Her Little Young Ladyship

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 287, 8 January 1915, Page 11

Her Little Young Ladyship

Copyrieht. 3811. by Allan Maonaiutbton. CHAPTER XVII. THE sun, which shone so hotly down on Dorothy Forbes and Lord Gresham, shone as brightly but more kindly upon the Hon. John Gresham as he stood upon the steps of Glendaire Castle, drawing on his gloves and watching the endearments passing between his nervous chestnut mare and the elderly groom who stood at her head. -'._ "Great old place/' said John as he put his toe into the stirrup and swung himself into the saddle. "Is Pluto chained, Darby?" "He is, your Honor,-' the man answered. "I'm leaving him at home this morning because I intend to ride round the coverts and take a look at the young pheasants." "Well, he's chained, your Honor, out behind the coach house. He's as safe as a church." If Darby's idea of ecclesiastical stability were represented by the security of Pluto his religion must have been in parlous ease, for John, having trotted down the avenue to a point where a turf road branched off from it, was conscious of an irregular banging clatter behind him. Turning in his saddle he discovered Pluto, most docile of blood hounds, in hot etame with his chain, its staple and a section of ancient oak depending from his collar. There was an expression so blended of triumph and appeal ihliis faithful eyes and dripping tongue that John was constrained to dismount to relieve him of his inpediments (though they had not impeded him in the least) and to abandon his design upon the pheasant runs. Even the energetic Dorothy Forbes, seeing Glendaire in the glory of its Maytime, would have understood that a man could find satisfaction there for all his ambition and activities. Hawthorn —pink and white—drooping yellow laburnum, rhododendrons, hprse chestnuts in spiky bloom filled the air with perfume and the land with color. John Gresham as he rode stuck bis cap in his pocket and let the IPfftowering branches brush his hair. And Pluto, at his humbler altitude, pattered through buttercups, daisies, bluebells and violets, cowslips and primroses: "1 never saw," thought the Honorable John as he rode upon his way, "so wonderful a spring as this." • • : ■.✓.'. •■ Irish springs in his era must have been progressively beautiful. ? for 'ea'j-h of them. had earned this encomium. ; . ~.,',.J " ; .. His customary air of heavy and aloof despondency was affected somewhat by the beauty all about'liini. He looked almost happy as he followed the grass roads and reached at last the steep pastures-on the uplands. l There he stopped to speak to a boy in charge of the flocks. His questions so simple and direct that they drew direct and simple answers; even frotn the tortious mind of this peasant lad. It was true enough, as the wandering Pat had told Dorothy, that John knew how to get on with these people. Three minutes sufficed to draw from Rory all the information he possessed or John desired. And several times during his ride he .field other such conversations. With the head gamekeeper, at whose house he stopped, he held longer conference. Everywhere he was dictatorial, masterful, and nowhere was there an insinuation—by so'much as the flicker of an eyelid—that he was not master. Presently he finished his inspection. He looked up at the sun, guessed it to be eleven, corroborated his guess, for he was a man who trusted nature more than watchmakers and liked to put his questions straight to headquarters. It must not "be inferred that he always refused help and advice from other minds. On the contrary, the library of Glendaire Castle, antiquated, priceless and negglected in all other departments, contained the very newest books on natural science. There also might be found much modern and ancient lore of sundials, hedges of box and yew, roses, landscape gardening, shrubs and evergreens, and all that pertairfs to beauty out of doors. > glendaire bore eloquent/ and silent witness to the success with which John studied jnjnd appliedthese gentle arts. Even the man jilimself, doomed from birth to illness and disappointment, showed the softening influence pjf these From time to time he halted in his ride to observe how intelligently Ka'ture had accepted his hints and such assist- " ance as he had given her; how generously she had fulfilled his expectations, how generously she had exceeded his hopes. The picture he had conjured up in the long winter evenings, the growth and maturity he had waited for during many unflowering years, the vistas he hiid cut through obscuring thickets, the surprises he had devised in unexpected spots, all were as his mind's eye had seen Ihem, as his mind's despondent habit had told him they would never be. ;';''Pat had described hjs twin brother as ''cracked about Glendaire," and he had not overstated the case. To Pat the place meant pride and pleasure now and rest in the placid years to come. Its beauty stirred him. Its associations —save those connected with his own parents—sometimes bored and sometimes overwhelmed him. But they never occupied his:-matter of fact attention for very Jong at* ft time. He sincerely loved and pitied his delicate brother; made him; a handsome allowance; paid him a generous salary to act as his agent and left the management of Glendaire absolutely in John's hands, as during his later years the Earl his father had dpne. This had been John's one stipulation:—-He would brook no dictation, no division of authority and responsibility. While Pat was satisfied with his brother's stewardship John would administer the- estate. When Pat ceased to be satisfied

John would resign. He would accept no modification of his dictatorship. And Pat had never tried to interfere in his own smoothly running affairs. He never even asked to see the wheels go round. His cheerful, optimistic nature suffered partial eclipse in his brother's moody presence and he accepted with meekness, though with some amusement, the position of casual guest into which John always forced him. Pat had often writhed in spirit over his five minutes of seniority, and he gladly ignored them when John set him the example. When his African campaigns were over and he had brought back a brother officer to recuperate at Glendaire the stranger had found it difficult indeed to believe that this grave gentleman—so like his friend in face and body, so unlike in mind and bearing—was not indeed the host. He was not a subtle man. Indeed, he belonged to a profession in which subtlety and "too much thinking on the event'' might mean disaster and defeat —but he saw a fact to which every" one had been blind. "That Johnny." he elegantly phrased his discovery, "really believes that the whole little shooting match belongs to him. It's not actm' with him, you know." And long after this Columbus had gone baclr to his regiment "the Johnny" went on believing and every one went on being blind. A little eccentricity of manner might be overlooked in a man carrying the curse and the fear that went always close beside John Gresham. For there was yet another collection of modern books at Glendaire, but not in the pleasant library. They were not even in the chamber called the Oak Room, flanking the great door in which John Gresham and his secretary, young Jarvis Burke, transacted the business of the estate. They were securely locked away in a chest which stood at the foot of John's bed, and they all dealt with one branch of learning—the psychopathic. In vain the local physician and such brighter professional lights as the more violent outbreaks of Gresham's disorder brought to Glendaire, remonstrated with him. The books were written by professional men—forprofessional num. Distinctly with a cold detachment, they set out symptoms, diagnosis a*hd prognosis of epilepsy and its allied horrors of insanity and disease. John Gresham had for .years known quite clearly that neither' life nor death promised much for him. There was no trace of the disease in his ancestry* and he knew that though this fact left his ultimate recovery possible, it also left other unspeakable outcomes equally possible. He knew the nature and the danger of the blasts of Wrath which swept over him, his habitual mood of almost suicidal gloom. He knew, too. what he owed to the quiet, the calm beauty and regular outdoor life which Pat and Glendaire gave him. In all his morbid reading regularity in life and an open air existence were insisted upon. Well, he had them, and they meant his chance; his chance for life and sanity and happiness. J4ife happiness was not so far from the Honorable John as his customary gravity would suggest. It was within a half hour's ride from one of his battlemented gates,and on the morning that Pluto put the young pheasants out of the question and into the future John turned his horse's head toward Renira Banbridge. His own heart always turned toward her in pleasureas in sorrow, and to-day it was the hope of pleasure which drew him to her; the hope of inducing her to return to Glendaire with him for lunch and an hour among the rhododendrons afterward. And so eager was he in this desire that he neither faltered nor drew rein at the necessity of inviting one of Renira's sisters to the former and more substantial feast. CHAPTER XVIII. Sir Richard Banbridge, Bart,, J. P., &c, was sunning himself in a bevy of pointers and setters upon the steps of "The Monastery." He wore an old hunting coat and a general air of the sportsman in the off season, and he smoked a short pipe and read a pink paper with most pictorial effect. Had Sir Richard wished to bask in the light of gentler society he might easily have done so, for the Monastery, untrue to all its traditions and vows, furnished sanctuary to no less than four examples of feminine charm. Lady Banbridge and her youngest daughter, the Renira of John Gresham's < dreams, represented Beauty mature and in the bud. Joan and Betty represented Mind, triumphant and militant. Renira's ambition was to satisfy John Gresham's love. Joan liveki in the hope of some day devoting herself actively to the propaganda for women's suffrage. Betty had already devoted herself to the study of Gaelic and spent her days in vivid and hairy tweeds, uncomfortable, but of native manufacture. In the evening she blossomed out in native lace and poplin as beautiful as her morning things were hideous. Now, it happened, strangely enough, that these two intellectual sisters were remarkably stupid looking. Their long, heavy faces suggested the portraits left to us of George Eliot; like her, I hey' bore a far away but unmistakable resemblance to a tired horse. This-equine cast of feature might have been' expected to endear them to their father, but did not. He was frankly bored and puzzled by them. But Renira, who was, as her sisters lost no opportunity of pointing out to her, more illogical, flippant and 1 ignorant than they could have believed possible in a human adult, had a face which sparkled with intelligence. Her blue eyes saw everything within their range, her quick tongue found words and comment of a sort which froze her sisters' erudition in their throats—for all that her eyes fell upon. Joan and Betty, stiff and silent, were accus-, tomed to accept congratulations upon their possession of so clever and entertaining a sister. Accustomed, but not resigned. They knew that once started upon their own beloved topics they could out-talk Renira, who ■■ had not a single conviction tosustain her con-

versation. It is possible that the guests knew this also. It is certain that they abstained from assisting the sisters to mount their hobbies and always dragged them off when they managed to get a leg over on their own account. Sir Richard, their sire, and as much a stranger to them as any wandering guest could be, also preferred the more responsive Renira to her inconvenient sisters. He considered Betty to be only a little less than a lunatic and a good deal less than a lady since she had tried to convert him to wear a kilt and let his hair grow long. "Bless, my soul, woman!" he remonstrated. "Do you want to take my breeches from me? A pretty figure I'd cut in the hunting field without 'em." . It w T as characteristic of Sir Richard that he saw himself always in the hunting field and costume. As a matter of fact, he was- rarely seen out of them. "A M F H in ettieoats!" he chuckled, "the dogs themselves would be laughing at me, to say nothing of the horses." "But your ancestors, the origiral Celts, wore kilts," Betty urged with a blv *h. She might

or might not have convictions, but she certainly had very proper feelings, and this conversation was playing havoc with them. Only her strong devotion to the cause could have induced her to embark upon the subject of kilts with a gentleman, even with an elderly gentleman. To hear the matter treated with flippancy was almost too much to bear. Yet what save flippancy could have prompted his next remark?

"Because they hadn't anything else to wear, my love. And even if I should give you my breeches, which I have no intention of doing, how do I know the matter would end there? In a month or two you'd burrow back to some more remote forefather and try to make me swap my kilts for a string of cockle shells. Reform yourself, my dear, as much as you will. Any change would be for the better. But, by heavenj you must leave me my breeches!" And Betty, blushing an unbecoming brick color, removed herself and her suggestion. It must lie admitted that in the privacy of the old schoolroom, now the study, she wept. It must also be admitted that her father guessed that she would and found the idea highly diverting. From which it will appear that Sir Richard's sense of humor was of a robust kind. It ...was a little like the tigers he had travelled to Africa to kill and whose skins on the drawing room floor proved so many snares to the unwarned and unexpectiug. Its smile w r as so wide as to be nearly a snarl. It may be remarked that Sir Richard's wife was devoted to the tiger skins. They represented the intervals of peace which had made her married life bearable, Reiiira, the youngest daughter of this happy union, scorned the tigers. "Twelve of you." she would reproach them, "and only one of him! You might have seized upon your opportunity—and upon him. I'm

ashamed of you!" Sir Richard was one of those men of whom absence made his womenkind fonder. His final exit would have roused their absolute devotion. But he was very popular in the country and he had been known to stay up all night with a sick cow. He was in the habit of referring to that cow. The story of his nervous collapse when she was definitely out of danger had edified many a dinner table. The climax ran:— "An' there was I, blubberin' like a fool, 1 give you my word. An' there was she, breath in' sweet and steady., with her head on an armful of hay. . I never was so moved in my life." It was often said Hint Sir Richard's wife did not appreciate him. Her reception of this touching narrative gave color to the rumor. But it was not generally understood that by some trick of the mind the story of the cow's head on the armful of straw alw r ays suggested to her the picture of a child's golden head on a pillow, her own head laid down beside it and her husband's voice, in a tone utterly unlike that which he employed for the cow story, saying to her: : — "It's all over, I tell you. That child is dead.

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•Stop your blubberin'. Ar'eju t three girls enough for any man io feed and clothe? Now, if it had been a boy"—— And alter a, long space, a mercifully long space, the voice again:— "What did you call this one? There is to be an entry or something on the parish books, and I can't remember the silly name you gave it. Stop that noise, 1 say J" It was as true, as it was frequently remarked, that Mrs. Banbridge's opinion of her husband varied from that of those neighbors who knew him slightly. She, too, never forgave the desultory tigers. CHAPTER XIX. Renira and John easily persuaded Betty to act as their chaperon. Indeed, Betty required no persuasion. She? seized upon any opportunity of visiting Glendaire, for she had undertaken to convert John's secretary, young Jarvis Burke, to the Gaelic-revival and propaganda. Suitable candidates for conversion were rare in that immediate neighborhood, and young Jarvis promised well, though as yet she had made no attempts upon his costume. Also there were certain old manuscript volumes in the Glendaire library relating to the days in which her imagination loved most to linger. In the library, therefore, she and young Burke whiled away the sunny afternoon hours, while John and Renira went about the grounds. Renira, in her riding habit, looked very sweet and boyish, and John's heart stirred a little out of its accustomed beat as he imagined what life would be with Renira always there, and with no superintelligent Betty to be propitiated and soothed with minds to con-

e quer. John decided lo let that enthusiast try I the housekeeper next and then the other serr vauts. But the end would come some time. p After the scullery maids, what? John wonY dered. ? Renira wandered from place to place, recogf nizing old friends among the flower beds and 7 being- introduced to new ones; marvelling • upon the growth of tm> clambering rose whieb spanned the arch between the formal Italian - garden and the wild border land beyond, where the close clipped hawthorn hedges be--1 came trees of wonderful bloom and where the flowers requiring little cultivation stood 1 sturdily and laughed at those recently trans--3 planted from the hot houses. Renira was sit- • ting on the edge of the fountain feeding the ? goldfish and wishing that the "Monastery'* | boasted some fuch attraction. * "But father wouldn't hear of our having J them," she complained. "He thinks everyJ thing but horses an extravagance." s 3 "I shouldn't interfere with him on that subject if I Were you," said John, "not, at least, as long as he'd let me ride his horses." "Oh, we get plenty of riding," she admitted. "In the hunting season, you know, we get nearly too much; but A do wish he'd give us something to spend on the place and the house. He's done absolutely nothing to it since his father died and we came in for it. And that was before you began at this. Yet see how beautiful, how wonderful you have made these gardens and the house! Even I can remember it as being so different." , "I have been getting it ready for you," said John, taking his place beside her, "And I think it is nearly ready now." Suddenly all her gayety died and her eyes filled with tears. The air of false proprietorship always made her miserable. "Don't, dear, don't," she pleaded. "You: know w r e agreed never to speak of it." "Never while it was hopeless," he corrected. "But I'm beginning to see light ahead. Listen, darling, I've been perfectly well for nearly, three years, and you know 7 the doctors said that after three years it would'be-safe"—— '•'"' "Yes, yes, I know," she interrupted, with a vivid blush, "but I'm wiser now than when you spoke of this before; and I'm afraid, dear> that it won't do yet. What you said a moment ■"■ ago about -getting,, this place ready for, me is very sweet and very, lovelike and verykind"——r- •' . . _ ■..•'-.. ...-' "And literally true," her lover assured -her. * "I hardly ever think of it except in relation to you—-to the time w r hen you'll always be here with me.":--"Yes, dear, ye% I know, you look forward always to having but think, John; think hard, and answer truly:—Do you overlook forward to having without the place?" lie answeree!,' after a ' pause. # "Never! . I can't imagine any other life for us than this—l won't live any other life, and if Pat thinks that his five minutes' advantage of me gives him the right to interfere with my life he is very much mistaken. Look here, Renira, you' know I am fond of you, but I give you my w r ord I'd sh'Opt him like a dog if he ever tried to lord it over .rile' and the place/;' here." •■ • *■■ ; _/ '".,.. "_.',""_' '"'.'" "Dear John," .s,aid^ : lJe.nwa,.,."don't talk so wildly. You know you wouldn't injure Pat for all the gold in Goiconda." "I'm not talking about gold. It's this place that 1 have made and loved and lived for. What did he ever do that it should be his? 1 swear to you I'll never let him take it from me." "I can't bear t<y hear you talk this way," cried poor Renira. "You know it's not true." "It's quite true. I intend to let you see w T hat sort of man I really am. When our marriage" Renira stretched a little hand toward him, and he held it in both of his as he went on. "W T hen our marriage, sweetheart, seemed as far away as the clouds it would have been a crime to tell you anything which might have v , destroyed your love for your worthless lover. The better you thought me then the happier for you. But now that Pat seems likely to go on travelling about as he has all these years back and to leave me in possession here; now that the enemy seems to be scotched at least (for three year!s is a long time, my darling)— now I w r ant yb.ii ito think seriously all over « , again about niarrying me, and you can't do that unless I jtell you what sort of beast I am. You know that you and the place are the only things in jthe world l\are for, because I have never forgiven my mother for the five minutes whichimade an earl of Pat and a hire-" ling of me." j "Oh, my dear," she remonstrated. "My dear, my dear!" ! "Yes, I know, I know it's shocking, unfilial and all that sort of thing, but I'm telling you to-day the absolute truth about myself, and that's a part of it. I hate my mother." "I know," she said. "I've always known, K ut it's terrible to hear you say it." "And when Pat was in South Africa and the lists *of wounded began to pour in I used to feel that I would give anything on earth to read his name among the dead." Renira started up somewhat wildly. "No, no, John," she cried, "you cannot mean what you are saying. For God's sake, John, don't say that you wanted Pat out of the way; you know he loves you and that he would*never think of interfering here." "It was all on your account," said John, looking sombrely lip at her. "Oh, don't, John, hold me responsible," she wailed; say it was all for me. You love the place morej John—you know you do." "Love it?" hf 'echoed. "Aye, more than any of you will ever know. You know that, Renira —you always have known it—and now you know the! rest —that, if you marry me* you will have a husband consumed withcovetousness, rusted with envy, perverted and bitter by an accident!of five minutes." "I will be jmarried to. the man I love," Renira answered, "and tlmt's all I ask of life." ■ ■ • i ■ (To Be Coiuiuucd).