acquiring that of his tongue. In fact, he was a very fine forward child, who might easily have been supposed to be eighteen months old instead of fifteen, as Ida did not fail to remark.

He was a handsome little creature, round and fair, with splendid st.u.r.dy legs and mottled arms, hair that stood up in a pale golden crest, round blue eyes and a bright colour, without much likeness as yet to either parent, though Lord Northmoor declared that there was an exact resemblance to his own brother, Charles, Herbert's father, as he first remembered him. Ida longed to purse up her lips but did not dare, and was provoked to see her mother taken completely captive by his charms, and petting him to the utmost extent.

Indeed, Lady Northmoor, who was very much afraid of spoiling him, was often distressed when such scenes as this took place. 'Mite! Mite, dear, no!' when his fat little hands had grasped an ivory paper-cutter, and its blade was on the way to the b.u.t.ton mouth. 'No!' as he paused and looked at her. 'Here's Mite's ball! poor little dear, do let him have it'--and Mite, reading sympathy in his aunt's face, laughed in a fascinating triumphant manner, and took a bite with his small teeth.