“You a beggar child!” exclaimed Sybil indignantly. “Of course not. Perhaps, on the contrary, you were somebody very grand.”
“No, no,” said Ellinor sensibly. “In that case I should have been advertised for and inquired after. No, I have never thought that, and I should not wish it. I should be more than thankful to know I came of good, honest people, however simple; to have someone of my very own.”
“I forget the actual details,” said Sybil, “though you have often told me about it. You were found—no, not literally in the workhouse, was it?”
“They were going to take me there,” said Miss March. “It was at a village near Bath where Mr. and Mrs. Bellairs were then living, and one day, after a party of gipsies had been encamping on the common, a cottager’s wife heard something crying in the night, and found me in her little garden. She was too poor to keep me herself, and felt certain I was a child the gipsies had stolen and then wanted to get rid of. I was fair-haired and blue-eyed, not like them. She was a friend or relation of some of Mrs. Bellairs’s servants, and so the story got round to my kind old friend. And you know the rest—how they first thought of bringing me up in quite a humble way, and then finding me— well, intelligent and naturally rather refined, I suppose, I got a really good education, and my good luck did not desert me, dear, when I came to be your governess.”
Sybil smiled.
“And can you remember nothing?”
Ellinor hesitated.
“Queer, dreamy fragments come back to me sometimes,” she said. “I have a feeling of having seen hills long, long ago. It is strange,” she went on, for by this time they had left the private grounds and were strolling along the hill-path in the direction of the town, “it is strange that since I came here I seem to have got hold of a tiny bit of these old memories, if they are such. It must be the hills,” and she stood still and gazed round her with a deep breath of satisfaction, “I could only have been between two and three when I was found,” she went on. “The only words I said were ‘Dada’ and ‘Nennie’—it sounded like ‘Nelly’. That was why Mrs. Bellairs called me ‘Ellinor,’ and ‘March,’ because it was in that month she took me to her house.”
Sybil walked on in silence for a moment or two.
“It is such a romantic story,” she said at last. “I am never tired of thinking about it.”
They entered Monksholdings again from the east entrance, Ellinor glanced at the stile.
“By-the-bye,” she said, “this is one of the two old stiles, I suppose. Have you ever seen your ghost again, Sybil? Have you found out anything about him?”
Sybil looked round her half nervously.
“It is the other stile he haunts,” she said. “I rather avoid it, at least, I mean to do so now. It is curious you speak of it, for till yesterday I had not seen him again, and had almost forgotten about it. But yesterday afternoon, just before you came, there he was—exactly the same, staring in. I meant to speak to papa about it, but with the pleasure and bustle of your arrival, I forgot it. Remind me about it. I am afraid he is out of his mind.”
“Poor old man!” said Ellinor. “I wish we could do something to comfort him. I feel as if everybody must be happy here. It is such a charming, exhilarating place. Dear me, how windy it is! The path is all strewn with the white petals of the cherry blossom.”
“They have degenerated into wild cherry trees,” said Sybil. “Long ago papa says these must have been good fruit trees of many kinds, and this is a great cherry country, you know.”
The wind dropped that afternoon, but only temporarily. It rose again so much during the night that by the next morning the grounds looked, to use little Annis’s expression, “quite untidy”.
“And down in the village, or just beyond it,” said Mark, who had been for an early stroll, “at one place it really looks as if it had been snowing. The road skirts that old farmhouse; you know it, father? I forget the name—there’s a grand cherry orchard there.”
“‘Mayling Farm,’ you must mean,” said Mr. Raynald. “Farmer Giles’s. Oh, by the way, that reminds me, Sybil,” but a glance round the table made him stop short. They were at breakfast. He scarcely felt inclined to relate the tragic story before the younger children, “they might look frightened or run away if they came across the poor fellow,” he reflected. “I will tell Sybil about it afterwards.”
Easter holidays were not yet over, though the governess had returned, so regular routine was set aside, and the whole of the young party, Ellinor included, spent that morning in a scramble among the hills.
The children seemed untirable, and set off again somewhere or other in the afternoon. Sybil was busy with her mother, writing letters and orders to be despatched to London, so that towards four o’clock or so, when Miss March, having finished her own correspondence, entered the drawing-room, she found it deserted.
Sybil had promised to practise some duets with her, and while waiting on the chance of her coming, Ellinor seated herself at the piano and began to play—nothing very important—just snatches of old airs which she wove into a kind of half-dreamy harmony, one melting into another as they occurred to her.
All at once a shadow fell on the keys, and then she remembered having heard the door softly open a moment or two before—so softly, that she had not looked round, imagining it to be the wind, which, though fallen now, still lingered about.
Now her ideas took another shape.
“It is Sybil, no doubt,” she thought with a smile. “She is going to make me jump,” and she waited, half expecting to feel Sybil’s hands suddenly clasped over her eyes from behind.
But this was not to be the mode of attack, apparently, though she heard what sounded like stealthy footsteps.
“You need not try to startle me, Sybbie,” she exclaimed laughingly, without turning or ceasing to play, “I hear you.”
It was no laughing voice which replied.
On the contrary, a sigh, almost a groan, close to her made her look up sharply—a trifle indignant perhaps at the joke being carried so far—and she saw, a pace or two from her only, the figure of an old man—a white-haired, somewhat bent form, a worn face with wistful blue eyes—gazing at her.
She had scarcely time to feel frightened, for almost instantaneously Sybil’s “ghost” recurred to her memory.
“He has found his way in, then,” she thought, not without a slight and natural tremor, which, however, disappeared as she gazed, so pathetically gentle was the whole aspect of the intruder. But—his face changed curiously—the sight of hers, now fully in his view, seemed strangely to affect him. With a gesture of utter bewilderment he raised his hand to his forehead as if to brush something away—the cloud still resting on his brain— then a smile broke over the old face, a wonderful smile.
“Marion,” he said, “at last? I—I thought I was dreaming. I heard you playing in my dream. It is the right place though, ‘Halfway between the stiles,’ you said. I have waited so long and come so often, and now it is snowing again. Just a little, dear, nothing to hurt. Marion, my darling, why don’t you speak? Is it all a dream—this fine room, the music and all? Are you a dream?”
He closed his eyes as if he were fainting. Inexpressibly touched, all Ellinor’s womanly nature went out to him. She started forward, half leading, half lifting him to a seat close at hand.
“I—I am not Marion,” she said, and afterwards she wondered what had inspired the words, “but I am”—not “Ellinor,” something made her change the name as he spoke—“I am Nelly.”
He opened his eyes again.
“Little Nell,” he said, “has she sent you down to me from heaven? My little Nell!”
And then he fell back unconscious—this time he had fainted.
She thought he was dead, but it was not so—her cries for help soon brought her friends, Mr. Raynald first of all. He did not seem startled, he soothed Ellinor at once.
“It is poor old Giles,” he said. “I know all about him, he has found his way in at last.
”
“But—but——,” stammered the girl, “there is something else, Mr. Raynald. I—I seem to remember something.”
She looked nearly as white as their poor visitor, and as Mr. Raynald glanced at her, a curious expression flitted across his own face.
Could it be so? He knew all her story.
“Wait a little, my dear,” he said. “We must attend to poor Giles first.” They were very kind and tender to the old man, but he seemed to be barely conscious, even after restoratives had brought him out of the actual fainting fit. Then Mrs. Raynald proposed that his servants—his housekeeper if he had one—should be sent for.
And when faithful Betsy, stout as of old, though less nimble, made her appearance, her irrepressible emotion at the sight of Ellinor, pale and trembling though the young governess was, gave form and substance to Mr. Raynald’s suspicions.
Yes, they had met at last—father and daughter—“halfway between the stiles”. He was “Dada,” she was little “Nell.” Might it not be that Marion’s prayers had brought them together?
Every reasonable proof was forthcoming—the little parcel of clothes, the correspondence in the dates, the strong resemblance to her mother.
And—joy does not often kill. Barnett was able to understand it all better than might have been expected. He was never quite himself, but infinitely better both in mind and body than poor old Betsy had ever dreamt of seeing him. And he was perfectly content—content to live as long as it should please God to spare him to his little Nell; ready to go to his Marion when the time should come.
And Ellinor had her wish—a home, though not a “grand” one; someone of her “very own” to care for; a father’s devoted love, and, to complete her happiness, the friends who had grown so dear to her close at hand.
More may yet be hers in the future, for she is still young. Her father may live to see his grandchildren playing about the farmstead at Mayling, so that, though the name be changed, the old stock will still nourish where so many generations of its ancestors have sown and reaped.
The Clock that Struck Thirteen
(A story from Uncanny Tales)
“You misunderstand me wilfully, Helen. I neither said nor inferred anything of the kind.”
“What did you mean then, for if words to you bear a different interpretation from what they do to me, I must trouble you to speak in my language when addressing me,” angrily retorted a young girl, with what nature had intended to be a very pretty face with a charming expression, but which at the present moment was far from deserving the latter part of the description. Eyes flashing, cheeks burning and hands clenched in the excess of her indignation, stood Helen Beaumont by the window of her pretty little sitting-room, or “studio” as she loved to call it, presenting a striking contrast to the peaceful scene without; where a carefully tended garden still looked bright with the remaining flowers of late September.
Her companion, standing in the attitude invariably assumed now-a-days by novelists’ heroes, namely, leaning against the mantelpiece, was a young man of equally prepossessing appearance with her own. At first glance no one would have suspected him of sharing any of the young lady’s excitement, for his expression was so calm as almost to merit the description of sleepy. Looking more closely, however, the signs of some unusual disturbance or annoyance were to be descried, for his face was slightly flushed and his blue eyes had lost the look of sweet temper evidently their ordinary expression.
“What I meant to say, Helen, was not, as you choose to misinterpret it, that I blame you for proper womanly courage and spirit, than which, I consider few things more admirable, nor as you are well aware do I admire the sweetly silly and affectedly timid order of young ladies. But this I do mean and repeat, that I think your persistence in this foolish scheme a piece of sheer bravado and foolhardiness, totally unworthy of any sensible person’s approval, and what is more——”
“Thank you, Malcolm, or rather Mr. Willoughby, I have heard quite enough,”—and as she spoke, Helen turned from the window out of which she had been gazing while Malcolm spoke, with, it must be confessed, very little interest in the varied tints of the dahlias blooming in all their rich brilliance on the terrace, —“I have heard quite enough, and think myself exceedingly fortunate in having heard it now before it is too late. You may imagine,” she continued, “that I am speaking in temper, but it is not so. I have for some time suspected, and now feel convinced, that we are not suited to each other. Your own words bear witness to your opinion of me, ‘self-willed, foolhardy, unwomanly,’ and I know not what other pretty expressions you have applied to me, and for my part I tell you simply that I cannot and will not marry a man whose opinion of what a woman should be is like yours; and who insults me constantly as you do, by telling me how far short I fall of his ideal. Marry your ideal, Malcolm Willoughby, and I shall wish you joy of her. Some silly little fool who dares not move a step alone in her bewitching helplessness. But do not think to convert me into such a piece of contemptible inanity,” and so saying she turned towards the door.
“Helen,” said Malcolm quietly, so quietly that Helen was arrested in spite of herself, “you are unjust, unreasonable and ungenerous. You know that I never cared for any woman but you, you know that nothing pleases me more than to witness your superiority in numberless particulars to the general run of girls, and you know too the pride and pleasure I take in your skill as an artist; but blinded by self-will you will not see the perfect reasonableness of my request that you will abandon this absurd expedition. If not for your own sake, at least do so for Edith’s, who is as you know left in your special charge by Leonard.”
The first part of this speech seemed, to judge by Helen’s transparent countenance, likely to soften and move her, but the unlucky word “absurd” and the tone in which Malcolm spoke, as if it was necessary to remind her of her duty, effectually did away with any good result that his remonstrance might have worked. She turned, with her hand on the door, and saying, “I have told you my decision, Mr. Willoughby, and I wish you good-evening,” left the room. Malcolm remained behind, lost in thought of no pleasurable nature. At last he too left the little sitting-room, after first ringing the bell and ordering his horse to be brought round. Making his way to the front entrance he there “mounted and rode away,” his spirits, poor fellow, by no means the better for his visit.
It is time, I think, to explain the cause of the lovers’ quarrel above described. Helen and Edith Beaumont were orphans, left to the guardianship of their brother Leonard, in whose house we have seen the former. Delicacy, induced by a severe illness some months previously, had obliged Mr. Beaumont, accompanied by his wife, to go for the autumn and winter months to the south of France, leaving his sisters at home under the nominal chaperonage of an elderly aunt, who performed her duty to the perfect satisfaction of her nieces by letting them do exactly as they liked.
More correctly speaking, perhaps, exactly as Helen liked, for the younger of the two, Edith, a girl of seventeen and four years her sister’s junior, could hardly be said to have likes or dislikes distinct from those of Helen. Possibly Mr. Beaumont might not have left the two to their own devices with so easy a mind, had he not quitted home happy in the knowledge of Helen’s engagement to his friend and neighbour Malcolm Willoughby. The gentleman in question lived within a few miles of our heroine’s home, having succeeded some years before to his father’s property. His only sister, Mrs. Lindsay, was at this time living with him for a few months while awaiting her husband’s return from India, and though some years older, was, next to her sister, Helen’s most valued friend and companion.
Malcolm Willoughby was a man of high character, peculiarly fitted, by his unusual amount of sterling good sense, to be the guide of an impulsive, enthusiastic girl like pretty Helen Beaumont, whom to know was to love, and who would have been altogether charming but for her inordinate amount of self-will and inveterate dislike to being, as she expressed it, “ordered” to do or not to do whatever came into h
er head. She and her sister had real talent as artists, and their spirited and well-executed landscapes bore but little resemblance to the insipid productions of most young lady painters. To improving herself in this direction Helen had devoted much time and labour. Unfortunately, it had so absorbed her thoughts and desires that in its pursuance she was inclined sometimes to forget what were for her more important avocations.
Helen’s fortunate engagement to Mr. Willoughby had for some time past corrected these only objectionable tendencies in her character, and all had gone smoothly and happily till the date at which our story commences, when, unluckily, some artist friends had filled her head with their descriptions of the exquisite autumn scenery, “effects of foliage,” etc. , to be seen in a mountainous and hitherto little explored part of Wales. Her imagination, and through her that of her sister Edith, ran wild on the subject, and now nothing would satisfy her but a journey to the spot in question, by themselves, in order that they might enjoy their freedom to the utmost, and revel in the delight of painting some of the wonderful Welsh scenery described to them. The idea had at first been mooted half in joke, but an impolitic expression of strong disapprobation on the part of Mr. Willoughby had done more to determine Helen on carrying it out than all the anticipated artistic enjoyment.
“It will be just the opportunity I wanted,” thought the foolish girl, “of showing him that I do not intend to be a silly nonentity of a wife with no opinion of my own, and hedged in by all the absurd old-fashioned conventionalities which will not allow a woman to have an existence of her own or give her opportunity to cultivate what talents she may possess.”
And once determined, Miss Helen remained inflexible. In vain Mr. Willoughby remonstrated, in vain even their indulgent old aunt expressed her horror at the idea of “two young girls scouring the country by themselves,” her own feebleness rendering her accompanying them out of the question. Go to Wales Helen and Edith must, and go they would, till at last the discussion with her fiancé terminated in the disastrous manner above recorded.
The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mrs Molesworth Page 18