Heriot's Choice Part 3

'I hope so, before the hand has lost its cunning. But I am too egotistical. And so you are going to take Polly from me--from Dad Fabian, ay?'--looking at the young girl fondly.

'Indeed, Mr. Fabian, I must thank you for your goodness to my ward. Poor child! she would have fared badly without it. Polly, you must ask Miss Lambert to bring you to see this kind friend again.'

'Nay, nay; this is a poor place for ladies to visit,' replied the other, hastily, as he brushed away the fragment of a piece of snuff with a trembling hand; but he looked gratified, notwithstanding. 'Polly has been a good girl--a very good girl--and weathered gallantly through a very ticklish illness, though some of us thought she would never reach England alive.'

'Were you so ill, Polly?' inquired her guardian anxiously.

'Dad Fabian says so; and he ought to know, for he and Mrs. Rogers nursed me. Oh, he was so good to me,' continued Polly, clinging to him. 'He used to sit up with me part of the night and tell me stories when I got better, and go without his dinner sometimes to buy me fruit. Mrs. Rogers was good-natured, too; but she was noisy. I like Dad Fabian's nursing best.'

'You see she fretted for her father,' interposed the artist. 'Polly's one of the right sort--never gives way while there is work to be done; and so the strain broke her down. She has lost most of her pretty hair.

Ellison used to be so proud of her curls; but it suits her, somehow. But you must not keep your new friends waiting, my child. There, G.o.d bless you! We shall be seeing you back again here one of these days, I dare say.'

Mildred felt as though her new life had begun from the moment the young stranger crossed her threshold. Polly bade her guardian good-bye the next day with unfeigned regret. 'I shall always feel I belong to him, though he cannot have me to live with him,' she said, as she followed Mildred into the house. 'Papa told me to love him, and I will. He is different, somehow, from what I expected,' she continued. 'I thought he would be gray-haired, like papa. He looks younger, and is not tall. Papa was such a grand-looking man, and so handsome; but he has kind eyes--has he not, Aunt Milly?--and speaks so gently.'

Mildred was quite ready to p.r.o.nounce an eulogium on Dr. Heriot. She had already formed a high estimate of her brother's friend; his ready courtesy and highly-bred manners had given her a pleasing impression, while his gentleness to his ward, and a certain lofty tone of mind in his conversation, proved him a man of good heart and of undoubted ability. There was a latent humour at times discernible, and a certain caustic wit, which, tinged as it was with melancholy, was highly attractive. She felt that a man who had contrived to satisfy Betha's somewhat fastidious taste could not fail to be above the ordinary standard, and, though she did not quite echo Polly's enthusiasm, she was able to respond sympathetically to the girl's louder praise.

Before many days were over Polly had transferred a large portion of loving allegiance to Mildred herself. Women--that is, ladies--had not been very plentiful in her small circle. One or two of the artists'

wives had been kind to her; but Polly, who was an aristocrat by nature, had rather rebelled against their want of refinement, and discovered flaws which showed that, young as she was, she had plenty of discernment.

'Mrs. Rogers was noisy, and showed all her teeth when she laughed, and tramped as she walked--in this way;' and Polly brought a very slender foot to prove the argument. And Mrs. Hornby? Oh, she did not care for Mrs. Hornby much--'she thought of nothing but smart dresses, and dining at the restaurant, and she used such funny words--that men use, you know. Papa never cared for me to be with her much; but he liked Mrs.

Rogers, though she fidgeted him dreadfully.'

Mildred listened, amused and interested, to the girl's prattle. The young creature on the stool at her feet was conversant with a life of which she knew nothing, except from books. Polly would chatter for hours together of picture-galleries and museums, and little feasts set out in illuminated gardens, and of great lonely churches with swinging lamps, and little tawdry shrines. Monks and nuns came familiarly into her reminiscences. She had had _gateau_ and cherries in a convent-garden once, and had swung among apple-blossoms in an orchard belonging to one.

'I used to think I should like to be a nun once,' prattled Polly, 'and wear a great white flapping cap, as they did in Belgium. Soeur Marie used to be so kind. I shall never forget that long, straight lime-walk, where the girls used to take their recreation, or sit under the cherry-trees with their lace-work, while Soeur Marie read the lives of the saints. Do you like reading the lives of the saints, Aunt Milly? I don't. They are glorious, of course; but it pains me to know how uncomfortable they made themselves.'

'I do not think I have ever read any, Polly.'

'Have you not?'--with a surprised arching of the brows. 'Soeur Marie thought them the finest books in the world. She used to tell me stories of many of them; and her face would flush and her eyes grow so bright, I used to think she was a saint herself.'

Mildred rarely interrupted the girl's narratives; but little bits haunted her now and then, and lingered in her memory with tender persistence. What sober prose her life seemed in contrast to that of this fourteen-years' old girl! How bare and empty seemed her niche compared to Polly's series of pictures! How clearly Mildred could see it all! The wandering artist-life, in search of the beautiful, poverty oppressing the mind less sadly when refreshed by novel scenes of interest; the grave, taciturn Philip Ellison, banis.h.i.+ng himself and his pride in a self-chosen exile, and training his motherless child to the same exclusiveness.

The few humble friends, grouped under the same roof, and sharing the same obscurity; stretching out the right hand of fellows.h.i.+p, which was grasped, not cordially, but with a certain protest, the little room which Polly described so graphically being a less favourite resort than the one where Dad Fabian was painting his Tobit.

'It was only after papa got so ill that Mrs. Rogers would bring up her work and sit with us. Papa did not like it much; but he was so heavy that I could not lift him alone, and, noisy as she was, she knew how to cheer him up. Dad suited papa best: they used to talk so beautifully together. You have no idea how Dad can talk, and how clever he is. Papa used to say he was one of nature's gentlemen. His father was only a working man, you know;' and Polly drew herself up with a gesture Mildred had noticed before, and which was to draw upon her later the _soubriquet_ of 'the princess.'

'I think none the less of him for that,' returned Mildred, with gentle reproof.

'You are not like papa then,' observed Polly, with one of her pretty gestures of dissent. 'It fretted him so being with people not nice in their ways. The others would call him milord, and laugh at his grand manners; but all the same they were afraid of him; every one feared him but I; and I only loved him,' finished Polly, with one of her girlish outbursts of emotion, which could only be soothed by extra petting on Mildred's part.

Mildred's soft heart was full of compa.s.sion for the lonely girl. Polly, who cried herself to sleep every night for the longing for her lost father, often woke to find Mildred sitting beside her bed watching her.

'You were sleeping so restlessly, I thought I would look in on you,' was all she said; but her motherly kiss spoke volumes.

'How good you are to me, Aunt Milly,' Polly would say to her sometimes.

'I am getting to love you more every day; and then your voice is so soft, and you have such nice ways. I think I shall be happy living with you, and seeing my guardian every day; but we don't want Olive and Chrissy, do we?'--for Mildred had described the vicarage and its inhabitants--'It will feel as though we were in a beehive after this quiet little nest,' as she observed once. Mildred smiled, as she always did over Polly's quaint speeches, which were ripe at times with an old-fas.h.i.+oned wisdom, gathered from the stored garner of age. She would ponder over them sometimes in her slow way, when the girl was sleeping her wet-eyed sleep.

Would it come to her to regret the quietness of life which she was laying by for ever as a garment that had galled and fretted her?--that life she had inwardly compared to a dead mill-stream, flecked only by the shadow and sunlight of perpetually recurring days? Would there come a time when the burden and heat of the day would oppress her?--when the load of existence would be too heavy to bear, and even this retrospect of faint gray distances would seem fair by contrast?

Women who lead contemplative and sedentary lives are overmuch given to this sort of morbid self-questioning. They are for ever examining the spiritual mechanism of their own natures, with the same result as though one took up a feeble and growing plant by the root to judge of its progress. They spend labour for that which is not bread. By and by, out of the vigour of her busy life, Mildred learnt the wholesome sweetness of a motto she ever afterwards cherished as her favourite: _Laborare est orare_. Polly's questions, direct or indirect, sometimes ruffled the elder woman's tranquillity, however gently she might put them by. 'Were you ever a girl, Aunt Milly?--a girl like me, I mean?' And as Mildred bit her lip and coloured slightly at a question that would have galled any woman of eight-and-twenty, she continued, caressingly, 'You are so nice; only just a trifle too solemn. I think, after all, I would rather be Polly than you. You seem to have had no pictures in your life.'

'My dear child, what do you mean?' returned Mildred; but she spoke with a little effort.

'I mean, you don't seem to have lived out pretty little bits, as I have.

You have walked every day over that common and down those long white sunny roads, where there is nothing to imagine, unless one stares up at the clouds--just clouds and dust and wheel-ruts. You have never gone through a forest by moonlight, as I have, and stopped at a little rickety inn, with a dozen _Jager_ drinking _lager-bier_ under the linden-trees, and the peasants dancing in their _sabots_ on a strip of lawn. You have never----' continued Polly breathlessly; but Mildred interrupted her.

'Stop, Polly; I love your reminiscences; but I want to ask you a question. Is that all you saw in our walk to-day--clouds and dust and wheel-ruts?'

'I saw a hand-organ and a lazy monkey, and a bra.s.s band, driving me frantic. It made me feel--oh, I can't tell you how I felt,' returned Polly, with a grimace, and putting up her hands to her delicate little ears.

'The music was bad, certainly; but I found plenty to admire in our walk.'

Polly opened her eyes. 'You are not serious, Aunt Milly.'

'Let me see: we went across the common, and then on. My pictures are very humble ones, Polly; but I framed at least half-a-dozen for my evening's refreshment.'

Polly drew herself up a little scornfully. 'I don't admire monkeys, Aunt Milly.'

'What sort of eyes have you, child?' replied Mildred, who had recovered her cheerfulness. 'Do you mean that you did not see that old blind man with the white beard, and, evidently, his little grand-daughter, at his knees, just before we crossed the common?'

'Yes; I noticed she was a pretty child,' returned Polly, with reluctant candour.

'She and her blue hood and tippet, and the great yellow mongrel dog at her feet, made a pretty little sketch, all by themselves; and then, when we went on a little farther, there was the old gipsy-woman, with a handsome young ne'er-do-weel of a boy. Let me tell you, Polly, Mr.

Fabian would have made something of his brown skin and rags. Oh, what rags!'

'She was a horrid old woman,' put in Polly, rather crossly.

'Granted; but, with a clump of fir-trees behind her, and a bit of sunset-clouds, she made up a striking picture. After that we came on a flock of sheep. One of them had got caught in a furze-bush, and was bleating terribly. We stood looking at it for full a minute before the navvy kindly rescued it.'

'I was sorry for the poor animal, of course. But, Aunt Milly, I don't call that much of a picture.'

'Nevertheless, it reminded me of the one that hangs in my room. To my thinking it was highly suggestive; all the more, that it was an old sheep, and had such a foolish, confiding face. We are never too old to go astray,' continued Mildred, dreamily.

'Three pictures, at least we have finished now,' asked Polly, impatiently.

'Finished! I could multiply that number threefold! Why, there was the hay-stack, with the young heifers round it; and that red-tiled cottage, with the pigeons tumbling and wheeling round the roof, and the flower-girl asleep on my own doorstep, with the laburnum shedding its yellow petals on her lap, to the great delight of the poor sickly baby.

Come, Polly; who made the most of their eyes this evening? Only clouds, dust, and wheel-ruts, eh?'

'You are too wise for me, Aunt Milly. Who would have thought you could have seen all that? Dad Fabian ought to have heard you talk! We must go out to-morrow evening, and you shall show me some more pictures. But doesn't it strike you, Aunt Milly'--leaning her dimpled chin on her hand--'that you have made the most of very poor material? After all'--triumphantly--'there is not much in your pictures!'

CHAPTER III

VIa TEBAY

'All the land in flowing squares.