George Fenn - The Star-Gazers

“Yes,” he said, “I know. But we shall have to go away from the old place, Judy, for it can’t never be.”

“Oh, father!”

“No, my dear, it won’t do. It’s all been a muddle, and I ought to have known better, instead of being a proud old fool, pleased as could be to see my lassie growing into a lady. There, I may as well tell you the truth, lass, at once.”

“The truth, father?” she said sharply.

“Yes, my dear, though it goes again me to hurt your poor little soft heart.”

“What do you mean, father?” she cried, startled now by the keeper’s looks.

“It must come, Judy; but I wish you’d found it out for yourself. Young Robert isn’t the man his dead father was. He’s a liar and a scoundrel, girl, and – ”

She sprang from him with her eyes flashing, and a look of angry indignation convulsing her features.

“It’s true, my girl. He never meant to marry you, only to make you his plaything because he liked your pretty face.”

“It isn’t true,” said the girl harshly; and the indignation in her breast against her father made her wonderfully like him now.

“It is true, Judy, my pretty. I wouldn’t lie to you, and half break your heart. You’ve got to face it along with me. We’re sent away because the captain is going to marry.”

“It isn’t true, father; he wouldn’t marry Madge Emlin, with her cruel, deceitful heart.”

“No, my lass; he’s chucked her over too. He’s going to marry Sir John Day’s gal, over at Brackley Hall – her who came here and painted your face in the sun bonnet, when you were home those few days the time I had rheumatiz.”

“Is this true, father?”

“As true as gospel, lass.”

She gave him a long, searching look, as if reading his very soul, and then crept back to a low chair, sank down, and buried her face in her hands.

“Hah!” he said to himself, “she takes it better than I thought for. Thank God, it wasn’t too late.”

He stood thinking for a few minutes.

“Where am I to get a cottage, Judy, my lass?” he said at last. “One of those at Lindham might do for the present, out there by your grandmother’s, if there’s one empty. Mother Wattley would know. I’ll go and see her. Let’s get out of this. Poor old place, though,” he said, as he looked round. “It seems rather hard.”

Judith had raised her head, and sat gazing straight before her, right into the future, but she did not speak.

Glynne Day was seated in her favourite place – a bright, cheerful-looking room connected with her bedchamber on the first floor at Brackley, and turned by her into a pleasant nest; for the French windows opened into a tiny conservatory over a broad bay window of the dining-room, where were displayed the choicest floral gems that Jones, the head gardener, could raise, all being duly tended by her own hands.

The gardener shook his head, and said that “the plahnts wiltered” for want of light, and wanted to cut away the greater part of the tendril-like stems of the huge wistaria, which twisted itself into cables, and formed loops and sprays all over the top glass; but Glynne looked at him in horror, and forbade him to cut a stem. Consequently, in the spring-time, great lavender racemes of the lovely flowers clustered about the broad window at which the mistress of the Hall loved to sit and sketch “bits” of the beautiful landscape around, and make study after study of the precipitous pine-crowned hill a mile away, behind whose dark trees the sun would set, and give her opportunities to paint in gorgeous hues the tints of the western sky.

Here Lucy Alleyne would be brought after their walks, to sit and read, while Glynne filled in sketches she had made; and many a pleasant hour was passed by the two girls, while the soft breezes of the sunny country waved the long wistaria strands.

“It’s no use for me to speak, Mr Morris,” said the gardener one day. “It ’most breaks my heart, for all about there, and under the little glass house is the untidiest bit about my garden. I told Sir John about it, and he said, ‘Why don’t you cut it then, booby?’ and when I told him why, and ast him to speak to Miss Glynne, he said, ‘Be off, and leave it alone.’”

“And of course you did,” said Morris, the butler.

“Sack’s the word if I hadn’t, sir. But you mark my words: one of these days – I mean nights – them London burglars ’ll give us a visit, and they won’t want no ladder to get up to the first-floor windows. A baby could climb up them great glycene ropes and get in at that window; and then away goes my young lady’s jewels.”

“Well, they won’t get my plate,” said Morris with a chuckle. “I’ve two loaded pistols in my pantry for anyone who comes, so let ’em look out; and if I shout for help, the major’s got his loaded too.”

Glynne Day was seated one afternoon in her conservatory, bending over her last water-colour sketch by the open window, when a loud, reverberating bang echoed along the corridor, making the windows rattle outside her room. Starting up, knowing from old experience that it was only an earthquake, one of the social kind which affected Brackley from time to time, she hurried into her little study, and out into the passage, to go to the end, and tap sharply at the door facing her.

“Come in,” was shouted in the same tones as he who uttered the order had cried “wheel into line!” and Glynne entered to find the major with his hair looking knotted, his moustache bristling, and his eyes rolling in their sockets.

“What is the matter, uncle?”

“Matter?” cried the major, who was purple with rage. “Matter? He’s your father, Glynne, and he’s my brother, but if – if I could only feel that it wasn’t wicked to cut him down with the sword I used at Chillianwallah, I’d be thankful.”

“Now, uncle, dear, you don’t feel anything of the kind,” said Glynne, leaning upon the old gentleman’s arm.

“I do feel it, and I mean it this time. Now, girl, look here! Why am I such an old idiot – ”

“Oh, uncle!”

” – As to stop here, and let that bullying, farm-labouring, overbearing bumpkin – I beg your pardon, my dear, but he is – father of yours, ride rough-shod over me?”

“But, uncle, dear – ”

“But, niece, dear, he does; and how I can be such an idiot as to stop here, I don’t know. If I were his dependent, it couldn’t be worse.”

“But, uncle, dear, I’m afraid you do show a little temper sometimes.”

“Temper! I show temper! Nothing of the kind,” cried the old fellow, angrily, and his grey curls seemed to stand out wildly from his head. “Only decision – just so much decision as a military man should show – nothing more. Temper, indeed!”

“But you are hasty, dear, and papa so soon gets warm.”

“Warm? Red hot. White hot. He has a temper that would irritate a saint, and heaven knows I am no saint.”

“It does seem such a pity for you and papa to quarrel.”

“Pity? It’s abominable, my child, when we might live together as peaceably as pigeons. But he shall have it his own way now. I’ve done. I’ll have no more of it I’m not a child.”

“What are you going to do, uncle?”

“Do? Pack up and go, this very day. Then he may come to my chambers and beg till all’s blue, but he’ll never persuade me to come out here again.”

“Oh, uncle! It will be so dull if you go away.”

“No, no, not it, my dear. You’ve got your captain; and there’ll be peace in the house then till he finds someone else to bully. Why, I might be one of his farm labourers; that I might. But there’s an end of it now.”

“But, uncle!” cried Glynne, looking perplexed and troubled, “come back with me into the library. I’m sure, if papa was in the wrong, he’ll be sorry.”