He did not live to be either the one or the other. Some very rough weather off the Cape was fatal to him at a critical point in his illness. How Mrs. Minchin contrived to keep her own feet and to nurse the poor boy as she did was a marvel. He died on her knees.

The weather had been rough up to the time of his death, but it was a calm lovely morning on which his body was committed to the deep. The ship’s bell tolled at daybreak, and all the ladies but the bride were with poor Mrs. Curling at the funeral. Mrs. Seymour lay in her berth, and whined complaints of “that horrid bell.” She displayed something between an interesting terror and a shrewish anger because there was “a body on board.” When she said that the Curlings ought to be thankful to have one child less to provide for, the other ladies hurried indignantly from the cabin.

The early morning air was fresh and mild. The sea and sky were grey, but peaceful. The decks were freshly washed. The sailors in various parts of the ship uncovered their heads. The Colonel and several officers were present. I had earnestly begged to be there also, and finding Mr. George, I stood with my hand in his.

Mrs. Curling’s grief had passed the point of tears. She had not shed one since the boy died, though Mrs. Minchin had tried hard to move her to the natural relief of weeping. She only stood in silent agony, though the Quartermaster’s cheeks were wet, and most of the ladies sobbed aloud.

As the little coffin slid over the hatchway into the quiet sea, the sun rose, and a long level beam covered the place where the body had gone down.

Then, with a sudden cry, the mother burst into tears.

CHAPTER V.

“Any one occupation!” cried Mrs. Buller, to whom he had spoken. “I’m sure, Edward, I’m always busy. I never have a quiet moment from morning to night, it seems to me. But it is so like you men! You can stick to one thing all along, and your meals come to you as if they dropped out of the skies, and your clothes come ready-made from the tailor’s (and very dearly they have to be paid for, too!); and when one is ordering dinner and luncheon, and keeping one’s clothes decent, and looking after the children and the servants, and taking your card, and contriving excuses that are not fibs for you to the people you ought to call on, from week’s end to week’s end—you say one has no occupation.”

“Well, well, my dear,” said the Major, “I know you have all the trouble of the household, but I meant to say that if you had any pursuit, any study——”

“And as to visitors,” continued Aunt Theresa, who always pursued her own train of ideas, irrespective of replies, “I’m sure society’s no pleasure to me; I only call on the people you ought to call on, and keep up a few acquaintances for the children’s sake. You wouldn’t have us without a friend in the world when the girls come out; and really, what with regimental duties in the morning, and insects afterwards, Edward, you are so absorbed, that if it wasn’t for a lady friend coming in now and then, I should hardly have a soul to speak to.”

The Major was melted in a moment.

“I am afraid I am a very inattentive husband,” he said. “You must forgive me, my dear. And this sprained ankle keeping me in makes me cross, too. And I had so reckoned on these days at home to finish my list of Coleoptera, and get some dissecting and mounting done. But to-day, Mrs. Minchin brought her work directly after breakfast, and that empty-headed fellow Elliott dropped in for lunch, and we had callers all the afternoon, and a coterie for tea, and Mrs. St. John (who seems to get through life somehow without the most indefinite notion of how time passes) came in just when tea was over, and you had to order a fresh supply when we should have been dressing for dinner, and the dinner was spoilt by waiting till she discovered that she had no idea (whoever did know her have an idea?) how late it was, and that Mr. St. John would be so angry. And now you want me to go in a cab to a concert at the Rooms to meet all these people over again!”

“I’m sure I don’t care for Mrs. St. John a bit more than you do,” said Mrs. Buller. “And really she does repeat such things sometimes—without ever looking round to see if the girls are in the room. She told me a thing to-day that old Lady Watford had told her.”

“My dear, her ladyship’s stories are well known. Cremorne’s wife hears them from her, and tells them to her husband, and he tells them to the other fellows. I can always hear them if I wish. But I do not care to. But if you don’t like Mrs. St. John, Theresa, what on earth made you ask her to come and sit with you in the morning?”

“Well, my dear, what can I do?” said Mrs. Buller. “She’s always saying that everybody is so unsociable, and that she is so dull, she doesn’t know what to do with herself, and begging me to take my work and go and sit with her in a morning. How can I go and leave the children and the servants, just at the time of day when everything wants to be set going? So I thought I’d better ask her to come here instead. It’s a great bore, but I can keep an eye over the house, and if any one else drops in I can leave them together. It’s not me that she wants, it’s something to amuse her.

“You talk about my having nothing to do,” Aunt Theresa plaintively continued. “But I’m sure I can hardly sleep at night sometimes for thinking of all I ought to do and haven’t done. Mrs. Jerrold, you know, made me promise faithfully when we were coming away to write to her every mail, and I never find time. Every week, as it comes round, I think I will, and can’t. I used to think that one good thing about coming home would be the no more writing for the English mail; but the Indian mail is quite as bad. And I’m sure mail-day seems to come round quicker than any other day of the week. I quite dread Fridays. And then your mother and sisters are always saying I never write. And I heard from Mrs. Pryce Smith only this morning, telling me I owed her two letters; and I don’t know what to say to her when I do write, for she knows nobody here, and I know nobody there. And we’ve never returned the Ridgeways’ call, my dear. And we’ve never called on the Mercers since we dined there. And Mrs. Kirkshaw is always begging me to drive out and spend the day at the Abbey. I know she is getting offended, I’ve put her off so often; and Mrs. Minchin says she is very touchy. And Mrs. Taylor looks quite reproachfully at me because I’ve not been near the Dorcas meetings for so long. But it’s all very well for people who have no children to work at these things. A mother’s time is not her own, and charity begins at home. I’m sure I never seem to be at rest, and yet people are never satisfied. Lady Burchett says she’s certain I am never at home, for she always misses me when she calls; and Mrs. Graham says I never go out, she’s sure, for she never meets me anywhere.”

“Isn’t all that just what I say?” said Major Buller, laying down his knife and fork. (The discussion took place at dinner.) “It’s the tyranny of the idle over the busy; and why, in the name of common sense, should it be yielded to? Why should friends be obliged, at the peril of disparagement of their affection or good manners, to visit each other when they do not want to go—to receive each other when it is not convenient, and to write to each other when there is nothing to say? You women, my dear, I must say, are more foolish in this respect than men. Men simply won’t write long letters to their friends when they’ve nothing to say, and I don’t think their friendships suffer by it. And though there are heaps of idle gossiping fellows, as well as ladies with the same qualities, a man who was busy would never tolerate them to his own inconvenience, much less invite them to persecute him. We are more straightforward with each other, and that is, after all, the firmest foundation for friendship. It is partly a misplaced amiability, a phase of the unselfishness in which you excel us, and partly also, I think, a want of some measuring quality that makes you women exact unreasonable things, make impossible promises, and after blandly undertaking a multiplicity of small matters that would tax the method of a man of business to accomplish punctually, put your whole time at the disposal of every fool who is pleased to waste it.”

“It’s all very well talking, Edward,” said Aunt Theresa. “But what is one to do?”

“Make a stand,” said the Major. “When you’re busy, and can’t conveniently see people, let your servant tell them so in as many words. The friendship that can’t survive that is hardly worth keeping, I think. Eh, my dear?”

But I suppose the stand was to be made further on, for Major Buller took Aunt Theresa to the concert at “the Rooms.”

CHAPTER VI.

We both wish to read the biographies—why should we tease ourselves by sticking obstinately to our first opinion?

No doubt it would be nice to read them “straight through.” But we are rather apt to devour books at a pace unfavourable to book-digestion, so perhaps it will be better still to read them by bits, as one reads a thing that “comes out in numbers.”

And in short, at this point Eleanor took mine, and has read it, and I have read hers. She lays down mine, saying, “But, my dear, you don’t remember all this?”

Which is true. What I have recorded of my first English home is more what I know of it from other sources than what I positively remember. And yet I have positive memories of my own about it, too.

I have hinted that my poor young mother did not look after me much. Also that the Ayah, who had a mother’s love and care for me, paid very little attention to my being tidy in person or dress, except when I was exhibited to “company.”

But my mother was dead. Ayah (after a terrible parting) was left behind in India. And from the time that I passed into Aunt Theresa’s charge, matters were quite changed.

I do remember the dresses I had then, and the keen interest I took in the subject of dress at a very early age. A very keen interest was taken in it by Aunt Theresa herself, by Aunt Theresa’s daughters, and by the ladies of Aunt Theresa’s acquaintance. I think I may say that it formed (at least one of) the principal subjects of conversation during all those working hours of the day which the ladies so freely sacrificed to each other. Mrs. Buller was truly kind, and I am sure that if I had depended in every way upon her, she would have given to my costume as much care as she bestowed upon that of her own daughters. But my parents had not been poor; there was no lack of money for my maintenance, and thus “no reason,” as Aunt Theresa said, why my clothes should not be “decent,” and “decent” with Aunt Theresa and her friends was a synonym for “fashionable.”

Thus my first black frock was such an improvement (in fashion) upon the pink silk one, as to deprive my deep mourning of much of its gloom. Mrs. (Colonel) St. Quentin could not refuse to lend one of her youngest little girl’s frocks as a copy, for “the poor little orphan”; and a bevy of ladies sat in consultation over it, for all Mrs. St. Quentin’s things were well worth copying.

“Keep a paper pattern, dear,” said Mrs. Minchin; “it will come in for the girls. Her things are always good.”

And Mrs. Buller kept a paper pattern.

I remember the dress quite clearly. It is fixed in my mind by an incident connected with it. It had six crape tucks, of which fact I was very proud, having heard a good deal said about it. The first time Mr. George came to our bungalow, after I had begun to wear it, I strutted up to him holding my skirt out, and my head up.

“Look at my black frock, Mr. George,” said I; “it has got six crape tucks.”

Matilda was most precocious in—at least—one way: she could repeat grown-up observations of wonderful length.

“It’s the best crape,” she said; “it won’t spot. Cut on the bias. They’re not real tucks though, Margery. They’re laid on; Mrs. Minchin said so.”

“They are real tucks,” I stoutly asserted.

“No, they’re not. They’re cut on the bias, and laid on to imitate tucks,” Matilda repeated. I think she was not sorry there should be some weak point in the fashionable mourning in which she did not share.

I turned to Mr. George, as usual.

“Aren’t they real tucks, Mr. George?”

But Mr. George had a strange look on his face which puzzled and disconcerted me. He only said, “Good heavens!” And all my after efforts were vain to find out what he meant, and why he looked in that strange manner.

Little things that puzzle one in childhood remain long in one’s memory. For years I puzzled over that look of Mr. George’s, and the remembrance never was a pleasant one. It chilled my enthusiasm for my new dress at the time, and made me feel inclined to cry. I think I have lived to understand it.

But I was not insensible of my great loss, though I took pride in my fashionable mourning. I do not think I much connected the two in my mind. I did not talk about my father to any one but Mr. George, but at night I often lay awake and cried about him. This habit certainly affected my health, and I had become a very thin, weak child when the home voyage came to restore my strength.

By the time we reached Riflebury, my fashionable new dress was neither new nor fashionable. It was then that Mrs. Minchin ferreted out a dressmaker whom Mrs. St. Quentin employed, and I was put under her hands.

The little Bullers’ things were “made in the house,” after the pattern of mine.

“And one sees the fashion-book, and gets a few hints,” said Mrs. Buller.

If Mr. George was not duly impressed by my fashionable mourning, I could (young as I was) trace the effect of Aunt Theresa’s care for my appearance on other friends in the regiment. They openly remarked on it, and did not scruple to do so in my hearing. Callers from the neighbourhood patronized me also. Pretty ladies in fashionably pitched bonnets smiled, and said, “One of your little ones, Mrs. Buller? What a pretty little thing!” and duly sympathized over the sad story which Aunt Theresa seemed almost to enjoy relating. Sometimes it was agony to me to hear the oft-repeated tale of my parents’ death, and then again I enjoyed a sort of gloomy importance which gave me satisfaction. I even rehearsed such scenes in my mind when I was in bed, shedding real tears as (in the person of Aunt Theresa) I related the sad circumstances of my own grief to an imaginary acquaintance; and then, with dry eyes, prolonging the “fancy” with compliments and consolations of the most flattering nature. I always took care to fancy some circumstances that led to my being in my best dress on the occasion.

Gentleman company did not haunt my new home as was the case with the Indian one. But now and then officers of the regiment called on Mrs. Buller, and would say, “Is that poor Vandaleur’s child? Dear me! Very interesting little thing;” and speculate in my hearing on the possibility of my growing up like my mother.

“’Pon my soul, she is like her!” said one of the “middle ones” one day, examining me through his eyeglass, “Th’ same expressive eyes, you know, and just that graceful gracious little manner poor Mrs. Vandaleur had. By Jove, it was a shocking thing! She was an uncommonly pretty woman.”

“You never saw her mother, my good fellow,” said one of the “old ones” who was present. “She had a graceful gracious manner, if you like, and Mrs. Vandaleur was not to be named in the same day with her. Mrs. Vandaleur knew how to dress, I grant you——”

“You may go and play, Margery dear,” said Aunt Theresa, with kindly delicacy.

The “old one” had lowered his voice, but still I could hear what he said, as Mrs. Buller saw.

When my father was not spoken of, my feelings were very little hurt. On this occasion my mind was engaged simply with the question whether I did or did not inherit my mother’s graces. I ran to a little looking-glass in the nursery and examined my eyes; but when I tried to make them “expressive,” I either frowned so unpleasantly, or stared so absurdly, that I could not flatter myself on the point.

The girls were out; I had nothing to do; the nursery was empty. I walked about, shaking out my skirts, and thinking of my gracious and graceful manner. I felt a pardonable curiosity to see this for myself, and, remembering the big glass in Aunt Theresa’s room, I stole out to see if I could make use of it unobserved. But the gentlemen had gone, and I feared that Mrs. Buller might come up-stairs. In a few minutes, however, the door-bell rang, and I heard the sound of a visitor being ushered into the drawing-room.

I seized the chance, and ran to Aunt Theresa’s room.

The mirror was “full length,” and no one could see me better than I now saw myself. Once more I attempted to make expressive eyes, but the result was not favourable to vanity. Then I drew back to the door, and, advancing upon the mirror with mincing steps, I threw all the grace and graciousness of which I was conscious into my manner, and holding out my hand, said, in a “company voice,” “Charmed to see you, I’m sure!”

“Mais c’est bien drôle!” said a soft voice close behind me.

I had not heard the door open, and yet there stood Aunt Theresa on the threshold, and with her a little old lady. The little old lady had a bright, delicately cut face, eyes of whose expressiveness there could be no question, and large grey curls. She wore a large hat, with large bows tied under her chin, and a dark-green satin driving-cloak lined with white and grey fur.

She looked like a fairy godmother, like the ghost of an ancestor—like “somebody out of a picture.” She was my great-grandmother.

CHAPTER VII.

I must certainly have presented a very comical appearance, but the little old lady’s smiles died away, and her eyes filled with tears.

“It is strange, is it not,” she said to Aunt Theresa, “that, after all, I should laugh at this meeting?”

Then, sitting down on a box by the door, she held out her hands to me, saying:

“Come, little Margery, there is no sin in practising one’s good manners before the mirror. Come and kiss me, dear child; I am your father’s father’s mother. Is not that to be an old woman? I am your great-grandmother.”

My great-grandmother’s voice was very soft, her cheek was soft, her cloak was soft. I buried my face in the fur, and cried quietly to myself with shame and excitement; she stroking my head, and saying:

“Pauvre petite!—thou an orphan, and I doubly childless! It is thus we meet at last to join our hands across the graves of two generations of those we love!”

“It was a dreadful thing!” said Mrs. Buller, rummaging in her pocket for a clean handkerchief. “I’m sure I never should forget it, if I lived a thousand years. I never seemed able to realize that they were gone; it was all so sudden.”

The old lady made no answer, and we all wept in silence.

Aunt Theresa was the first to recover herself, and she insisted on our coming down-stairs. A young regimental surgeon and his wife dropped in to lunch, for which my great-grandmother stayed. We were sitting in the drawing-room afterwards, when “Mrs. Vandaleur’s carriage” was announced. As my great-grandmother took leave of me, she took off a watch and chain and hung them on my neck. It was a small French watch with an enamelled back of dark blue, on which was the word “Souvenir” in small pearls.

“I gave it to your grandfather long years ago, my child, and he gave it back to me—before he sailed. I would only part with it to his son’s child. Farewell, petite! Be good, dear child—try to be good. Adieu, Mrs. Buller, and a thousand thanks! Major Buller, I am at your service.”

Major Buller took the hand she held out to him and led the old lady to the front door, whither we all followed them.

Mrs. Vandaleur’s carriage was before the steps. It was a very quaint little box on two wheels, in by no means good repair. It was drawn by a pony, white, old, and shaggy. At the pony’s head stood a small boy in decent, but not smart, plain clothes.

“Put the mat over the wheel to save my dress, Adolphe,” said the old lady; and as the little boy obeyed her order she stepped nimbly into the carriage, assisted by the Major. “The silk is old,” she observed complacently; “but it is my best, of course, or it would not have been worn to-day,” and she gave a graceful little bow towards Aunt Theresa; “and I hope that, with care, it will serve as such for the rest of my life, which cannot be very long.”

“If it wears as well as you do, Madam,” said Major Buller, tucking her in, “it may; not otherwise.”

The Surgeon was leaning over the other side of the little cart, and seemed also to be making polite speeches. It recalled the way that men used to hang upon my mother’s carriage. The old lady smiled, and made gracious little replies, and meanwhile deliberately took off her kid gloves, folded, and put them into her pocket. She then drew on a pair of old worsted ones.

“Economy, economy,” she said, smiling, and giving a hand on each side of her to the two gentlemen. “May I trouble you for the reins? Many thanks. Farewell, gentlemen! I cannot pretend to fear that my horse will catch cold—his coat is too thick; but you may. Adieu, Mrs. Buller, once more. Farewell, little one, I wish you good-morning, Madam. Adolphe, seat yourself; make your bow, Adolphe. Adieu, dear friends!”

She gave a flick with the whip, which the pony resented by shaking his head; after which he seemed, so to speak, to snatch up the little cart, my great-grandmother, and Adolphe, and to run off with them at a good round pace.

“What an extraordinary turn-out!” said the Surgeon’s wife. (She was an Irish attorney’s daughter, with the commonest of faces, and the most unprecedented of bonnets. She and her husband had lately “set up” a waggonette, the expense of which just made it difficult for them to live upon their means, and the varnish of which added a care to life.) “Fancy driving down High Street in that!” she continued; “and just when everybody is going out, too!”

“Uncommon sensible little affair, I think,” said the Surgeon. “Suits the old lady capitally.”

“Mrs. Vandaleur,” said Major Buller, “can afford to be independent of appearances to an extent that would not perhaps be safe for most of us.”

“You’re right there, Buller,” said the Surgeon. “Wonderfully queenly she is! That fur cloak looks like an ermine robe on her.”

“I don’t think you’d like to see me in it!” tittered his wife.

“I don’t say I should,” returned the Surgeon, rather smartly.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Buller, “you must make up your mind to be jealous of the Duchess. All gentlemen are mad about her.”

“The Duchess!” said Mrs. O’Connor, in a tone of respect. “I thought you said——”

“Oh, she is not really a duchess, my dear; it’s only a nickname. I’ll tell you all about it some day. It’s a long story.”

Discovering that Mrs. Vandaleur was a family connection, and not a chance visitor from the neighbourhood, Mrs. O’Connor apologized for her remarks, and tried to extract the Duchess’s history from Aunt Theresa then and there. But Mrs. Buller would only promise to tell it “another time.”

“I’m dying with curiosity,” said Mrs. O’Connor, as she took leave, “I shall run in to-morrow afternoon on purpose to hear all about it. Can you do with me, dear Mrs. Buller?”

“Pray come,” said Aunt Theresa warmly, with an amiable disregard of two engagements and some arrears of domestic business.

I was in the drawing-room next day when Mrs. O’Connor arrived.

“May I come in, dear Mrs. Buller?” she said, “I won’t stay two minutes; but I must hear about the Duchess. Now, are you busy?”

“Not at all,” said Aunt Theresa, who was in the midst of making up her tradesmen’s books. “Pray sit down, and take off your bonnet.”

“It’s hardly worth while, for I can’t stay,” said Mrs. O’Connor, taking her bonnet off, and setting it down so as not to crush the flowers.

As Mrs. O’Connor stayed two hours and a half, and as Aunt Theresa granted my request to be allowed to hear her narrative, I learnt a good deal of the history of my great-grandmother.

CHAPTER VIII.

Years later I used to repeat these histories to girls I was with. When we were on good terms they were interested to hear, as I was proud to tell, and would say, “Tell us about your ancestors, Margery.” And if we fell out there was no surer method of annoying me than to slight the memory of my great-great-grandparents.

I have told their story pretty often. I shall put it down here in my own way, for Aunt Theresa told a story rather disconnectedly.

The de Vandaleurs (we have dropped the de now) were an old French family. There was a Duke in it who was killed in the Revolution of ’92, and most of the family emigrated, and were very poor. The title was restored afterwards, and some of the property. It went to a cousin of the Duke who was murdered, he having no surviving children; but they say it went in the wrong line. The cousin who had remained in France, and always managed to keep the favour of the ruling powers, got the title, and remade his fortunes; the others remained in England, very poor and very proud. They would not have accepted any favours from the new royal family, but still they considered themselves deprived of their rights. One of these Vandaleur émigrés (the one who ought to have been the Duke) had married his cousin. They suffered great hardships in their escape, I fancy, and on the birth of their son, shortly after their arrival in England, the wife died.

There was an old woman, Aunt Theresa said, who used to be her nurse when she was a child, in London, who had lived, as a girl, in the wretched lodgings where these poor people were when they came over, and she used to tell her wonderful stories about them. How, in her delirium (she was insane for some little time before her son was born), Madame de Vandaleur fancied herself in her old home, “with all her finery about her,” as Nurse Brown used to say.

Nurse Brown seems to have had very little sympathy with nervous diseases. She could understand a broken leg, or a fever, “when folks kept their beds”; but the disordered fancies of a brain tried just too far, the mad whims of a lady who could “go about,” and who insisted upon going about, and changing her dress two or three times a day, and receiving imaginary visitors, and ordering her faithful nurse up and down under the names of half-a-dozen servants she no longer possessed, were beyond her comprehension.

Aunt Theresa said that she and her brothers and sisters had the deepest pity for the poor lady. They thought it so romantic that she should cry for fresh flowers and dress herself to meet the Queen in a dirty little lodging at the back of Leicester Square, and they were always begging to hear “what else she did.” But Nurse Brown seems to have been fondest of relating the smart speeches in which she endeavoured to “put sense into” the devoted French servant who toiled to humour every whim of her unhappy mistress, instead of being “sharp with her,” as Nurse Brown advised. Aunt Theresa had some doubts whether Mrs. Brown ever did make the speeches she reported; but when people say they said this or that, they often only mean that this or that is what they wish they had said.

“If she’s mad, I says, shave her head, instead of dressing her hair all day long. I’ve knowed mad people as foamed at the mouth and rolled their eyes, and would have done themselves a injury but for a strait-jacket; and I’ve knowed folks in fevers unreasonable enough, but they kept their beds in a dark room, and didn’t know their own mothers. Madame’s ways is beyond me, I says. You calls it madness: I calls it temper. Tem—per, and no—thing else.”

Aunt Theresa used to make us laugh by repeating Nurse Brown’s sayings, and the little shake of herself with which she emphasized the last sentence.

If she had no sympathy for Madame de Vandaleur, she had a double share for the poor lady’s husband: “a good soul,” as she used to call him. It was in vain that Jeanette spoke of the sweet temper and unselfishness of her mistress “before these terrible days”; her conduct towards her husband then was “enough for” Nurse Brown, so she said. No sooner had the poor gentleman gone off on some errand for her pleasure than she called for him to be with her, and was only to be pacified by a fable of Jeanette’s devising, who always said that “the King” had summoned Monsieur de Vandaleur. Jeanette was well aware that, the childless old Duke being dead, her master had succeeded to the title, and she often spoke of him as Monsieur le Duc to his wife, which seems to have pleased the poor lady. When he was absent, Jeanette’s ready excuse, “Eh, Madame! Pour Monsieur le Duc—le Roi l’a fait appeller,” was enough, and she waited patiently for his return.

Ever-changing as her whims and fancies were, the poor gentleman sacrificed everything to gratify them. His watch, his rings, his buckles, the lace from his shirt, and all the few trifles secured in their hasty flight, were sold one by one. His face was familiar to the keepers of certain stalls near to where Covent Garden Market now stands. He bought flowers for Madame when he could not afford himself food. He sold his waistcoat, and buttoned his coat across him—and looked thinner than ever.

Then the day came when Madame wished, and he could not gratify her wish. Everything was gone. He said, “This will kill me, Jeanette;” and Jeanette believed him.

Nurse Brown (according to her own account) assured Jeanette that it would not. “Folk doesn’t die of such things, says I.”

But, in spite of common-sense and experience, Monsieur de Vandaleur did die of grief, or something very like it, within twenty-four hours of the death of his wife, and the birth of their only son.

For some years the faithful Jeanette supported this child by her own industry. She was an exquisite laundress, and she throve where the Duke and Duchess would have starved. As the boy grew up she kept him as far as possible from common companions, treated him with as much deference as if he had succeeded to the family honours, and filled his head with traditions of the deserts and dignity of the de Vandaleurs.

At last a cousin of Monsieur de Vandaleur found them out. He also was an exile, but he had prospered better, had got a small civil appointment, and had married a Scotch lady. It was after he had come to the help of his young kinsman, I think, that an old French lady took a fancy to the boy, and sent him to school in France at her own expense. He was just nineteen when she died, and left him what little money she possessed. He then returned to England, and paid his respects to his cousin and the Scotch Mrs. Vandaleur.

She congratulated herself, I have heard, that her only child, a daughter, was from home when this visit was paid.

Mrs. Janet Vandaleur was a high-minded, hard-headed, north-country woman. She valued long descent, and noble blood, and loyalty to a fallen dynasty like a Scotchwoman, but, like a Scotchwoman, she also respected capability and energy and endurance. She combined a romantic heart with a practical head in a way peculiar to her nation. She knew the pedigree of every family (who had a pedigree) north of the Tweed, and was, probably, the best housekeeper in Great Britain. She devoutly believed her own husband to be as perfect as mortal man may be here below, whilst in some separate compartment of her brain she had the keenest sense of the defects and weaknesses which he inherited, and dreaded nothing more than to see her daughter mated with one of the helpless Vandaleurs.

This daughter, with much of her mother’s strong will and practical capacity, had got her father’s physique and a good deal of his artistic temperament. Dreading the development of de Vandaleur qualities in her, the mother made her education studiously practical and orderly. She had, like most Scotch matrons of her type, too good a gift for telling family stories, and too high a respect for ancestral traditions, to have quite kept herself from amusing her daughter’s childhood with tales of the de Vandaleur greatness. But after her husband discovered his young relative, and as their daughter grew up, she purposely avoided the subject, which had, probably, the sole effect of increasing her daughter’s interest in the family romance. Mrs. Janet knew the de Vandaleur pedigree as well as her own, and had shown a miniature of the late Duke in his youth to her daughter as a child on many occasions; when she had also alluded to the fact that the title by birth was undoubtedly in the exiled branch of the family. Miss Vandaleur was not ignorant that the young gentleman who had just completed his education was, if every one had their rights, Monsieur le Duc; and she was as much disappointed to have missed seeing him as her mother was glad that they had not met.

For Bertrand de Vandaleur had all the virtues and the weaknesses of his family in intense proportions. He had a hopeless ignorance of the value of money, which was his strongest condemnation before his Scotch cousin. He was high-minded, chivalrous, in some points accomplished, charming, and tender-hearted. But he was weak of will, merely passive in endurance, and quite without energy. He had a graceful, fanciful, but almost weak intellect. I mean, it just bordered on mental deficiency; and at times his dreamy eyes took a wildness that was said to make him painfully like his mother in her last days. He was an absurd but gracefully romantic idea of his family consequence. He was very handsome, and very like the miniature of the late Duke. It was most desirable that his cousin should not meet him, especially as she was of the sentimental age of seventeen. So Mrs. Janet Vandaleur hastened their return from London to their small property in Scotland.

But there was no law to hinder Monsieur de Vandaleur from making a Scotch tour.

One summer’s afternoon, when she had just finished the making of some preserves, Miss Vandaleur strolled down through a little wood behind the house towards a favourite beck that ran in a gorge below. She was singing an old French song in praise of the beauty of a fair lady of the de Vandaleurs of olden time. As she finished the first verse, a voice from a short distance took up the refrain—

“Victoire de Vandaleur! Victoire! Victoire!”

It was her own name as well as that of her ancestress, and she blushed as her eyes met those of a strange young gentleman, with a sketch-book in his hand, and a French poodle at his heels.

“Place aux dames!” said the stranger. On which the white poodle sat up, and his master bowed till his head nearly touched the ground.

They had met once as children, which was introduction enough in the circumstances. Here, at last, for Victoire, was the embodiment of all her dreams of the de Vandaleur race. He was personally so like the miniature, that he might have been the old Duke. He was the young one, as even her mother allowed. For him, he found a companion whose birth did not jar on his aristocratic prejudices, and whose strong character was bone and marrow to his weak one. Before they reached the house Mrs. Janet’s precautions were vain.

She grew fond of the lad in spite of herself. The romantic side of her sympathized with his history. He was an orphan, and she had a mother’s heart. In the direct line he was a Duke, and she was a Scotchwoman. He freely consented to settle every penny he had upon his wife, and, as his mother-in-law justly remarked, “Many a cannier man wouldn’t just have done that.”

In fine, the young people were married with not more than the usual difficulties beforehand.

He was nineteen, and she was seventeen. They were my great-grandfather and great-grandmother.

They had only one child—a son. They were very poor, and yet they gave him a good education. I ought to say, she gave him, for everything that needed effort or energy was done by my great-grandmother. The more it became evident that her Bertrand de Vandaleur was less helpful and practical than any Bertrand de Vandaleur before him, the more there seems to have developed in her the purpose and capability inherited from Mrs. Janet. Like many another poor and ambitious mother, she studied Latin and Greek and algebra that she might teach her son. And at the same time she saved, even out of their small income. She began to “put by” from the boy’s birth for his education, and when the time came he was sent to school.

My grandfather did well. I have heard that he inherited his father’s beauty, and was not without his mother’s sense and energy. He had the de Vandaleur quality of pleasing, with the weakness of being utterly ruled by the woman he loved. At twenty he married an heiress. His parents had themselves married too early to have reasonable ground for complaint at this; but when he left his own Church for that of his wife, there came a terrible breach between them and their only son. His mother soon forgave him; but the father was as immovable in his displeasure as weak people can sometimes be. Happily, however, after the birth of a grandson peace was made, and the young husband brought his wife to visit his parents. The heiress had some property in the West Indies, which they proposed to visit, and they remained with the old people till just before they sailed. It was as a keepsake at parting that my grandfather had restored to his mother the watch which she gave to me. The child was left in England with his mother’s relations.

My grandfather and grandmother never returned. They were among the countless victims of the most cruel of all seas. The vessel they went out in was lost during a week of storms. On what day or night, and in what part of the Atlantic, no one survived to tell.

Their orphan child was my dear father.

CHAPTER IX.

My father was brought up chiefly by his mother’s relations. The religious question was always a difficulty as regarded the de Vandaleurs, and I fancy extended to my own case. My guardians were not my great-grandparents, but Major Buller, and Mr. Arkwright, a clergyman of the Church of England. My great-grandfather and great-grandmother were Roman Catholics. Though not my appointed guardians, they were my nearest relations, and when my great-grandmother had held out her little hand towards me over the side of the pony-carriage and said, “You will let the child come to me? Soon, very soon?” Major Buller had taken her hand in both his, and replied very cordially, “Of course, my dear madam, of course. Whenever it is convenient to yourself and to Mr. de Vandaleur.”

And this promise had stirred my heart with such a flutter of happy expectation as I had not felt since I persuaded my father to promise that I should dine with him, all alone, like a grown-up lady, on that sad birthday on which he died.

It is perhaps useless to try and find reasons for the fancy I took to the “Duchess”—as Aunt Theresa called her—since it was allowed that she fascinated every one who came near her. With the bright qualities which made her admirable in herself, she combined the gracious art of putting other people at ease with themselves; and, remembering how sore the wounds of a child’s self-love are, I think that her kindness must have been very skilful to make me forgive myself for that folly of the looking-glass enough to forget myself in admiration of her.

Like most children, I was given to hero and heroine worship. I admired more than one lady of Aunt Theresa’s acquaintance, and had been fascinated by some others whom I did not know, but had only seen in church, and had longed for the time when I also should no longer trip about in short and simple skirts, and tie up my curls with a ribbon, but should sweep grandly and languidly in to the parade service, bury half a pew under the festoons and furbelows of my silk dress and velvet trimmings, sink into a nest of matchless millinery for the Litany, scent the air with patchouli as I rose for the hymn, examine the other ladies’ bonnets through one of those eyeglasses which are supposed to make it no longer rude to stare, and fan myself from the fatigues of the service during the sermon.

But even the dignity of grown-updom embellished by pretty faces and splendid costumes did not stir my imagination as it was stirred by the sight of my great-grandmother and by the history of her life. It was like seeing the princess of a fairy tale with one’s very own eyes. The faces of the fine ladies I had envied were a little apt to be insipid in expression, and to pass from the memory; but my great-grandmother’s quick, bright, earnest face was not easily to be forgotten. I made up my mind that when I grew up I would not wear a large chignon after all, nor a bonnet full of flowers, nor a dress full of flounces, but a rather short skirt and buckled shoes and grey curls, and a big hat with many bows, and a green satin driving-cloak lined with fur.

How any one, blessed with grown-up freedom of choice, could submit to be driven about by a coach-man in a big carriage, as highly stuffed and uninteresting as a first-class railway carriage, when it was possible to drive one’s self in a sort of toy-cart with a dear white pony as shaggy as a dog, I could not understand. I well knew which I should choose, and I thought so much of it that I remember dreaming that my great-grandmother had presented me with a pony and chaise the counterpart of her own. The dream-joy of this acquisition, and the pride of driving up to the Bullers’ door and offering to take Matilda for an expedition, was only marred by one of those freaks which spoil the pleasure of so many dreams. Just as Matilda appeared, full of gratitude, and with a picnic luncheon in a basket, I became conscious that I was in my night-gown, and had forgotten to dress. Again and again I tried to go back in my dream and put on suitable clothes. I never accomplished it, and only woke in the effort.

In sober daylight I indulged no hope that Mrs. Vandaleur would give me a carriage and pony for my very own, but I did hope that I should go out in hers if ever I went to stay with her. Perhaps sometimes alone, driving myself, with only the rosy-cheeked Adolphe to open the gates and deliver me from any unexpected difficulties with the reins. But I dreamed many a day-dream of the possible delights in store for me with my new-found relatives, and almost counted the hours on the Duchess’s watch till she should send for me.

As it happened, however, circumstances combined for some little time to hinder me from visiting my great-grandmother.

The little Bullers and I had the measles; and when we were all convalescent, Major Buller got two months’ leave, and we went away for change of air. Then small-pox prevailed in Riflebury, and we were kept away, even after Major Buller returned to his duties. When we did return, before a visit to the Vandaleurs could be arranged, Adolphe fell ill of scarlet fever, and the fear of contagion postponed my visit for some time.

I was eight years old when I went to stay at The Vine. This was the name of the little cottage where my great-grandparents lived—so called because of an old vine which covered the south wall on one side of the porch, and crept over a framework upon the roof. I do not now remember how many pounds of grapes it had been known to produce in one season, and yet I ought not to have forgotten, for it was a subject on which my great-grandfather, my great-grandmother, Adolphe, and Elspeth constantly boasted.

“And if they don’t just ripen as the master says they do in France, it’s all for the best,” said Elspeth; “for ripe grapes would be picked all along, and the house not a penny the better for them. But green-grape tarts and cream are just eating for a king.”

Elspeth was “general servant” at my great-grandmother’s. Her aunt Mary had come from Scotland to serve “Miss Victoire” when she first married. As Mary’s health failed, and she grew old, her young niece was sent for to work under her. Old Mary died with her hands in my great-grandmother’s, and Elspeth reigned in her stead.

Elspeth was an elderly woman when I first made her acquaintance. She had a broad, bright, sensible face, and a kindly smile that won me to her. She wore frilled caps, tied under her chin; and as to exchanging them for “the fly-away bits of things servants stick on their heads at the present time,” Elspeth would as soon have thought of abandoning the faith of her fathers. She was a strict but not bitter Presbyterian. She was not tall, and she was very broad; her apparent width being increased by the very broad linen collars which spread, almost like a cape, over her ample shoulders.

My great-grandmother had an anecdote of me connected with this, which she was fond of relating.

“And what do you think of Elspeth, little one?” she had said to me on the first evening of my visit.

“I think she’s very big,” was my reply.

“Certainly, our good Elspeth is as wide as she is tall,” said my great-grandfather, laughing.

I wondered if this were so; and when my great-grandmother gave me a little yard-measure in a wooden castle, which had taken my fancy among the treasures of her work-box, the idea seized me of measuring Elspeth for my own satisfaction on the point. But the silken measure slipped, and caught on the battlements of the castle, and I lost my place in counting the figures, and at last was fain to ask Elspeth herself.

“How tall are you, Elspeth, please? As much as a yard?”

“Ou aye, my dear,” said Elspeth, who was deeply engaged in darning a very large hole in one of my great-grandfather’s socks.

“As much as two yards?” I inquired.

“Eh, no, my dearie,” said Elspeth. “That wad be six feet; and I’m not just that tall, though my father was six feet and six inches.”

“How broad are you, Elspeth, please?” I persisted. “As much as a yard?”

“I’m thinking I will be, my dear,” said Elspeth, “for it takes the full width of a coloured cotton to cut me a dress-front, and then it’s not over-big.”

“Are you as broad as two yards, do you think?” I said, drawing my ribbon to its full length from the castle, and considering the question.

Elspeth shook her head. She was biting the end off a piece of darning-cotton; but I rightly concluded that she would not confess to being two yards wide.

“Please, I have measured Elspeth,” I announced over the tea-table, “and grandpapa is quite right.”

“Eh?” said Mr. Vandaleur, who had a trick of requiring observations to be repeated to him by his wife.

“She says that she has measured Elspeth, and that you are right,” said my great-grandmother. “But about what is grandpapa right, my little one?”

“Grandpapa said that Elspeth is as wide as she is tall,” I explained. “And so she is, for I measured her—at least, the ribbon would slip when I measured her, so I asked her; and she’s a yard tall, but not as much as two yards; and a yard wide, but not as much as two yards. And so grandpapa is right.”

Some of the happiest hours I spent at The Vine were spent in Elspeth’s company. I made tiny cakes, and tarts of curious shapes, when she was busy pastry-making, and did some clear-starching on my doll’s account when Elspeth was “getting-up” my great-grandfather’s cravats.

Elspeth had strong old-fashioned notions of paying respect where it was due. She gave Adolphe a sharp lecture one day for some lack of respect in his manner to “Miss Margery”; and, on the other hand, she taught me to curtsy at the door where I breakfasted with Mr. and Mrs. Vandaleur.

Some dancing lessons that I had had in Riflebury helped me here, and Elspeth was well satisfied with my performance. I felt very shy and awkward the first time that I made my morning curtsy, my knees shaking under me, and Elspeth watching from the passage; but my great-grandfather and mother seemed to take it as a matter of course, and I soon became quite used to it. If Mr. Vandaleur happened to be standing in the room, he always returned my curtsy by a low bow.

I became very fond of my great-grandfather. He was a tall, handsome old man, with high shoulders, slightly bent by age and also by habit. He wore a blue coat with brass buttons, that had been very well made a very long time ago; white trousers, a light waistcoat, a frilled shirt, and a very stiff cravat. On the wall of the drawing-room there hung a water-colour portrait of a very young and very handsome man, with longish wavy hair, features refined to weakness, dreamy, languid eyes, and a coat the very image of my great-grandfather’s. The picture hung near the door; and as Mr. Bertrand Vandaleur passed in or out, I well remember that he almost always glanced at the sketch, as people glance at themselves in passing a mirror.

I was too young then to notice this as being a proof that the drawing was a portrait of himself; but I remember being much struck by the likeness between the coat in the picture and that my great-grandfather wore, and also by the way that the hair was thrown back from the high, narrow forehead, just as my great-grandfather’s grey hairs were combed away from his brow. Children are great admirers of beauty too, especially, I think, of an effeminate style of good looks, and are very susceptible to the power of expression in faces. I had a romantic admiration for “the handsome man by the door,” and his eyes haunted me about the room.

I was kneeling on a chair and examining the sketch one morning, when my great-grandfather came up to me, “Who is it, little one?” said he.

I looked at the picture. I looked at my great-grandfather’s coat. As his eyes gazed steadily into mine, there was a likeness there also; but it was the coat that decided me. I said, “It is you, grandpapa.”

I think this little incident just sealed our friendship. I always remained in high favour with my great-grandfather.

He spent a great deal of his time in painting. He never had, I believe, had any profession. The very small income on which he and his wife had lived was their own private fortune. I often think it must have been a great trial to a woman of my great-grandmother’s energy, that her husband should have made no effort to add to their resources by work of some kind. But then I cannot think of any profession that would have suited him. He was sadly wanting in general capacity, though accomplished much above the average, and with a fine knack in the budding of roses.

I thought him the grandest gentleman that ever lived, and the pleasantest of companions. His weak but lovable nature had strong sympathy with children, I think. I ought to say, with a child; for he would share the fancies and humours of one child companion for hours, but was quite incapable of managing a larger number—as, indeed, he was of any kind of domestic administration or control. Mrs. Vandaleur was emphatically Elspeth’s mistress, if she was also her friend; but in the absence of “the mistress” Elspeth ruled “the master” with a rod of iron.

I quickly gained a degree of power over him myself. I discovered that if I maintained certain outward forms of respect and courtesy, so as not to shock my grandpapa’s standard of good manners, I might make almost any demands on his patience and good-nature. Children and pet animals make such discoveries very quickly, and are apt to use their power somewhat tyrannically. I fear I was no exception to the rule.

CHAPTER X.

I can very clearly remember the sight of my great-grandfather pacing slowly up and down the tiny garden at The Vine, his hands behind him, and followed sedately by Thomas. Now and then he would stop to gaze, with infinite contentment in his eyes, at the delicate blue-grey mist behind the leafless trees (which in that spring sunshine were, no doubt, of much more complex and beautiful colour to him than mere brown), or drinking in the blue of the scillas in the border with a sigh of satisfaction. When he paused, Thomas would pause; as he feasted his eyes, Thomas would rub his head against his master’s legs, and stretch his own. When Elspeth had cooked the fish, and my great-grandmother had made the tea and arranged the flowers on the table, they would come in together and condescend to their breakfasts, with the same air about them both of having no responsibility in life but to find out sunny spots and to enjoy themselves.

My great-grandfather’s most charming paintings were sketches of flowers. Ordinary stiff flower-paintings are of all paintings the most uninteresting, I think; but his were of a very different kind. Each sketch was a sort of idyll. Indeed, he would tell me stories of each as he showed them.

Long as my great-grandfather had lived, he was never a robust man, and Elspeth’s chief ideas on the subject of his sketches bore reference to the colds he had caught, and the illnesses he had induced, by sitting in the east winds or lying on damp grass to do this or that sketch.

“That’ll be the one the master did before he was laid by with the rheumatics,” Elspeth said, when I described one of my favourites to her. It was a spring sketch. My great-grandfather had lain face downwards on the lawn to do it. This was to bring his eyes on a level with the subject of his painting, which was this: a crocus of the exquisite shades of lilac to be seen in some varieties, just full-blown, standing up in its first beauty and freshness from its fringe of narrow silver-striped leaves. The portrait was not an opaque and polished-looking painting on smooth cardboard, but a sketch—indefinite at the outer edges of the whole subject—on water-colour paper of moderate roughness. The throat and part of the cup of the flower stood out from some shadow at the roots of a plant beyond; a shadow of infinite gradation, and quite without the blackness common to patches of shade as seen by untrained eyes. From the level of my great-grandfather’s view, as he lay in the grass, the border looked a mere strip; close behind it was a hedge dividing the garden from a field. Just by the crocus there was a gap in the hedge, which in the sketch was indicated rather than drawn. And round the corner of the bare thorn branches from the hedge-bank in the field there peeped a celandine and a daisy. They were not nearly such finished portraits as that of the crocus. A few telling strokes of colour made them, and gave them a life and pertness that were clever enough. Beneath the sketch was written, “La Demoiselle. Des enfants du village la regardent.”

My great-grandfather translated this for me, and used to show me how the “little peasants,” Marguerite and Celandine, were peeping in at the pretty young lady in her mauve dress striped with violet.

But every sketch had its story, and often its moral; not, as a rule, a very original one. In one, a lovely study of ivy crept over a rotten branch upon the ground. A crimson toadstool relieved the heavy green, and suggested that the year was drawing to a close. Beneath it was written, “Charity.” “Thus,” said my great-grandfather, “one covers up and hides the defects of one he loves.”

A study of gaudy summer tulips stood—as may be guessed—for Pride.

“Pride,” said my great-grandfather, “is a sin; a mortal sin, dear child. Moreover, it is foolish, and also vulgar—the pride of fine clothes, money, equipages, and the like. What is called pride of birth—the dignity of an ancient name—this, indeed, is another thing. It is not petty, not personal; it seems to me more like patriotism—the pride of country.”

I did my best to describe to Elspeth both the sketch and my great-grandfather’s commentary.

“A’ pride’s sinful,” said Elspeth decidedly. “Pride o’ wealth, and pride o’ birth. Not that I’m for objecting to a decent satisfaction in a body’s ain gude conduct and respectability. Pride o’ character, that’s anither thing a’thegither, and to be respectit.”

My great-grandfather gave me a few paints, and under his directions I daubed away, much to my own content. When I was struggling hopelessly with the perspective of some pansies of various colours (for in imitation of him I painted flowers), he would say, “Never mind the shape, dear Marguerite, get the colour—the colour, my child!” And he trained me to a quickness in the perception of colour certainly not common at my age.

I spent many pleasant hours, too, in the less intellectual society of Adolphe. He dug a bed for me in a bit of spare ground, and shaped it like a heart. He laboured constantly at this heart, making it plump by piling up the earth, and cramming it with plants of various kinds—perennials much in want of subdivision, and often in full bloom—which he brought from cottage gardens of “folk he knew,” and watered copiously to “sattle ’em.”

His real name was not Adolphe, but Thomas. As this, however, had created some confusion between him and the cat, my great-grandmother had named him afresh, after a retainer of the de Vandaleurs in days gone by, whose faithful service was a tradition in the family.

I was very happy at The Vine—by day. I feel ashamed now to recall how miserable I was at night, and yet I know I could not help it. In old times I had always been accustomed to be watched to sleep by Ayah. After I came to Aunt Theresa, I slept in the same room with one or more of the other children. At The Vine, for the first time, I slept alone.

This was not all. It was not merely the being alone in the dark which frightened me. Indeed, a curious little wick floating on a cup of oil was lighted at night for my benefit, but it only illumined the great source of the terror which made night hideous to me.

Some French refugee artist, who had been indebted to my great-grandparents for kindness, had shown his gratitude by painting a picture of the execution of that Duc de Vandaleur who perished in the Revolution, my great-grandfather having been the model. It was a wretched daub, but the subject was none the less horrible for that, and the caricatured likeness to my great-grandfather did not make it seem less real or more pleasant.

That execution which was never over, this ghastly head which never found rest in the grave, that awful-looking man who was, and yet was not, Grandpapa—haunted me. They were the cause of certain horrible dreams, which I can remember quite as clearly at this day as if I dreamed them last night, and which I know I shall never forget. The dreams again associated themselves with the picture, and my fears grew instead of lessening as the time went by.

Very late one night Elspeth came in and found me awake, and probably looking far from happy. I had nothing to say for myself, but I burst into tears. Elspeth was tenderness itself, but she got hold of a wrong idea. I was “just homesick,” she thought, and needed to be “away home again,” with “bairns like myself.”

I do not know why I never explained the real reason of my distress—children are apt to be reticent on such occasions. I think a panic seized upon the members of the household, that they were too old to make a child happy. I was constantly assured that “it was very natural,” and I “had been very good.” But I was sent back to Riflebury. No one knew how loth I was to leave, still less that it was to a much older relative than those at The Vine that I owed my expulsion—to my great-great-great-grandfather—Monsieur le Duc de Vandaleur.

Thomas, the cat, purred so loudly as I withdrew, that I think he was glad to be rid of me.

Adolphe alone was against the verdict of the household, and I think believed that I would have preferred to remain.

“I’m sure I thought you was quite sattled, miss,” he said, as he saw me off; and he blubbered like a baby. His transplanted perennials were “sattled” by copious floods of water. Perhaps he hoped that tears would settle me!