The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-06-11 00:00:00

NOBLER THAN REVENGE.

BY TEN
Author of" The Heiress of dtherstone Group?

• CHAPTER 111,
A GOLDEN FUTURE.

"Tie expectation makes a blessing dear—
Heaven were not heaven if we knew what it were.
—SIR JOHN SUCKLING.

WHILE Mrs. Jarvis wrote her note—a civil one for
once—to her husband, the two young men made
themselves agreeable to the girls, and well-nigh
turned their prim young heads with lively chat about
the world outside Campsie House and its admirably.
kept gardens. Mrs. Jarvis had been rather taken
with the name of the house when her husband bought
It. He had felt inclined to do away with the very
conspicuous lettering that adorned the gate, and call
his dwelling by a simpler name, but his wife decided
that it sounded important, and kept it.
The lawyer would have had the pretty shrubbery,
with its tangle of wild flowers, that gave such a rural
air to one corner of the grounds, kept as it was, and a
rustic summer house in it put into repair; but Mrs.
Jarvis had decided that the wild nook was 'untidy,'
and the summer house spidery,' and had them both
demolished, and a kitchen garden, with a useful
brick wall for fruit, established in their place. Nothing
was pretty in her eyes that was not useful as well.
There was no room for the imagination to run riot at
Campsie house, nor any chance of the girls ever lrsing
themselves in dreams of what had happened in that
house and its gardens in olden times, when
hoops and ruffles were the order of the day, and gen-
tlemen walked about in lace coats and carried swords
to show how careful they were of their honour and
their lives.
It was an old hou-e, dating from the days of the
First Chalice, and had fine rooms in it still, though it
bad been much modernised, and had trees in its
garden which were as old as itself; but its aspect wag
decidt d'y marred by the extreme primness of its
modern owners—or rather the wife of its owner—
who liked everything about her to look as orderly as
the squares of a chessboard.
Beastly tidy, isn't it?' had been Frank Hatherleigh's
sotto voce remark as he and his cousin came up the
drive to the spotless steps ; and the Rev. Horace had
laughed, and said:
'My dear Frank, a place can't be too tidy.'
Oh, yes, it can.' the younger man replied. I
don't like to see a littered garden myself, but this is—
well, it's Mrs. Jarvis, and nothing more can be said
about it:
No wonder the hearts of the Misses Jarvis fluttered
a little as the two young men entered the room. Any
girl might have been pleased to greet either of them.
Frank Hatherleigh was the very personification of a
light hearted young Englishman; he was fair and
strikingly hardsome, with a face that never would
look old if he lived to the age of Methusaleh, and an
easy, upright carriage, that spoke of perfect health
and a wea-knit figure. His hair was brown, and his
eyes were —well, when his friends wanted to enrage
him they told him they were blue. He declared only
girls and dolls had blue eyes; they had been blue as a
child, but time had deepened them into grey—good
honest ones that were never ashamed to look any one
in the face. They were of quite a different colour
from Helen Ramsay's soft b.-own eyes, and yet there
was a resemblance—l think it was ili the perfect
truthfulness and honesty of their expression.
For the rest, Frank's face bore another resemblance
to that of his betrothed. He was singularly good-
looking, without having, perhaps, a perfect feature.
His cousin, and bosom friend, the Rev. Horace
Gaylord, who accompanied him had not an imperfect
one, except, perhaps, that the lips that gave ex-
pression to his scholarly sermons and beautiful read-
ing, were a little too thin and too tightly set together
for perfect beauty. The ladies voted him with one
accord the handsomest man that ever stepped into a
pulpit, and fell down and worshipped him according
to the fashion of the sex when they meet with a
clerical Adon's.
He was dark of complexion, and his hair was as
nearly black as is ever Been in this country. But the
contour of his face was perfect, and his eyes were
dark and more piercing than melting. When he
stepped into the reading desk on Sunday, his fine
head showing grandly above his white vestments, and
his exquisitely-shaped hand, with its well-chosen
diamond on the third finger, moving over the pages
of the book before him—there was always a sort of
rustle of admiration amongst his feminine hearers—a
sort of sigh of praise that made itself perceptible
throughout the church. And he had a voice that
matched hie appearance sweet and sonorous, a voice
that could ring out clear and thrilling like a bell, or
spread itself all over the place in soft whisper-like
sounds that everyone could hear, notwithstanding
their low tones.
Horace Gaylord's voice was an inheritance from h's
mother. of whom very little was known. His father,
Frank Hat berleigh's mother's brother, had been a fair,
slight man; like his sister, from whom Frank inherited
h;s blue eyes and English complexion. The two had
been the only children of a gentleman, who bad fallen
into difficulties, and left England when they were
young. -
The girl had grown up and married, and gone
to India with her husband to die there,
leaving her little boy to become in time the
ward of Mr. Jarvis. The boy had taken his life
into his own hands from the time that Ile was
sixteen years of age, and almost a stranger to his
sister, whose senior he was by some ten years. But
little was heard of him for many years, when he sud-
denly appeared in England with a wife and fortune—
at least, so the gossips said—and settled down on a
small estate in Warwickshire as a country gentleman
in a small way.
No one knew who his wife was, though there were
many rumours about her; some said she was an act r ess,
some a singer, some averred that they had seen her at
Franconi's leaping over banners and riding wild horses
of the prairie in short skirts and fleshings. Some
were un elaritable enough to hint at worse than that,
and to declare that Mr. Gaylord would not dare to
explain in any respectable society where he picked up
the beautiful woman whom he had brought home to
be the head of his household. There was enough
curiosity about him and his wife to incite the people
who make it their business to find out everything, to
discover when and where he had married the hand-
some fort igner, for she was a foreigner, hardly speak-
ing intelligili!o English, and strange to all our manners
and customs.
The marriage was all satisfactory enough. The lady
was a married woman, and might be visited as far as
tbat went. At the English Embassy at Vienna there
was the record of the marriage of Horace Attwell
Gaylord to Annette Waldburg. The lady's parentage
was given, but it told nothing. Indeed, it could
hardly do so, rieeing that the young lady had fore•
sworn her real name for some time, and had been
singing in the chorus of the opera at Milan, under the
name of Madlle. L'Etoille. It was her voice that had
attracted the impressionable young Englishman, who
had heard her singing to herself one summer evening
as he was passing under the wing of the ricketty old
house in which she rented a third-storey room in con-
junction with a friend of her own rank in the
theatre.
The admiration ripened into intimacy, and ended
in the English gentleman marrying the singer. She
was a good girl of her class; not very brilliant
perhaps, but virtuous and sensible, and un 'eniably
handsome. and Horace Gaylord might have drne
worse. She had an imperious temper and a glorious
, voice, both of which gifts she bequeathed to her son,
whonaahe idolised. She did not live to see him grow
up or io keep hr husband, as she might have done,
- from ruinous speculations, and when Mr. Gayf. rd
died it was found that there was little more elan
would complete the education of his son whom he had
destined for the church.
Many lads would htve run wild and become reckless
under e.uch circumstances, but young Horace had
the stability of character that his father lacked, and
set himself reso'utely to make his p'ace in the world.
He succeeded so well that he was looked upon as one
of the most capable and rising of young clergymen,
and his personal and social gifts made him adored by
the ladies and sought after by the gentlemen.
No wonder Phyllis Jarvis was fluttering and
simpering as he talked to her, leaning over her chair,
with the easy frankness of a perfect man of the world;
"'while his cousin was making himself agreeable to her
mother and talking of his bride-eleet.
Mrs
'lt's awfully good of you to send for Fairy, h .
Jarvis,' Frank said. You don't mind my er
Fairy, do you? I mostly do, you know.'
My dear Mr. Hatherleigh, you have a perfect right
to call Miss Ramsay whatever you
chooses to allow you.' please and she
Oh she wculdn't mind what I called her ; she's an
awfully jelly girl, and —'
He slopped and blushed, conscious that he had mid
something not permissible in the sacred precincts of
Campsie House.
'1 mean :•he is so good-natured, you know, and all
that.'

I understsnd. "Awfully jolly" Incans. good-
natured, does it? lam not conversant, with the slang
of the day; I have no doubt that, Miss Ramsay is all
that is agreeable and ladylike. I have seen
scarcely anyt:lng of her, as 3 ou know.'
'No, I know. But you'll see more of her now.
HUH, rd ini'L so vf ry far away.'
I never go to Half. rd,' Mrs Jarvis said, icily; and
Frank eaw that he had, as he caged it afterwards to
Helen, put his foot into it;
If you were going to stay here, I should have to
re you by s ealth, or make appointments with you at
the Temple,' he s-iid to Helen, describing Mrs. Jarvis's
manner. 'I couldn't stand being snubbed like that too
often.'
And Helen !aught d, and said she was going to
someone equally forn idahle, and drew a fancy portrait
of Mrs. Court:11.11 that discomfited Frank immensely,
till he perct ivsd she was laughing at him. But all
this was 14,te in the evening, after their meeting, and
Miss BilMSIWts introduction to Mr. Gayford, who was
makirg himself to agreeable to Itqlliss while they
were wa;ting.
Hatherleigh is a lucky fellow,' he said, in his
INVEI t, low voice, that went straight to Phyllis's heart,
It was so unlike any voice she was in the habit of
hearing.
As how?' she asked.
'As being lucky enough to have a wife selected for
him—beautiful, amiable, and accomplished. I am
imsuming Miss Ramsay is all them.'