‘I wish you had taken me, ma,’ said Ida, ‘I should have known what to say to them.’
‘I can’t tell, child, you might only have made it worse. I see how it is now, and we must be mum, or it may be the worse for us. He says he will do what he can for us, but I know what that means. She will hold the purse-strings, and make him meaner than he is already. He will never know how to spend his fortune now he has got it! If your poor, dear pa had only been alive now, he would never have let you be wronged.’
‘But you gave it to them?’ cried Ida.
‘That I did! Only that lady, Lady Kenton, came in all stuck-up and haughty, and cut me short, interfering as she had no business to, or I would have brought Miss Mary to her marrow-bones. She hadn’t a word to say for herself, but now she has got those fine folks on her side, the thing will go on as sure as fate. However, I’ve done my dooty, that’s one comfort; and now, I suppose I shall have to patch it up as best I can.’
‘I wouldn’t!’ said Ida hotly.
‘Ah, Ida, my dear, you don’t know what a mother won’t do for her children.’
A sigh that was often reiterated as Mrs. Morton composed a letter to her brother-in-law, with some hints from Ida on the spelling, and some from Mr. Rollstone on the address. The upshot was that her dear brother and his fiancée were to believe her actuated by the purest sense of the duty and anxiety she owed to them and her dear children, the orphans of his dear deceased brother. Now that she had once expressed herself, she trusted to her dear Frank’s affectionate nature to bury all in oblivion, and to believe that she should be ready to welcome her new sister-in-law with the warmest affection. Therewith followed a request for five pounds, to pay for her mourning and darling Ida’s, which they had felt due to him!
Lord Northmoor did not quite see how it was due to him, nor did he intend to give whatever his dear sister-in-law might demand, but she had made him so angry that he felt that he must prove his forgiveness to himself. Mary had not thought it needful to describe the force of the attack upon herself, or perhaps his pardon might not have gone so far. He sent the note, and added that as he was wanted at Northmoor for a day or two, he would take his nephew Herbert with him.
This was something like, as Mrs. Morton said, a kind of tangible acknowledgment of their relationship and of Herbert as his heir, and it was a magnificent thing to tell all her acquaintances that her son was gone to the family seat with his uncle, Lord Northmoor. She would fain have obtained for him some instructions in the manners of the upper ten thousand from Mr. Rollstone, but Herbert entirely repudiated listening to that old fogey, observing that after all it was only old Frank, and he wasn’t going to bother himself for the like of him.
The uncle was fond of his brother’s boy, and had devised this plan partly for the sake of the pleasure it would give, and partly because it was impossible to form any judgment of his character while with the mother. He was a fine, well-grown, manly boy, and when seen among his companions, had an indefinable air of good blood about him. He had hitherto been at a good day-school which prepared boys for the merchant service, and his tastes were so much in the direction of the sea, that it was much to be regretted that at fourteen and a half it was useless to think of preparation for a naval cadetship. He was sent up by train to join his uncle at Hurminster, and the first question after the greeting was, ‘I say, uncle, shan’t you have a yacht?’
‘I could not afford it, if I wished it,’ was the answer, while Punch was handed over to him, and Lord Northmoor applied himself to a long blue letter.
‘Landlubber!’ sighed Herbert to himself, with true marine contempt for a man who had sat on an office-stool all his life. ‘He doesn’t look a bit more of a swell than he used to. It is well there’s some one with some pluck in the family.’
CHAPTER IX
THE HEIR-PRESUMPTUOUS
Herbert began to be impressed when, on the train arriving at a little country station, a servant in mourning, with finger to his hat, inquired after his Lordship’s luggage, and another was seen presiding over a coroneted brougham.
‘I say,’ he breathed forth, when they were shut in, ‘is this yours?’
‘It is Miss Morton’s, I believe, at present. I am to arrange whether to keep it or not.’
They were driving over an open heath in its summer carpet-like state of purple heather, dwarf gorse, and bracken. Lord Northmoor looked out, with thoughtfulness in his face. By and by there was a gate, a lodge, a curtseying woman, and as they passed it, he said, ‘Now, this is Northmoor.’
‘Yours, uncle?’
‘Yes.’
‘My—!’ was all Herbert could utter. It semed to his town-bred eyes a huge space before they reached, through some rather scanty plantations, another lodge, and a park, not very extensive, but with a few fine trees, and they thundered up beneath the pillars to what was, to his idea, a palace—with servants standing about in a great hall.
His uncle would have turned one way, but a servant said, ‘Miss Morton is in the morning-room, my Lord,’ and ushered them into a room where a lady in black came forward.
‘You did not expect to find me here still,’ she said cordially; ‘but Adela is gone to her brother’s, and I thought I had better stay for the division of—of the things.’
‘Oh, certainly—I am—glad,’ he stammered, with a blush as one not quite sure of the correctness of the proceeding. ‘I wouldn’t have intruded—’
‘Bosh! I’m the intruder. Letitia Bury is gone—alas—but,’ said she, laughing, ‘Hailes is here—staying,’ she added to relieve him and to lessen the confusion that amused her, ‘and I see you have a companion. Your nephew—?’
‘Yes, Herbert, my late brother’s son. I would not have brought him if I had known.’
‘A cousin,’ she said, smiling, and shaking hands with him. ‘Boys are my delight. This is quite a new experience.’
Herbert looked up surprised, not much liking to become an experience. He had had less intercourse with ladies than many boys of humbler pretensions, for his mother had always scouted the idea of sending her children to a Sunday-school, and she was neither like his mother’s friends nor his preconceived notions. ‘There! for want of an introduction, I must introduce myself. Your cousin Bertha, or Birdie, whichever you like best.’
Frank was by no means prepared to say even Bertha, and was in agonies lest Herbert should presume on the liberty given him; but if the boy had been in the palace of Truth, he would have said, ‘You old girl, you are awfully old to call yourself Birdie!’ For Birdie had been a pet name of Rose Rollstone; and Bertha Morton, though slim and curly-headed, had a worn look about her eyes, and a countenance such as to show her five-and-thirty years, and to the eyes of fourteen was almost antediluvian; indeed, older observers might detect a worn, haggard, strained look. He was somewhat disgusted, too, at the thin rolls of bread-and-butter on the low table, whence she proceeded to hand teacups, as he thought of the substantial meals at home. When they had been conducted to their rooms, and his uncle followed to his, he broke out with his perpetual, ‘I say, uncle, is this all the grub great swells have? I’m awfully peckish!’
‘That’s early tea, my boy,’ was the answer, with a smile. ‘There’s dinner to come, and I hope you will behave yourself well, and not use such expressions.’
‘Dinner! that’s not such a bad hearing, but I suppose one must eat it like a judge?’
‘Certainly; I am afraid I am not a very good model, but don’t you do anything