David Elginbrod

SHAKSPERE

Mr. Arnold was busy at home for a few days after this, and Hugh and Harry had to go out alone. One day, when the wind was rather cold, they took refuge in the barn; for it was part of Hugh’s especial care that Harry should be rendered hardy, by never being exposed to more than he could bear without a sense of suffering. As soon as the boy began to feel fatigue, or cold, or any other discomfort, his tutor took measures accordingly.

Harry would have crept into the straw-house; but Hugh said, pulling a book out of his pocket,

“I have a poem here for you, Harry. I want to read it to you now; and we can’t see in there.”

They threw themselves down on the straw, and Hugh, opening a volume of Robert Browning’s Poems, read the famous ride from Ghent to Aix. He knew the poem well, and read it well. Harry was in raptures.

“I wish I could read that as you do,” said he.

“Try,” said Hugh.

Harry tried the first verse, and threw the book down in disgust with himself.

“Why cannot I read it?” said he.

“Because you can’t ride.”

“I could ride, if I had such a horse as that to ride upon.”

“But you could never have such a horse as that except you could ride, and ride well, first. After that, there is no saying but you might get one. You might, in fact, train one for yourself—till from being a little foal it became your own wonderful horse.”

“Oh! that would be delightful! Will you teach me horses as well, Mr. Sutherland?”

“Perhaps I will.”

That evening, at dinner, Hugh said to Mr. Arnold:

“Could you let me have a horse to-morrow morning, Mr. Arnold?”

Mr. Arnold stared a little, as he always did at anything new. But Hugh went on:

“Harry and I want to have a ride to-morrow; and I expect we shall like it so much, that we shall want to ride very often.”

“Yes, that we shall!” cried Harry.

“Could not Mr. Sutherland have your white mare, Euphra?” said Mr. Arnold, reconciled at once to the proposal.

“I would rather not, if you don’t mind, uncle. My Fatty is not used to such a burden as I fear Mr. Sutherland would prove. She drops a little now, on the hard road.”

The fact was, Euphra would want Fatima.

“Well, Harry,” said Mr. Arnold, graciously pleased to be facetious, “don’t you think your Welsh dray-horse could carry Mr. Sutherland?”

“Ha! ha! ha! Papa, do you know, Mr. Sutherland set him up on his hind legs yesterday, and made him walk on them like a dancing-dog. He was going to lift him, but he kicked about so when he felt himself leaving the ground, that he tumbled Mr. Sutherland into the horse-trough.”

Even the solemn face of the butler relaxed into a smile, but Mr. Arnold’s clouded instead. His boy’s tutor ought to be a gentleman.

“Wasn’t it fun, Mr. Sutherland?”

“It was to you, you little rogue!” said Sutherland, laughing.

“And how you did run home, dripping like a water-cart!—and all the dogs after you!”

Mr. Arnold’s monotonous solemnity soon checked Harry’s prattle.

“I will see, Mr. Sutherland, what I can do to mount you.”

“I don’t care what it is,” said Hugh; who though by no means a thorough horseman, had been from boyhood in the habit of mounting everything in the shape of a horse that he could lay hands upon, from a cart-horse upwards and downwards.

“There’s an old bay that would carry me very well.”

“That is my own horse, Mr. Sutherland.”

This stopped the conversation in that direction. But next morning after breakfast, an excellent chestnut horse was waiting at the door, along with Harry’s new pony. Mr. Arnold would see them go off. This did not exactly suit Miss Cameron, but if she frowned, it was when nobody saw her. Hugh put Harry up himself, told him to stick fast with his knees, and then mounted his chestnut. As they trotted slowly down the avenue, Euphrasia heard Mr. Arnold say to himself, “The fellow sits well, at all events.” She took care to make herself agreeable to Hugh by reporting this, with the omission of the initiatory epithet, however.

Harry returned from his ride rather tired, but in high spirits.

“Oh, Euphra!” he cried, “Mr. Sutherland is such a rider! He jumps hedges and ditches and everything. And he has promised to teach me and my pony to jump too. And if I am not too tired, we are to begin to-morrow, out on the common. Oh! jolly!”

The little fellow’s heart was full of the sense of growing life and strength, and Hugh was delighted with his own success. He caught sight of a serpentine motion in Euphra’s eyebrows, as she bent her face again over the work from which she had lifted it on their entrance. He addressed her.

“You will be glad to hear that Harry has ridden like a man.”

“I am glad to hear it, Harry.”

Why did she reply to the subject of the remark, and not to the speaker? Hugh perplexed himself in vain to answer this question; but a very small amount of experience would have made him able to understand at once as much of her behaviour as was genuine. At luncheon she spoke only in reply; and then so briefly, as not to afford the smallest peg on which to hang a response.

“What can be the matter?” thought Hugh. “What a peculiar creature she is! But after what has passed between us, I can’t stand this.”

When dinner was over that evening, she rose as usual and left the room, followed by Hugh and Harry; but as soon as they were in the drawing-room, she left it; and, returning to the dining-room, resumed her seat at the table.

“Take a glass of claret, Euphra, dear?” said Mr. Arnold.

“I will, if you please, uncle. I should like it. I have seldom a minute with you alone now.”

Evidently flattered, Mr. Arnold poured out a glass of claret, rose and carried it to his niece himself, and then took a chair beside her.

“Thank you, dear uncle,” she said, with one of her bewitching flashes of smile.

“Harry has been getting on bravely with his riding, has he not?” she continued.

“So it would appear.”

Harry had been full of the story of the day at the dinner-table, where he still continued to present himself; for his father would not be satisfied without hint. It was certainly good moral training for the boy, to sit there almost without eating; and none the worse that he found it rather hard sometimes. He talked much more freely now, and asked the servants for anything he wanted without referring to Euphra. Now and then he would glance at her, as if afraid of offending her; but the cords which bound him to her were evidently relaxing; and she saw it plainly enough, though she made no reference to the unpleasing fact.

“I am only a little fearful, uncle, lest Mr. Sutherland should urge the boy to do more than his strength will admit of. He is exceedingly kind to him, but he has evidently never known what weakness is himself.”

“True, there is danger of that. But you see he has taken him so entirely into his own hands. I don’t seem to be allowed a word in the matter of his education any more.” Mr. Arnold spoke with the peevishness of weak importance. “I wish you would take care that he does not carry things too far, Euphra.”

This was just what Euphra wanted.

“I think, if you do not disapprove, uncle, I will have Fatima saddled to-morrow morning, and go with them myself.”

“Thank you, my love; I shall be much obliged to you.” The glass of claret was soon finished after this. A little more conversation about nothing followed, and Euphra rose the second time, and returned to the drawing-room. She found it unoccupied. She sat down to the piano, and sang song after song—Scotch, Italian, and Bohemian. But Hugh did not make his appearance. The fact was, he was busy writing to his mother, whom he had rather neglected since he came. Writing to her made him think of David, and he began a letter to him too; but it was never finished, and never sent. He did not return to the drawing-room that evening. Indeed, except for a short time, while Mr. Arnold was drinking his claret, he seldom showed himself there. Had Euphra repelled him too much—hurt him? She would make up for it to-morrow.

Breakfast was scarcely over, when the chestnut and the pony passed the window, accompanied by a lovely little Arab mare, broad-chested and light-limbed, with a wonderfully small head. She was white as snow, with keen, dark eyes. Her curb-rein was red instead of white. Hearing their approach, and begging her uncle to excuse her, Euphra rose from the table, and left the room; but re-appeared in a wonderfully little while, in a well-fitted riding-habit of black velvet, with a belt of dark red leather clasping a waist of the roundest and smallest. Her little hat, likewise black, had a single long, white feather, laid horizontally within the upturned brim, and drooping over it at the back. Her white mare would be just the right pedestal for the dusky figure—black eyes, tawny skin, and all. As she stood ready to mount, and Hugh was approaching to put her up, she called the groom, seemed just to touch his hand, and was in the saddle in a moment, foot in stirrup, and skirt falling over it. Hugh thought she was carrying out the behaviour of yesterday, and was determined to ask her what it meant. The little Arab began to rear and plunge with pride, as soon as she felt her mistress on her back; but she seemed as much at home as if she had been on the music-stool, and patted her arching neck, talking to her in the same tone almost in which she had addressed the flowers.

“Be quiet, Fatty dear; you’re frightening Mr. Sutherland.”

But Hugh, seeing the next moment that she was in no danger, sprang into his saddle. Away they went, Fatima infusing life and frolic into the equine as Euphra into the human portion of the cavalcade. Having reached the common, out of sight of the house, Miss Cameron, instead of looking after Harry, lest he should have too much exercise, scampered about like a wild girl, jumping everything that came in her way, and so exciting Harry’s pony, that it was almost more than he could do to manage it, till at last Hugh had to beg her to go more quietly, for Harry’s sake. She drew up alongside of them at once, and made her mare stand as still as she could, while Harry made his first essay upon a little ditch. After crossing it two or three times, he gathered courage; and setting his pony at a larger one beyond, bounded across it beautifully.

“Bravo! Harry!” cried both Euphra and Hugh. Harry galloped back, and over it again; then came up to them with a glow of proud confidence on his pale face.

“You’ll be a horseman yet, Harry,” said Hugh.

“I hope so,” said Harry, in an aspiring tone, which greatly satisfied his tutor. The boy’s spirit was evidently reviving. Euphra must have managed him ill. Yet she was not in the least effeminate herself. It puzzled Hugh a good deal. But he did not think about it long; for Harry cantering away in front, he had an opportunity of saying to Euphra:

“Are you offended with me, Miss Cameron?”

“Offended with you! What do you mean? A girl like me offended with a man like you?”

She looked two and twenty as she spoke; but even at that she was older than Hugh. He, however, certainly looked considerably older than he really was.

“What makes you think so?” she added, turning her face towards him.

“You would not speak to me when we came home yesterday.”

“Not speak to you?—I had a little headache—and perhaps I was a little sullen, from having been in such bad company all the morning.”

“What company had you?” asked Hugh, gazing at her in some surprise.

“My own,” answered she, with a lovely laugh, thrown full in his face. Then after a pause: “Let me advise you, if you want to live in peace, not to embark on that ocean of discovery.”

“What ocean? what discovery?” asked Hugh, bewildered, and still gazing.

“The troubled ocean of ladies’ looks,” she replied. “You will never be able to live in the same house with one of our kind, if it be necessary to your peace to find out what every expression that puzzles you may mean.”

“I did not intend to be inquisitive—it really troubled me.”

“There it is. You must never mind us. We show so much sooner than men—but, take warning, there is no making out what it is we do show. Your faces are legible; ours are so scratched and interlined, that you had best give up at once the idea of deciphering them.”

Hugh could not help looking once more at the smooth, simple, naïve countenance shining upon him.

“There you are at it again,” she said, blushing a little, and turning her head away. “Well, to comfort you, I will confess I was rather cross yesterday—because—because you seemed to have been quite happy with only one of your pupils.”

As she spoke the words, she gave Fatima the rein, and bounded off, overtaking Harry’s pony in a moment. Nor did she leave her cousin during all the rest of their ride.

Most women in whom the soul has anything like a chance of reaching the windows, are more or less beautiful in their best moments. Euphra’s best was when she was trying to fascinate. Then she was—fascinating. During the first morning that Hugh spent at Arnstead, she had probably been making up her mind whether, between her and Hugh, it was to be war to the knife, or fascination. The latter had carried the day, and was now carrying him. But had she calculated that fascination may re-act as well?

Hugh’s heart bounded, like her Arab steed, as she uttered the words last recorded. He gave his chestnut the rein in his turn, to overtake her; but Fatima’s canter quickened into a gallop, and, inspirited by her companionship, and the fact that their heads were turned stablewards, Harry’s pony, one of the quickest of its race, laid itself to the ground, and kept up, taking three strides for Fatty’s two, so that Hugh never got within three lengths of them till they drew rein at the hall-door, where the grooms were waiting them. Euphra was off her mare in a moment, and had almost reached her own room before Hugh and Harry had crossed the hall. She came down to luncheon in a white muslin dress, with the smallest possible red spot in it; and, taking her place at the table, seemed to Hugh to have put off not only her riding habit, but the self that was in it as well; for she chatted away in the most unconcerned and easy manner possible, as if she had not been out of her room all the morning. She had ridden so hard, that she had left her last speech in the middle of the common, and its mood with it; and there seemed now no likelihood of either finding its way home.

CHAPTER VII. THE PICTURE GALLERY

the house is crencled to and fro,And hath so queint waies for to go,For it is shapen as the mase is wrought.CHAUCER—Legend of Ariadne.

Luncheon over, and Harry dismissed as usual to lie down, Miss Cameron said to Hugh:

“You have never been over the old house yet, I believe, Mr. Sutherland. Would you not like to see it?”

“I should indeed,” said Hugh. “It is what I have long hoped for, and have often been on the point of begging.”

“Come, then; I will be your guide—if you will trust yourself with a madcap like me, in the solitudes of the old hive.”

“Lead on to the family vaults, if you will,” said Hugh.

“That might be possible, too, from below. We are not so very far from them. Even within the house there is an old chapel, and some monuments worth looking at. Shall we take it last?”

“As you think best,” answered Hugh.

She rose and rang the bell. When it was answered,

“Jacob,” she said, “get me the keys of the house from Mrs. Horton.”

Jacob vanished, and reappeared with a huge bunch of keys. She took them.

“Thank you. They should not be allowed to get quite rusty, Jacob.”

“Please, Miss, Mrs. Horton desired me to say, she would have seen to them, if she had known you wanted them.”

“Oh! never mind. Just tell my maid to bring me an old pair of gloves.”

Jacob went; and the maid came with the required armour.

“Now, Mr. Sutherland. Jane, you will come with us. No, you need not take the keys. I will find those I want as we go.”

She unlocked a door in the corner of the hall, which Hugh had never seen open. Passing through a long low passage, they came to a spiral staircase of stone, up which they went, arriving at another wide hall, very dusty, but in perfect repair. Hugh asked if there was not some communication between this hall and the great oak staircase.

“Yes,” answered Euphra; “but this is the more direct way.”

As she said this, he felt somehow as if she cast on him one of her keenest glances; but the place was very dusky, and he stood in a spot where the light fell upon him from an opening in a shutter, while she stood in deep shadow.

“Jane, open that shutter.”

The girl obeyed; and the entering light revealed the walls covered with paintings, many of them apparently of no value, yet adding much to the effect of the place. Seeing that Hugh was at once attracted by the pictures, Euphra said:

“Perhaps you would like to see the picture gallery first?”

Hugh assented. Euphra chose key after key, and opened door after door, till they came into a long gallery, well lighted from each end. The windows were soon opened.

“Mr. Arnold is very proud of his pictures, especially of his family portraits; but he is content with knowing he has them, and never visits them except to show them; or perhaps once or twice a year, when something or other keeps him at home for a day, without anything particular to do.”

In glancing over the portraits, some of them by famous masters, Hugh’s eyes were arrested by a blonde beauty in the dress of the time of Charles II. There was such a reality of self-willed boldness as well as something worse in her face, that, though arrested by the picture, Hugh felt ashamed of looking at it in the presence of Euphra and her maid. The pictured woman almost put him out of countenance, and yet at the same time fascinated him. Dragging his eyes from it, he saw that Jane had turned her back upon it, while Euphra regarded it steadily.

“Open that opposite window, Jane,” said she; “there is not light enough on this portrait.”

Jane obeyed. While she did so, Hugh caught a glimpse of her face, and saw that the formerly rosy girl was deadly pale. He said to Euphra:

“Your maid seems ill, Miss Cameron.”

“Jane, what is the matter with you?”

She did not reply, but, leaning against the wall, seemed ready to faint.

“The place is close,” said her mistress. “Go into the next room there,”—she pointed to a door—“and open the window. You will soon be well.”

“If you please, Miss, I would rather stay with you. This place makes me feel that strange.”

She had come but lately, and had never been over the house before.

“Nonsense!” said Miss Cameron, looking at her sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Please, don’t be angry, Miss; but the first night e’er I slept here, I saw that very lady—”

“Saw that lady!”

“Well, Miss, I mean, I dreamed that I saw her; and I remembered her the minute I see her up there; and she give me a turn like. I’m all right now, Miss.”

Euphra fixed her eyes on her, and kept them fixed, till she was very nearly all wrong again. She turned as pale as before, and began to draw her breath hard.

“You silly goose!” said Euphra, and withdrew her eyes; upon which the girl began to breathe more freely.

Hugh was making some wise remarks in his own mind on the unsteady condition of a nature in which the imagination predominates over the powers of reflection, when Euphra turned to him, and began to tell him that that was the picture of her three or four times great-grandmother, painted by Sir Peter Lely, just after she was married.

“Isn’t she fair?” said she.—“She turned nun at last, they say.”

“She is more fair than honest,” thought Hugh. “It would take a great deal of nun to make her into a saint.” But he only said, “She is more beautiful than lovely. What was her name?”

“If you mean her maiden name, it was Halkar—Lady Euphrasia Halkar—named after me, you see. She had foreign blood in her, of course; and, to tell the truth, there were strange stories told of her, of more sorts than one. I know nothing of her family. It was never heard of in England, I believe, till after the Restoration.”

All the time Euphra was speaking, Hugh was being perplexed with that most annoying of perplexities—the flitting phantom of a resemblance, which he could not catch. He was forced to dismiss it for the present, utterly baffled.

“Were you really named after her, Miss Cameron?”

“No, no. It is a family name with us. But, indeed, I may be said to be named after her, for she was the first of us who bore it. You don’t seem to like the portrait.”

“I do not; but I cannot help looking at it, for all that.”

“I am so used to the lady’s face,” said Euphra, “that it makes no impression on me of any sort. But it is said,” she added, glancing at the maid, who stood at some distance, looking uneasily about her—and as she spoke she lowered her voice to a whisper—“it is said, she cannot lie still.”

“Cannot lie still! What do you mean?”

“I mean down there in the chapel,” she answered, pointing.

The Celtic nerves of Hugh shuddered. Euphra laughed; and her voice echoed in silvery billows, that broke on the faces of the men and women of old time, that had owned the whole; whose lives had flowed and ebbed in varied tides through the ancient house; who had married and been given in marriage; and gone down to the chapel below—below the prayers and below the psalms—and made a Sunday of all the week.

Ashamed of his feeling of passing dismay, Hugh said, just to say something:

“What a strange ornament that is! Is it a brooch or a pin? No, I declare it is a ring—large enough for three cardinals, and worn on her thumb. It seems almost to sparkle. Is it ruby, or carbuncle, or what?”

“I don’t know: some clumsy old thing,” answered Euphra, carelessly.

“Oh! I see,” said Hugh; “it is not a red stone. The glow is only a reflection from part of her dress. It is as clear as a diamond. But that is impossible—such a size. There seems to me something curious about it; and the longer I look at it, the more strange it appears.”

Euphra stole another of her piercing glances at him, but said nothing.

“Surely,” Hugh went on, “a ring like that would hardly be likely to be lost out of the family? Your uncle must have it somewhere.”

Euphra laughed; but this laugh was very different from the last. It rattled rather than rang.

“You are wonderfully taken with a bauble—for a man of letters, that is, Mr. Sutherland. The stone may have been carried down any one of the hundred streams into which a family river is always dividing.”

“It is a very remarkable ornament for a lady’s finger, notwithstanding,” said Hugh, smiling in his turn.

“But we shall never get through the pictures at this rate,” remarked Euphra; and going on, she directed Hugh’s attention now to this, now to that portrait, saying who each was, and mentioning anything remarkable in the history of their originals. She manifested a thorough acquaintance with the family story, and made, in fact, an excellent show-woman. Having gone nearly to the other end of the gallery,

“This door,” said she, stopping at one, and turning over the keys, “leads to one of the oldest portions of the house, the principal room in which is said to have belonged especially to the lady over there.”

As she said this, she fixed her eyes once more on the maid.

“Oh! don’t ye now, Miss,” interrupted Jane. “Hannah du say as how a whitey-blue light shines in the window of a dark night, sometimes—that lady’s window, you know, Miss. Don’t ye open the door—pray, Miss.”

Jane seemed on the point of falling into the same terror as before.

“Really, Jane,” said her mistress, “I am ashamed of you; and of myself, for having such silly servants about me.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss, but—”

“So Mr. Sutherland and I must give up our plan of going over the house, because my maid’s nerves are too delicate to permit her to accompany us. For shame!”

“Oh, du ye now go without me!” cried the girl, clasping her hands.

“And you will wait here till we come back?”

“Oh! don’t ye leave me here. Just show me the way out.”

And once more she turned pale as death.

“Mr. Sutherland, I am very sorry, but we must put off the rest of our ramble till another time. I am, like Hamlet, very vilely attended, as you see. Come, then, you foolish girl,” she added, more mildly.