"They made a famous procession My good little women and men; Such a sight was never seen before And never will again."

SOUTHEY.

A division of a first-cla.s.s carriage, occupied only by Gerald, received Marian at the station, and first she had to be shown the hat, cloak, and umbrella with which he had constructed an effigy, which, as he firmly believed, had frightened away all who had thought of taking a seat in it.

"Thinking you a mad monkey, and that your keeper," said Marian, looking proudly at the handsome face and dancing black eyes of her beautiful brother. "Why! how you are grown, Gerald! Do stand up, and let me see if you are not taller than I am."

"No, not quite so tall, unless it is your bonnet," said Gerald, after craning up his neck in vain.

"At any rate, you are taller than Lionel. He only comes up to my ear,"

said Marian.

"Poor Lionel! How are his eyes?"

"O Gerald, it is very sad. He has very little sight left. I believe he finds his way about quite by feeling now. It has grown worse so much faster in these last three weeks."

"Poor fellow! What can he do all day?"

A long description followed, and then Gerald wanted to hear all about Caroline, and what Marian thought fit to tell him, together with his comments, lasted till, in spite of his effigy, a lady made an entrance, and for some time Gerald was reduced to silence, and as he sat on the same side, to making horrible sidelong scowls at her, out of her sight, which sorely tried his sister's propriety of countenance.

The tongues of two such happy people could not long, however, continue tied, and presently Gerald rattled off into a history of his sporting adventures in Scotland, as if he would detail every shot. The narration was endless, and very tiresome it would have been to any woman but a sister, and a sister who had so much of the hunter spirit in her as Marian; but she listened and sympathised with all her heart and soul, and understood why such a shot was a good one, and why such another failed, and was absorbed in the interest of the attempt to recover a wounded bird when the retriever was stupid, long after the intruder had made her exit, and they might have returned to matters touching her more closely, though regarded by Gerald as hardly equal in importance to roe deer, salmon, and grouse.

They were on Devonshire ground before they ever began to rejoice over Edmund's engagement, and from thence to talk of Edmund himself. Gerald p.r.o.nounced many an eulogium on him, in which praises of his excellence as a fisherman and sportsman were strangely mixed with a real genuine appreciation of his goodness and superiority.

"'Tis a capital thing that he is come home to stay," said Gerald, heartily.

"Isn't it?"

"I like him specially," said Gerald. "Do you know he showed me some of my father's letters."

"Did he indeed?"

"That he did. It was before I was born, when he thought he was going to have Fern Torr and all, he had rather an idle fit, and these were what papa wrote to him."

"Was Edmund ever idle?" exclaimed Marian, falling into a reverie of wonder whether this did not make it more hopeful for Gerald.

"I am very glad he has got this money," proceeded Gerald. "I only wish it was more. One letter he showed me that was best of all. It was from my father when I was born. You can't think what a nice letter it was.

There was something about its being a disappointment to him--to Edmund, I mean, but how papa cared for him as much as ever, and thought after all it might be better for him in the end. And then, Marian, papa said he could hardly expect to live till I was grown up, and he asked Edmund to be my G.o.dfather, and said he trusted to him to be like an elder brother to us."

"That he is!" murmured Marian.

"Edmund said he wished me to read it that I might not think him interfering."

"You never could have thought so!"

"I don't know. I could not have stood it from some people, but I could see the sense of what Edmund said."

Without entering into particulars, Gerald was now all freedom and openness, casting quite away the restraint that had so long grieved his sister. How happy she was!

Mr. Wortley himself met them at Exeter, and in spite of the early darkness of the winter day, Charles and James met them at the foot of Blackstone hill, and Edmund and Agnes were a little further on.

What a happy greeting it was! Marian and Gerald would jump out and walk home with them, the boys ran and called in the dark, the stars came out overhead, the tall hedges kept out all the glimmering light, splashes alone made them aware of the puddles; but on the happy party tramped, all talking an unmitigated flow of merry nonsense, laughing and enjoying it, all the more the darker and stranger it grew, and merrier than all, when they got home, at Mrs. Wortley's dismay at their having dragged Marian a mile and a half, in the dark and dirt, after her long journey.

"Pretty guardians to have the care of her!"

All the evening again there was nothing but fun and joyousness, fun of the brightest, happiest kind, positively wild in the three boys, and Edmund not much less so, the girls weary with laughing, and contributing their share to the sport. A person must have lived like Marian, pent up by formalities and the certainty of being disliked, to know what was the enjoyment of the perfect liberty and absence from constraint, the thorough home-like feeling of every one loving and understanding each other, which existed at Fern Torr. How delightful it was to have no heart achings for Gerald, to see Edmund just like his old self, and the dear Agnes, so very lovely and bright! so very unlike her only former experience of betrothed lovers. It was no small happiness to the Fern Torr party to have one so prized and loved as Marian to rejoice with them, indeed, all this evening every one was too joyous to dwell on any of the causes of their felicity, it was nothing but high spirits, and unreflective mirth.

When they had bidden each other good night, and were gone up stairs, there was more of gravity and thought. Marian and Agnes could have sat up talking half the night, if Mrs. Wortley would have allowed them, but she said Marian must have time to rest, and ruthlessly condemned her to bed.

Never did Marian spend so happy a Christmas. There was plenty of depth and earnestness in her _tete-a-tetes_ with Agnes, when they talked over the wonders that had happened to them both, and always ended by returning to recollections of happy old days before Marian left Fern Torr, when Edmund had been the prime mover of every delightful adventure. Marian was as good as a sister to each of the lovers, so heartily did she help each one to admire the other. Or when they were "lovering," as the boys chose to call their interminable wanderings in the manor gardens, Marian used to be extremely happy with Mrs. Wortley, talking over the history of the engagement, and settling how and when the love began. Mr. Wortley suggested that the first attraction had been Agnes' unmitigated horror of the Lyddells, which he declared had won Mr.

Arundel's heart, though he never owned how much he partic.i.p.ated in it.

It needs not to be stated how Edmund's n.o.ble behaviour was appreciated, more especially after the new lights which Marian was able to throw upon it.

Then came the discussion of the plans for the house which Edmund was to build, on a farm, which had come into the market at the very nick of time, just on the other side of the hill, and in Fern Torr parish.

Marian and Gerald were taken the first day to look and advise whether the new house should be on the old site, or under the shelter of a great old slate quarry, crested with a wood, a beautiful view spread before it, and capacities for making the loveliest garden that was ever seen.

Edmund sketched house and garden in every possible point of view, each prettier than the other, and all the young gave their voices eagerly for the quarry, while the old protested on the difficulty of getting so far up the hill, and suggested damp. But the young carried the day, and the plans were drawn and debated on a dozen times in twenty-four hours, always including the prettiest of little sitting-rooms for Marian, with a window opening into the garden, and a door into the drawing-room, and then came letters to architects and calculations with builders, and reckonings that the house should be habitable by next September, and Mr.

Wortley laughing at their credulity for expecting it.

Marian was surprised to find how far away and secondary seemed the thoughts that had of late engrossed her entirely. She wondered to discover how little her mind had been occupied with Caroline and Lionel, fond as she was of them and very anxious about them. This was so very different a world! and she felt so much more as if she belonged to it.

She obtained from Agnes some admiration for Caroline's conduct, though in somewhat of the "better late than never" style, and at the price of warm abuse of the parents, in which Marian was not indisposed to join.

Caroline wrote nearly every day, saying that she missed Marian dreadfully, and that her letters were the only comfort she had; she would not wish her back again, for that would be selfish, but it would be a joyful day when she returned. These constant letters, which Marian always kept to herself, rather surprised the Wortleys, but Edmund could better guess at her position. "Depend upon it," he said to Agnes, "it is she who has saved Miss Lyddell."

"O, Edmund! do you think so? I wanted to have thought so, but she says it was the brother."

"He took the steps which would not have become Marian, but Walter Lyddell could never have moved without his sister, and where could she have found the principle but in Marian? I see now that her perseverance in right is beginning to tell on those around her, in spite of all untoward circ.u.mstances."

"I don't know anything like Marian!" said Agnes. "How very fine her countenance is!"

"That steadfast brow and lip."

"I saw her yesterday standing on the edge of a rock looking out on the view, and she was like some statue of Fort.i.tude."

"Yes, Marian is a grand creature," said Edmund; "so strong and firm, yet with such feminine, retiring strength. There are still prejudices and little roughnesses, but I doubt whether they have not been her safeguard, outworks to secure the building, and I think they are disappearing with the occasion."

"Ah! papa and mamma think her very much softened down."

"She has had a very hard part to act, and her shyness and rigidity have been great helps to her, but I am glad to see them wearing away, and especially pleasant it is to see her expand and show her true self here."

"And to know she may soon be free of them all for ever!" said Agnes.

The time when Marian was to be free of them for ever, as Agnes said, was to be the next summer. Edmund and Agnes were to be married in July, Marian would then come to Fern Torr, and comfort Mrs. Wortley for losing her daughter, till the holidays began, when Edmund and Agnes would return, and some undefined scheme of delight was to be settled on for Gerald's holidays, until the house should be ready. Gerald was in the meantime very agreeable and satisfactory on the whole. He was too busy drawing varieties of stables for Edmund, to talk about his own, and marvellous were the portraits of the inhabitants with which he would decorate Edmund's elevations, whenever he found them straying about the room. Very mischievous indeed was the young gentleman, and Marian considered him to have been "a great deal too bad" when on a neat, finished plan, just prepared to be sent to the builder, she found unmistakeable likenesses of the whole Wortley family, herself and Gerald, a.s.sembled round a great bowl of punch, large enough to drown them all, drinking to the health of Edmund and Agnes, who were riding in at the gate, pillion fashion, supposed to be returning after the honey moon, which in one corner of the picture was represented in a most waning state, but the man in the moon squinting down at them with a peculiarly benignant expression of countenance.

Marian was very angry, but Edmund and Agnes would do nothing but laugh, though the whole plan had to be drawn over again, and Edmund was kept at work with ruler, scale, and compa.s.ses the whole evening, Marian scolding Gerald all the time, and Edmund too, for spoiling him, thinking her cousin the most heroically good natured and good tempered man in the world to bear with such an idle monkey, and laugh at the waste of time and trouble; and getting at last a glimmering perception that these tricks, thus met, were the greatest proof of good understanding and friendship. It ended in Gerald's inking in the plan, of his own free will, and very neatly, and getting up at six, the next morning, to ride to Exeter, in the dark cold misty December twilight, to take it to the builder, that no time might be lost; indeed, as he boasted, it was there a quarter of an hour before it would have come by post, as it would have done had it gone yesterday.

Gerald's studies were not extensive, but Edmund, by some magic secret, unknown to Marian, made him read history to himself for a short s.p.a.ce every morning. The sporting paper had disappeared, and nothing was heard of Elliot or of Queen Pomare, while though he could not yet go the length of talking to the poor people himself, he stood by very civilly while Edmund talked to them.

The first ten days of Marian's stay had thus pa.s.sed, when Caroline one day mentioned in her letter that mamma had a regularly bad influenza cold, and was quite laid up. It was aggravated, Caroline said, by the distress they were all in about Elliot. "But you will hear enough of this when you come back," wrote she, "so I will not grieve you with it now; though it is an additional load upon my mind--an additional offence, I fear, in poor mamma's eyes, since all this would not have come to light had I persisted. But you must not think I am repenting, for I never was further from regretting what I have done. The different spirit in which I could come to this Christmas feast, is a blessing to be purchased at any price, even at such wretchedness as it has been this autumn; and most earnestly do I thank you, dearest Marian. I can thank you by letter, though we never can speak of such things. Yes, I thank you. I regret nothing but my previous folly and weakness, and bitterly do I suffer for them; though all is better now, and Christmas has brought me peace and calm. It is as if the storm was lulled at last, and nothing left but dreariness, and the longing to be at rest. How bright the world was before me not a year ago! and now how worn out it seems,--only three comforts left in it, you, and Walter, and poor Lionel. For Lionel is a comfort; he is very kind and considerate, and, I do believe, softens mamma towards me. I suppose it is best for us that our hearts should have no home but one above; and if I was sure it was not disgust and disappointment, I should hope I was seeking one there; for I know the only feeling of rest and refreshment is in turning thither, and surely that must come from the FATHER, Who is ready to receive me. But I must leave off, for mamma is too unwell to be long left.