First Love. Mrs. Loudon
the poor little dog was no more: it had expired in convulsions; and the group which presented itself, on entering the breakfast-room, appeared holding a sort of coroner’s inquest over the body. Lord L., still faithful to his charge, held the motionless favourite on his knee; Mrs. Montgomery sat near, with a countenance which seemed to say, “all is over!” Frances’ maid and the butler stood, one with a saucer of milk, the other with a plate of water, both now become useless; while Henry pinched, first a foot, then the tail, then an ear, to ascertain, as he said, whether the thing were quite dead. Frances gently put his hand aside, and looked in the doctor’s face. The doctor shook his head. He was asked if he could say, from the symptoms, what had caused the creature’s death?
“Poison, madam! poison!” he replied, without hesitation.
Henry reddened. “It does not admit of a doubt, madam!” continued the doctor, “the animal has died by poison.” The servants had their own opinion, as to who had given the poison, but were silent.—Such are the beginnings of crime.
Poor Edmund had now been some days an inmate of Lodore House, but, as yet, no one had been able to discover who or what he was: while from himself no replies could be obtained, but sobs and terrified looks.
One morning Frances sent for him to the breakfast-room, and, after giving him many good things, began a kind of questioning, which she hoped might draw some information from the child, without alarming him: such as, Where was his home? Where was the place where he used always to be? He replied, “No where.” Was there any one that used to love him? “Yes,” he said. She now thought she had found a clue to some useful discovery, and asked him, who it was that loved him? “You do,” he replied. Frances took him on her knee, and put her questions in low whispers; upon which, when she asked him particularly about the large bruise on the side of his leg, he stole his little arms round her neck, and breathed softly in her ear, “She wanted to break it off.” “Who, my dear, wanted to break it off?” “My mother.” Then, alarmed at the great effort he had made, he became more silent than ever, and looked so much distressed, that at last, for his own relief, he was dismissed in charge of good Mrs. Smyth. While Frances, inspired by the same sentiment which had guided the righteous judgment of Solomon, felt convinced that the woman, whoever she might be, who could treat a child so barbarously, was not its real mother. Mrs. Montgomery was herself disposed to entertain the same opinion; she, however, laughed at the romantic deduction attempted to be made by Frances, that Edmund therefore must be the child of parents in an exalted rank in life.
While the ladies were discussing this point, Mr. Lauson, an attorney resident at Keswick, came in to pay his respects: for he was agent to the Cumberland and Westmoreland estates, as well as general man of business to the family. Lauson had passed Mrs. Smyth and Edmund in the hall, and had looked rather hard at the child. As soon as the morning salutations were ended, and he had taken his seat, he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder towards the door, which was behind him, saying, “What child’s that?” And, without waiting for a reply, he added, “I’d be sworn but it’s the boy that was begging about at the regatta with one leg.”
“With one leg!” interrupted Frances.
“Ay, ay,” said Lauson; “but I saw him myself find the other, so there is nothing so surprising in his having the two now.”
The ladies requested an explanation, and Mr. Lauson gave the best he could, by recounting as much as he had witnessed of the scene which opens our history.
CHAPTER VI.
“Of snowy white the dress, the buskin white,
And purest white, the graceful waving plume.”
In about six weeks the marriage of Frances and Lord L—took place, and the happy couple set off for Beech Park, his lordship’s seat, near London. Within the following ten days Mrs. Montgomery made all her home arrangements, paid her pensioners, gave orders for the Christmas dinner of the neighbouring poor, placed Edmund in the peculiar care of Mrs. Smyth; and, finally, the day before she set out to join her daughter and son-in-law, dispatched Henry, under escort of the butler, back to S—B—school. The school, as we have before observed, was an excellent, though a cheap one; but the lodging was such as Mrs. Montgomery certainly would not have selected for her nephew, nor indeed suffered him to occupy, could she have known the scenes and society into which it threw him.
Henry arrived at the village of S—B—, and jumped out of the carriage at the door of a butcher’s house. While the servant was taking out the luggage, Henry addressed, very familiarly, a woman who stood with her back to him; and accommodating his language, as was his custom, to his company, said, “Weel, Katty, and whoo is’t wee aw wee you?” “No mickle the better for yeer axin!” she replied, continuing her washing. The next moment Henry was engaged in a game of romps with a fine girl of fourteen, who just then came in from the garden: all the flowers which had lately bloomed there collected in her apron, to be tied up in penny bunches for the ensuing day’s market. On receiving, though not, it must be confessed, without richly deserving it, a smart slap on the ear from his fair antagonist, the young gentleman closed with her, and commenced an absolute boxing-match. At this juncture the butcher himself entered.
“What’s aw this? what’s aw this?” he exclaimed. The angry voice of David Park (such was the butcher’s name) ended the scuffle.
“Mr. Henry and me was no’ but larking, fether,” replied his daughter, adjusting her disordered hair and drapery, and gathering up her scattered flowers.
“Mr. Henry! Mr. Deevil!” said the man, recognising Henry with a scowl. “Bonny larking truly!” he continued; “bonny larking truly! And what business had you, wife, to aloo of ony sic work?” And he sat down sullenly, deterred from taking signal vengeance on the laughing young gentleman, by the dread of losing his lodger. “Bonny larking truly!” he resumed, as, without looking round, he poked the fire before which he had seated himself, and began to light his pipe. “Ye’ll soon be oure aul’, te lark afther that gate wi’ the scholar lads, I can tell yee!” Here he glanced at his daughter, and added, “Git awaw wi’ ye, and don yeer sel’, lass! yeer na fit till stand afoor a man body noo, tho’ he be thee fether! Yeer aw ribbands!”
We shall here leave Henry to keep such society, and to follow such pursuits unmolested, and give our attention again to other and more amiable personages of our history.
CHAPTER VII.
“Yes, sweet boy, Clara will be thy mother.
Thou hast thus her first of mother’s feelings;
Even should there rise, to claim her fondness,
Other beings like to thee: innocents,
Helpless innocents.”
Months had rolled away. It was a beautiful evening in the middle of July; and Lodore House, which had been deserted by most of its inhabitants about the latter end of last October, when the trees were almost leafless, and the voice of the fall loud with the swell of wintry torrents, now looked with a cheerful aspect from amid embowering verdure. The lofty head of Skiddaw arose with great majesty above the woods immediately behind the house, and the calm lake spread abroad in front, and bounded by the wide amphitheatre of the Keswick mountains, filled the mind with pleasing ideas of peace and retirement. The building, in its own outline, was picturesque; running along in light corridors, connecting its principal parts. Numerous glass doors, or French windows, leading out on the lawn, were all standing open. A table, covered with fruit and other refreshments, might be just peeped at through one of these; musical instruments, freed from their cases, appeared through others, and through more might be discerned, sofas, book-stands, work-tables, Turkey carpets, reposé chairs, Italian vases, bronze lamps, cut-glass lustres, hothouse plants, French beds, swing mirrors, &c.: