Springhaven: A Tale of the Great War by R. D. Blackmore (red queen ebook .TXT) 📖

But, my dear madam, if that is your only objection to coming back to us, or rather to my daughters, I beg you not to let it weigh a feather's weight with you. Or, at any rate, enhance the obligation to us, by putting it entirely on one side. Dolly has the very finest heart in all the world; not so steady perhaps as Faith's, nor quite so fair to other people, but wonderfully warm, ma'am, and as sound as—as a roach.”

Lady Scudamore could not help laughing a little, and she hoped for her son's sake that this account was true. Her gratitude and good-will to the Admiral, as well as her duty to her son, made her give the promise sought for; and she began to prepare for her journey at once, that she might be back in good time for the winter. But she felt very doubtful, at leaving the Hall, whether she had done quite right in keeping her suspicions of Dolly from Dolly's father. For with eyes which were sharpened by jealousy for the interests, or at least the affections, of her son, she had long perceived that his lady-love was playing a dangerous game with Caryl Carne. Sometimes she believed that she ought to speak of this, for the good of the family; because she felt the deepest mistrust and dislike of Carne, who strictly avoided her whenever he could; but on the other hand she found the subject most delicate and difficult to handle. For she had taken good care at the outset not to be here upon any false pretences. At the very first interview with her host she had spoken of Blyth's attachment to his younger daughter, of which the Admiral had heard already from that youthful sailor. And the Admiral had simply said, as in Captain Twemlow's case: “Let us leave them to themselves. I admire the young man. If she likes him, I shall make no objection, when they are old enough, and things are favourable.” And now if she told him of the other love-affair, it would look like jealousy of a rival. Perhaps a hundred times a day, as her love for gentle Faith grew faster than her liking for the sprightly Dolly, she would sigh that her son did not see things like herself; but bitter affliction had taught her that the course of this life follows our own wishes about as much as another man's dog heeds our whistle. But, for all that, this good lady hoped some day to see things come round as she would like to bring them.

“No wonder that we like her son so much,” said Faith when they had done waving handkerchiefs at the great yellow coach going slowly up the hill, with its vast wicker basket behind, and the guard perched over it with his blunderbus; “he takes after his mother in so many ways. They are both so simple and unsuspicious, and they make the best of every one.”

“Including themselves, I suppose,” answered Dolly. “Well I like people who have something on their minds, and make the worst of everybody. They have so much more to talk about.”

“You should never try to be sarcastic, dear. And you know that you don't mean it. I am sure you don't like to have the worst made of yourself.”

“Oh, I have long been used to that. And I never care about it, when I know it is not true. I am sure that Mother Scudamore runs me down, when I am out of hearing. I never did like those perfect people.”

“Mother Scudamore, indeed! You are getting into a low way of talking, which is not at all pretty in a girl. And I never heard her say an unkind word about you. Though she may not have found you quite so perfect as she hoped.”

“I tell you, Miss Darling,” cried Dolly, with her bright colour deepened, and her grey eyes flashing, “that I don't care a—something that papa often says—what she thinks about me, or you either. I know that she has come here to spy out all my ways.”

“You should not have any to be spied out, Dolly,” Faith answered, with some sternness, and a keen look at her sister, whose eyes fell beneath her gaze. “You will be sorry, when you think of what you said to me, who have done nothing whatever to offend you. But that is a trifle compared with acting unfairly to our father. Father is the kindest man that ever lived; but he can be stern in great matters, I warn you. If he ever believes that you have deceived him, you will never be again to him what you have always been.”

They had sent the carriage home that they might walk across the fields, and this little scene between the sisters took place upon a foot-path which led back to their grounds. Dolly knew that she was in the wrong, and that increased her anger.

“So you are another spy upon me, I suppose. 'Tis a pretty thing to have one's sister for an old duenna. Pray who gave you authority to lord it over me?”

“You know as well as I do”—Faith spoke with a smile of superior calmness, as Dolly tossed her head—“that I am about the last person in the world to be a spy. Neither do I ever lord it over you. If anything, that matter is very much the other way. But being so much older, and your principal companion, it would be very odd of me, and as I think most unkind, if I did not take an interest in all your goings on.”

“My goings on! What a lady-like expression! Who has got into a low way of talking now? Well, if you please, madam, what have you found out?”

“I have found out nothing, and made no attempt to do so. But I see that you are altered very much from what you used to be; and I am sure that there is something on your mind. Why not tell me all about it? I would promise to let it go no further, and I would not pretend to advise, unless you wished. I am your only sister, and we have always been together. It would make you so much more comfortable, I am certain of that, in your own mind, darling. And you know when we were little girls, dear mother on her death-bed put her hands upon our heads and said, 'Be loving sisters always, and never let anything come between you.' And for father's sake, too, you should try to do it. Put aside all nonsense about spies and domineering, and trust me as your sister, that's my own darling Dolly.”

“How can I resist you? I will make a clean breast of it;” Dolly sighed deeply, but a wicked smile lay ambushed in her bright eyes and upon her rosy lips. “The sad truth is that my heart has been quite sore since I heard the shocking tidings about poor old Daddy Stokes. He went to bed the other night with his best hat on, both his arms in an old muff he found in the ditch, and his leathern breeches turned inside out.”

“Then the poor old man had a cleaner breast than yours,” cried Faith, who had prepared her heart and eyes for tears of sympathy; “he goes upon his knees every night, stiff as they are, and his granddaughter has to help him up. But as for you, you are the most unfeeling, mocking, godless, unnatural creature that ever never cared what became of anybody. Here we are at the corner where the path divides. You go home that way, and I'll go home by this.”

“Well, I'm so glad! I really did believe that it was quite impossible to put you in a rage. Now don't be in a hurry, dear, to beg my pardon.”