The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-07-16 00:00:00

BY TIM

Author of" The Heiress of Atherstotee Grange."

CHAPTER X.

WIIAT CAME OF. If.
' Why ! Right ! You are in the right;
And so, without more circumstance at all,
I hold it best that we shake hands and part.'
—SHAKESPEARP.
Mr. JARVIS felt somehow relieved after his conference
with Frank. He had been something neglectful in
allowing the young people to go their own way, with-
out trying to find out what they thought of their
position. He saw, or fancied he saw, that there was no
violent love between them; but he attributed that to
their early betrothal, which had made them more like
brother and sister than future husband and wife, and he
thought it would all come right in the end. He had
great faith in the providence, which, according to the
poet, 'creates the love to reward the love,' and he
thought that a love born of their parents' dying wishes
would grow into a pure and holy thing and gather
new life and strength with every added year.
Helen was a little pale and preoccupied when she
came to her guardian's chambers on the appointed
day. She had been dissipating she told him. Hill.
ford was gay in this bright summer weather, and
Mrs. Churchill's friends had all taken wonderfully to
her new inmate. There had been boating the day after
the pic-nic, and again the Rev. Horace Gayford had
been of the party.
'And not Frank?' Mr. Jarvis asked when she had
told him.
No, guardy, Frank was not there. Ho can't be
always with me, you know.'
I know, dear—l know—l wish he could; but the
time will soon come, birdie. Mrs. Jarvis has been
taking me to task for not having serious talks with
you about your wedding, my dear. I think it is time
something was settled.'
I didn't know that Mrs. Jarvis took so much in-
terest in me,' Helen said, with ever so little of pique
in her tone. It is very kind of her.'
If it was one of her own girls, all sorts of prepara-
tions would have been commenced before this,' the
lawyer said, smiling. But we need not discuss that
now. I want to give you some letters that I have had
in safe keeping for you, and talk to you about your
affairs. You are a woman now, my little girl, and
you will have to be Frank's better half in reality, I
suspect, as far as money matters are concerned.'
Poor Frank!' Helen said, with a littlesigh. Every-
body seems to want me to think he is not capable of
taking care of himself. Even Mrs. Churchill, who
admires him very much, talks to me about him as if
he were a boy:
So he is, my dear, and so he always will be, if he
lives to be a hundred. You will have to be his
"guide, philosopher and friend," as well as his wife.'
Helen's head was bowed, and she did not make any
answer, and the lawyer laid his hand lightly on her
shoulder as he spoke to her again.
Dear,' he said, and his voice was low and
sympathetic, can you guess what I have in my heart
to say to you, now that I have got you here? What
prompted you to ask me that question the other day?
Is it a matter of duty with you to marry Frank, and
nothing else? I have thought once or twice, my
child, that there was something in the prospect that
you do not like. If so—'
I don't know why you should think so,' Helen
said. Has Frank—'
Frank has not said one word to me to put such a
thing into my head. But you are a woman now, and
not a child, to be swayed by others; and it has crossed
my mind more than once that there might be someone
else—nay, never blush like that, my dear. Young
men will be young men, and your bonnie eyes are
alluring'
No, there is no one,' Helen said hastily,
blushing more furiously than ever. No man has
ever said one word of love to me. Everybody knew
I was betrothed to Frank.'
'Yes, that's it. Everybody did know, I suppose,
and that kept people at a distance. lam glad there
is no one, Helen' for Yrank's sake. Your question
the other day made me fancy there might be.'
That was curiosity,' Helen said, still keeping her
face hidden from her guardian. 'I had often wondered
whether anything terrible would happen if Frank and
I did not come together, as our parents wished. I am
glad to think that Frank would not suffer if he did
not marry me, that is all.'
She lifted her head now, and smiled on him, through
very suspicious looking tears. And he brought out
the old letters, and read to her what her mother had
said, when she committed her husband and her child
to his care; and what her father had written for her
to read when she should be grown up; and tried to
believe that all was right between the young people,
and that he might begin to make arrangements for
their wedding very soon. It might be well to leas, n
the time of probation, perhaps, and get things settled
and done with.
Arid then took his ward to dine with him at a
sumptuous restaurant, and then to the theatre, de-
positing her at Mrs. Churchill's door, at Hillford, at
most unholy hours, and having to take a conveyance
to get home himself, rendering himself liable to a long
lecture from Mrs. Jarvis on the economy of his
ccc-
duct That good lady was apt to forget that she was
not master as well as mistress at Campaie House some-
times.
Helen was pleased with the Hermitage, when she
was taken to see it, though she seemed rather listless
and tired, and said she did not think she was quite
well. Mrs. Jarvis was exceedingly gracious for her,
the more so, perhaps, because the Rev. Horace
managed to be of the party—how, no one quite
seemed to know—and in his usual fashion to be near
Helen all the time.
He was never obstrusive ; and even Mr. Jarvis,
with his penetration and innate dislike to the gentle-
man, could see nothing to find fault with.
I am afraid, if I were Frank, I should wring his
neck,' he said to himself, emphatically. 'But young
fellows now a-days seem to take things so easily.
That parson is like a serpent. One feels as if one
must look at him sometimes whether or no.'
Certainly, Helen must have been put of sorts; for
they were extremely alarmed by her suddenly turning
white, as if she were going to faint; and it was only
timely exodus into the fresh air, and a glass of water
that saved her from making an idiot of herself, as she
said afterwards. She said it was the heat, and she
felt tired. But she was terrified beyond measure
at her own sensations. Standing in the con-
servatory alone for a moment, while the others
were in the garden, she had suddenly felt as if she
must go up to the Rev. Horace Gay ford and stand
before him, waiting his orders like a slave. She had
struggled with the feeling, and it had gone as suddenly
as it had come. But it left her nearly fainting and
with a great dread that she must be going mad upon
her.
She told no one, and they went home. But she re-
solved to see as little of Frank's cousin in the time to
come as might be.
She had been at Mrs. Churchill's about a month, and
the sweet, bright summer was beginning to fade into
soft-tinted lovely autumn; and she had come to regard
the pretty house as her home. She had never been so
happy anywhere else; and but for the eccasional
presence of the Rev. Horace Gayford would have
seemed a Paradise. He had been less demonstrative
in his attentions to her lately. Once he had forgotten
himself in a fit of pique about something Frank had
done, and had spoken of his cousin with such undis-
guised contempt, that Helen's anger had been
thoroughly roused, and she had given him to under-
stand that to insult his cousin was to insult her. And
there had been a coolness between them ever since.
She was rather glad of it. It was much pleasanter
to feel that she could go in and out without having to
plan how she could avoid Horace Gayford, and to
know that if he came to the house she could shut her-
self up in her room, and be free from him, if she chose.
She had forsaken his church, too. The feeling that
though he was in the pulpit he was a sceptic, and
therefore a hypocrite, had never left her, and she
owned to Mrs. Churchill and the girls that she did not
like his preaching, at any rate for a continuance.
So she went elsewhere, and was freed from the
nightmare of mingled fear and attraction that was
always upon her in Mr. Gayford's church, and was
happier than she had been since she bade Cuthbert
Ingram good bye on his departure for the other side
of the world. And while she was growing happier
and brighter spirited, a change was creeping over
pretty merry Me dge Churchill. She said she was not
ill; but she was thin and pale, and it was seldom that
her cheerful voice rang through the house as it used
to when Helen first joined the family. Consumption,
Mrs. Churchill feared. She did not say so to Madge.
But she had lost many relations by that insidious
disease, and the first symptoms had been the smile—
languor and depression, and loss of all zest in thp
pleasures of life.
Madge made no objection when they called in the
best doctor in Hillford, a gentleman who was a great
friend of her mother's. She had nothing to tell him,
except that she did not care for anything much, and
only wanted to be left alone. He shook his head and
leoked wise, after the fashion of his race, and advised
change of air and so forth, and recommended Mrs.
Churchill to get away from Hillford, which was apt to
he a little lowering in the autumn, &a, &c.
So they were all to go to Scarborough, which was
advised on account of its bracing air; and Helen felt
as if she should he a new creature away from the
possibility of meeting the Rev. Horace. She could
hardly analyse her feelings when she thought of him;
he seemed to command her against her wdl, and to
force her to think of him whether she would or not.
He had never spoken a word to her that her betrothed
husband might not have listened to, but there was
always the dread in her heart that he would so speak
and cover her with confusion. At Scarborough she
would be far away from him, and when they returned
he would have found some new object for his

a:tentims msybe.
Their day of departure was fixed, and was about a
week distant, and Helen was sitting alone in her pretty
- - room which looked on to the garden. She was musing
somewhat sadly, for she had come to the knowledge,
and she owned it to herself now, that Frank was not all
that elle wanted in a husband. He was a dear, good
fellow, Lnd generous and warm hearted to a degree,
but Helen Eamsay acknowledged to herself that she
wanted so.Lething more than this in a companion for
•
Life.
I must t(11 him,' she _said. •I must be bralVe and
gay it. I think T can nerhaps at Scarborough, forq