you can never be to me quite ‘nothing.’”
“I know that,” he said, affectionately, and went out of the room.
When he came in he looked much more cheerful — stood switching his riding-whip after the old habit, and called upon me to admire his favourite brown mare.
“I do; and her master likewise. John, when you’re on horseback you look like a young knight of the Middle Ages. Maybe, some of the old Norman blood was in ‘Guy Halifax, gentleman.’”
It was a dangerous allusion. He changed colour so rapidly and violently that I thought I had angered him.
“No — that would not matter — cannot — cannot — never shall. I am what God made me, and what, with His blessing, I will make myself.”
He said no more, and very soon afterwards he rode away. But not before, as every day, I had noticed that wistful wandering glance up at the darkened window of the room, where sad and alone, save for kindly Mrs. Tod, the young orphan lay.
In the evening, just before bed-time, he said to me with a rather sad smile, “Phineas, you wanted to know what it was that I wished to speak about to your father?”
“Ay, do tell me.”
“It is hardly worth telling. Only to ask him how he set up in business for himself. He was, I believe, little older than I am now.”
“Just twenty-one.”
“And I shall be twenty-one next June.”
“Are you thinking of setting up for yourself?”
“A likely matter!” and he laughed, rather bitterly, I thought —“when every trade requires capital, and the only trade I thoroughly understand, a very large one. No, no, Phineas; you’ll not see me setting up a rival tan-yard next year. My capital is NIL.”
“Except youth, health, courage, honour, honesty, and a few other such trifles.”
“None of which I can coin into money, however. And your father has expressly told me that without money a tanner can do nothing.”
“Unless, as was his own case, he was taken into some partnership where his services were so valuable as to be received instead of capital. True, my father earned little at first, scarcely more than you earn now; but he managed to live respectably, and, in course of time, to marry.”
I avoided looking at John as I said the last word. He made no answer, but in a little time he came and leaned over my chair.
“Phineas, you are a wise counsellor —‘a brother born for adversity.’ I have been vexing myself a good deal about my future, but now I will take heart. Perhaps, some day, neither you nor any one else will be ashamed of me.”
“No one could, even now, seeing you as you really are.”
“As John Halifax, not as the tanner’s ‘prentice boy? Oh! lad — there the goad sticks. Here I forget everything unpleasant; I am my own free natural self; but the minute I get back to Norton Bury — however, it is a wrong, a wicked feeling, and must be kept down. Let us talk of something else.”
“Of Miss March? She has been greatly better all day.”
“She? No, not her to-night!” he said, hurriedly. “Pah! I could almost fancy the odour of these hides on my hands still. Give me a candle.”
He went up-stairs, and only came down a few minutes before bed-time.
Next morning was Sunday. After the bells had done ringing we saw a black-veiled figure pass our window. Poor girl! — going to church alone. We followed — taking care that she should not see us, either during service or afterwards. We did not see anything more of her that day.
On Monday a message came, saying that Miss March would be glad to speak with us both. Of course we went.
She was sitting quite alone, in our old parlour, very grave and pale, but perfectly composed. A little more womanly-looking in the dignity of her great grief, which, girl as she was, and young men as we were, seemed to be to her a shield transcending all worldly “proprieties.”
As she rose, and we shook hands, in a silence only broken by the rustle of her black dress, not one of us thought — surely the most evil-minded gossip could not have dared to think — that there was anything strange in her receiving us here. We began to talk of common things — not THE thing. She seemed to have fought through the worst of her trouble, and to have put it back into those deep quiet chambers where all griefs go; never forgotten, never removed, but sealed up in silence, as it should be. Perhaps, too — for let us not exact more from Nature than Nature grants — the wide, wide difference in character, temperament, and sympathies between Miss March and her father unconsciously made his loss less a heart-loss, total and irremediable, than one of mere habit and instinctive feeling, which, the first shock over, would insensibly heal. Besides, she was young — young in life, in hope, in body, and soul; and youth, though it grieves passionately, cannot for ever grieve.
I saw, and rejoiced to see, that Miss March was in some degree herself again; at least, so much of her old self as was right, natural, and good for her to be.
She and John conversed a good deal. Her manner to him was easy and natural, as to a friend who deserved and possessed her warm gratitude: his was more constrained. Gradually, however, this wore away; there was something in her which, piercing all disguises, went at once to the heart of things. She seemed to hold in her hand the touchstone of truth.
He asked — no, I believe I asked her, how long she intended staying at Enderley?
“I can hardly tell. Once I understood that my cousin Richard Brithwood was left my guardian. This my fa — this was to have been altered, I believe. I wish it had been. You know Norton Bury, Mr. Halifax?”
“I live there.”
“Indeed!”— with some surprise. “Then you are probably acquainted with my cousin and his wife?”
“No; but I have seen them.”
John gave these answers without lifting his eyes.
“Will you tell me candidly — for I know nothing of her, and it is rather important that I should learn — what sort of person is Lady Caroline?”
This frank question, put directly, and guarded by the battery of those innocent, girlish eyes, was a very hard question to be answered; for Norton Bury had said many ill-natured things of our young ‘squire’s wife, whom he married at Naples, from the house of the well-known Lady Hamilton.
“She was, you are aware, Lady Caroline Ravenel, the Earl of Luxmore’s daughter.”
“Yes, yes; but that does not signify. I know nothing of Lord Luxmore — I want to know what she is herself.”
John hesitated, then answered, as he could with truth, “She is said to be very charitable to the poor, pleasant and kind-hearted. But, if I may venture to hint as much, not exactly the friend whom I think Miss March would choose, or to whom she would like to be indebted for anything but courtesy.”
“That was not my meaning. I need not be indebted to any one. Only, if she were a good woman, Lady Caroline would have been a great comfort and a useful adviser to one who is scarcely eighteen, and, I believe, an heiress.”
“An heiress!” The colour flashed in a torrent over John’s whole face, then left him pale. “I— pardon me — I thought it was otherwise. Allow me to — to express my pleasure —”
“It does not add to mine,” said she, half-sighing. “Jane Cardigan always told me riches brought many cares. Poor Jane! I wish I could go back to her — but that is impossible!”
A silence here intervened, which it was necessary some one should break.
“So much good can be done with a large fortune,” I said.
“Yes.