The Lady of the Forest Part 22

A few days after these exciting events the Marmadukes went away. Unless a sense of relief, they left no particular impression behind them. The grown-up people had not made themselves interesting to the old ladies; the lady's-maid and the parrot alike had disturbed Newbolt's equanimity; and the children of Avonsyde had certainly not learned to love the Marmaduke children. Clementina had been humbled and improved by her accident, but even an improved Clementina could not help snubbing Rachel every hour of the day, and Rachel did not care to be snubbed. On the day they left Phil did remark, looking wistfully round him: "It seems rather lonely without the Marmadukes." But no one else echoed the sentiment, and in a day or two these people, who were so important in their own eyes, were almost forgotten at Avonsyde.

On one person, however, this visit had made a permanent impression: that person was poor Mrs. Lovel. She was made terribly uneasy by Clementina's words. If Clementina, an ignorant and decidedly selfish girl, could notice that Phil was not strong, could a.s.sure her, in that positive, unpleasant way she had, that Phil was very far from strong, surely Miss Griselda, who noticed him so closely and watched all he did and said with such solicitude, could not fail to observe this fact also. Poor Mrs. Lovel trembled and feared and wondered, now that the tankard was lost and now that Phil's delicacy was becoming day by day more apparent, if there was any hope of that great pa.s.sionate desire of hers being fulfilled.

Just at present, as far as Miss Griselda was concerned, she had no real cause for alarm.

Miss Griselda had quite made up her mind, and where she led Miss Katharine was sure to follow. Miss Griselda was certain that Phil was the heir. Slowly the conviction grew upon her that this little white-faced, fragile boy was indeed the lineal descendant of Rupert Lovel. She had looked so often at his face that she even imagined she saw a likeness to the dark-eyed, dark-browed, stern-looking man whose portrait hung in the picture-gallery. This disinherited Rupert had become more or less of a hero in Miss Griselda's eyes. From her earliest years she had taken his part; from her earliest years she had despised that sickly younger line from which she herself had sprung. Like most women, Miss Griselda invested her long-dead hero with many imaginary charms. He was brave and great in soul. He was as strong in mind as he was in physique. When she began to see a likeness between Phil's face and the face of her old-time hero, and when she began also to discover that the little boy was generous and brave, that he was one of those plucky little creatures who shrink from neither pain nor hards.h.i.+p, had Phil's mother but known it, his cause was won. Miss Griselda began to love the boy. It was beginning to be delightful to her to feel that after she was dead and gone little Phil would have the old house and the lands, that he should reign as a worthy squire of Avonsyde. Already she began to drill the little boy with regard to his future duties, and often when he and she took walks together she spoke to him about what he was to do.

"All this portion of the forest belongs to us, Phil," she said to him one day. "My father often talked of having a roadway made through it, but he never did so, nor will Katharine and I. We leave that as part of your work."

"Would the poor people like it?" asked Phil, raising his eyes with their queer expression to her face. "That's the princ.i.p.al thing to think about, isn't it--if the poor people would like it?"

Miss Griselda frowned.

"I don't agree with you," she said. "The first and princ.i.p.al thing to consider is what is best for the lord of Avonsyde. A private road just through these lands would be a great acquisition, and therefore for that reason you will have to undertake the work by and by."

Phil's eyes still looked grave and anxious.

"Do you think, then--are you quite sure that I am really the heir, Aunt Griselda?" he said.

Miss Griselda smiled and patted his cheek.

"Well, my boy, you ought to know best," she said. "Your mother a.s.sures me that you are."

"Oh, yes--poor mother!" answered Phil. "Aunt Griselda," he continued suddenly, "if you were picturing an heir to yourself, you wouldn't think of a boy like me, would you?"

"I don't know, Phil. I do picture you in that position very often. Your Aunt Katharine and I have had a weary search, but at last you have come, and I may say that, on the whole, I am satisfied. My dear boy, we have been employed for six years over this search, and sometimes I will own that I have almost despaired. Katharine never did; but then she is romantic and believes in the old rhyme."

"What old rhyme?" asked Phil.

"Have you not heard it? It is part and parcel of our house and runs in different couplets, but the meaning is always the same:

"'Come what may come, tyde what may tyde, Lovel shall dwell at Avonsyde.'"

"Is that really true?" asked Phil, his eyes s.h.i.+ning. "I like the words very much. They sound like a kind of speech that the beautiful green lady of the forest would have made; but, Aunt Griselda, I must say it--I am sorry."

"What about, dear?"

"That you are satisfied with me as an heir."

"My dear little Phil, what a queer speech to make. Why should not I be satisfied with a nice, good little boy like you?"

"Oh, yes, you might like me for myself," said Phil; "but as the heir--that is quite a different thing. I'd never picture myself as an heir--never!"

"What do you mean, Phil?"

"I know what I mean, Aunt Griselda, but it's a secret, and I mustn't say. I have a lovely picture in my mind of what the heir ought to be.

Perhaps there is no harm in telling you what my picture is like. Oh, if you only could see him!"

"See whom, Philip?"

"My picture. He is tall and strong and very broad, and he has a look of Rachel, and his cheeks are brown, and his hair is black, and his arms are full of muscle, and his shoulders are perfectly square, and he holds himself up so erect, just as if he was drilled. He is strong beyond anybody else I know, and yet he is kind; he wouldn't hurt even a fly.

Oh, if you only knew him. He's my picture of an heir!"

Phil's face flushed and his lovely eyes shone. Aunt Griselda stooped down and kissed him.

"You are a queer boy," she said. "You have described your ancestor, Rupert Lovel, to the life. Well, child, may you too have the brave and kindly soul. Phil, after the summer, when all is decided, you are to go to a preparatory school for Eton and then to Eton itself. All the men of our house have been educated there. Afterward I suppose you must go to Oxford. Your responsibilities will be great, little man, and you must be educated to take them up properly."

"Mother will be pleased with all this," said Phil; "only I do wish--yes, I can't help saying it--that my picture was the heir. Oh, Aunt Grizel, do, do look at that lovely spider!"

"I believe the boy is more interested in those wretched spiders and caterpillars than he is in all the position and wealth which lies before him," thought Miss Griselda.

Late on that same day she said to Miss Katharine:

"Phil this morning drew a perfect picture, both mental and physical, of our ancestor, Katharine."

"Oh," said Miss Katharine; "I suppose he was studying the portrait.

Griselda, I see plainly that you mean to give the boy the place."

"Provided his mother can prove his descent," answered Miss Griselda in a gentle, satisfied tone. "But of that," she added, "I have not, of course, the smallest doubt."

"Does it occur to you, Griselda, to remember that on the 5th of May Rachel's and Kitty's mother comes here to claim her children?"

"If she is alive," said Miss Griselda. "I have my doubts on that head.

We have not had a line from her all these years."

"You told her she was not to write."

"Yes, but is it likely a woman of that cla.s.s would keep her word?"

"Griselda, you will be shocked with me for saying so, but the young woman who came here on the day our father died was a lady."

"Katharine! she served in a shop."

"No matter, she was a lady; her word to her would be sacred. I don't believe she is dead. I am sure she will come here on the 5th of May."

CHAPTER XXII.--RIGHT IS RIGHT.

When Rupert Lovel and his boy left the gloomy lodgings where Rachel's and Kitty's mother was spending a few days, they went home in absolute silence. The minds of both were so absorbed that they did not care to speak. Young Rupert was a precocious lad, old and manly beyond his years. Little Phil scarcely exaggerated when he drew glowing pictures of this fine lad. The boy was naturally brave, naturally strong, and all the circ.u.mstances of his bringing-up had fostered these qualities. His had been no easy, bread-and-b.u.t.ter existence. He had scarcely known poverty, for his father had been well off almost from his birth; but he had often come in contact with danger, and latterly sorrow had met him.

He loved his mother pa.s.sionately; even now he could scarcely speak of her without a perceptible faltering in his voice, without a dimness softening the light of his bright eagle eyes. Rupert at fifteen was in all respects some years older than an English boy of the same age. It would have struck any parent or guardian as rather ridiculous to send this active, clever, well-informed lad to school. The fact was, he had been to Nature's school to some purpose, and had learned deeply from this most wonderful of all teachers.

When Rupert and his father reached the hotel in Jermyn Street where they were staying, the boy looked the man full in the face and broke the silence with these words:

"Now, father, is it worth it?"