The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8, 25 February 1909, Page 283

The Storyteller

THE OLD HOiVLE

. The gardens of Ardmore House had blazed in the July sunshine on the day when Pamela Langford and Captain La Touche had first met. " ' The lilies had -stood up in tall ' spikes of bloom ; there were roses and pansies and stocks and carnations, with scarlet geranium and lobelia in all the beds. The little apples were reddening ou the boughs. The flowers were like flames of fire against the dark yew hedges cut in arches. The coolness and dimness of the great drawing-room, its windows shaded by the creeper-hung verandah, were grateful to one coming m out of the sunshine. - "~" Pamela had come in from the garden, not knowing there were visitors. She had been picking raspberries for jam-making, and a flavor of the fruit clung about her. She had a big garden-hat, with a twist of pink in it, on top of her soft, fair hair, which curled naturally under the brim of her hat and on her white neck.,. Her frock was a washed-out muslin, with_<.yery faded pink roses upon it. It was untied at the throats * Her fingers were stained with the fruit. If her eyes had not been dazed from the sun she might have lecognised the presence of the visitors in time to avoid them. As it was she was in the midst of* them before she was aware. - - ' Motner, darling,' she began, ' Mary says there will be at least thirty more pounds of raspberries than last" year.' < - Then she stopped, and stood turning white and red. * "I There was a little old lady sitting in the' most comg^ fortable of all the" comfortable chairs. "She was verjr smartly dressed in a black gown- of a style and fit whicli suggested Paris. There was a touch of old lace at the. neck and wrists. She wore mittens^ Her early-Victorian bonnet was filled in with pink roses, which became amazingly well her unspoilt skin and blue eyes. In another chair sat an extremely smart young man; His silk hat rested on his knees. He was wearing a frockcoat. His sleek, dark head showed a parting down the middle. He had fine grey eyes and a very pleasant, honest, kindly expression. But at the moment he terrified Pam. People did not go visiting so smartly in this green corner of the world. A well-cut suit of tweed was quite good enough for the golden youth. Even flannels, were not inadmissible. A frock-coat and top-hat were not seen once in a twelvemonth. She stood with a helpless, frightened air, turning red and white. When she was red Captain Anthony thought she was like the tall, pale-pink hollyhocks, all over clusters of delicious roses, which were in a brown jar by' the fireplace. When she was white she was like~-the lilies in the garden. A lovely creature, he thought, -with the slenderness, the angularity of the child yet about her — a Psyche with that air of flight. _' Come and sit down, Pam,*'. said Mrs. Langford, extending a kind hand. ' Miss La Touche, this is my daughter, Pamela. Captain La Touche, my daughter.' Pamela fell shyly into a retired position close to her mother's elbow, and hardly lifted her eyes when Captain La Touche brought her her' tea and offered her bread and butter i - To be sure, the La Touches were the former owners -of Ardmore House. It was a long time ago, and Pam had been born and brought up in the big, red-brick house amid its many gardens and fields, which seemed to its children the most beautiful and kindly place in the world. Perhaps they would have thought any place so over which their mother presided. The father was dear to wiem in his quiet, -silent way. But the mother was an ideal mother — a fountain of love, a bosom of softness for the children sick or in trouble, .wise inTcounsel, patient, capable — in a word, adorable. " Mrs. Lahgford was not lovely only to her children. Everyone she came in contact with felt the richness, the warmth of her delightful personality. She made all- the world her friends and lovers. Her eyes danced now with a joyous humor as she listened to Miss La Touche. The old lady was recalling the house** as she remembered' it. It was not improved. Everything had been much better in the old days. Such a thing had stood here, such a thing there. The old arrangement had been charming.

To be sure, the La Touches were the former owners in my time. lam not sure that they are not out of place even yet in a gentleman's house. The only thing 'is that they save the servants. The water supply, too: we had pumps, and they used to run out occasionally. To be sure, the new ways have their advantages, -yet. the old were the times to live in.' -> ~

'Aunt Matilda is a crusted Tory,' laughed Anthony La Touche to Mrs. Langford, who met him with responsive laughter. 'I should think I was, my dear,' the old lady replied. Its the only thing for a gentlewoman to be.' Miss La Touche had forgotten that she had been told that the new people at Ardmore — who had been there thirty years— had taken up with the new-fangled notions and called themselves Nationalists. If she had 'remembered it, perhaps she might have tried to steel her heart against Mrs. Langford's soft, compelling claim, so it was just as well.

In the end Miss La Touche and her nephew had stayed to dinner, their scruples .about dining in their ordinary attire having been satisfied. Pamela had sat by Captain La Touche at dinner., and had almost forgotten her shyness of him. Something lie had said about her mother had won her heart.

You feel it,' she had said, lifting large, luminous eyes to his; m the intensity of her feeling and pleasure she had forgotten to he shy— < you feel it, who have only seen her this one afternoon. Can you imagine how we feel it?'

For the moment her expression had a passion which made his thoughts go to Juliet on her balcony. Before the dinner-hour Miss La Touche had explored the house from garret to basement, peopling "every corner with old memories and old ghosts. Pamela had gone silently up and down stairs with her. She had often thought about those La Touches who had lived so many years at Ardmore, so many generations, so many centuries, even for part of Ardmore was very old. As she listened to the old lady she felt that the house did not really belong to them. They were interlopers. The La Touches had set their seal on every inch of it. She had had some shadowy sense of it, hardly realised, while she had listened to the peasants' talk of the La Touches. The house had just tolerated them. They were in no real sense its owners.

' You would not le inclined to sell ?' the old lady saia " to Mr. Langford later. ' The one thing that might induce us to come back to live in Ireland would be if you would sell. To be sure, it matters less- while Anthony is in the Service ; but by-and-bye he will marry and settle down. Perhaps by that time you might be tired of Ardmore.' < I hope to live and die at Ardmore,' Mr. Langford said, in a startled way, passing his hand over his lined intellectual forehead. '

It was a thousand pities that it was the La Touches' last evening in the country, that they were not likely to meet again. Even with Miss La Touche Mrs. Langfordhad made strides towards friendship. 'I can think of you in- Ardmore with less pain than I could have imagined,' the old lady said, with an air of great generosity. 'In fact, I could give it up to no one as I feel now I can give it up to you It is not like strangers being m the place. Still, we should have liked to have .bought it lack. I should have liked Anthony's children to be born in Ardmore. It is a little hard now that Peter La Touche has left his fortune to Anthony that Ardmore must be yet beyond us.' ' I felt like sympathising with her over our own V usurpation,' laughed Mrs. Langford afterwards. 'I paid thirty thousand for the place,' Maurice Langford said. 'As I listened to the old lady I felt as though it had been given to me as a gift.' Seven years. A good many things may happen in seven years. To Pamela Langford it happened to lose everything, everything, m seven years— father and mother, sisters and brothers, home and fortune, were all lost to her between that day when she met with Anthony La Touche and the day she turned her back on Ardmore in its summer glory to take a governess's place in the city. Mrs. Clifford, the wife of the hard lawyer who had managed John Langford's affairs down to the payment of the last creditor, had found the place for Pamela The girl had accepted it in a dazed way. Now that everything was gone, what did it matter how she fared during the years of her pilgrimage till she should find her mother^ arms about her again? She listened, not understanding them, to Mrs. Clifford's explanations about the place slxo was to undertake. The salary was small, and there were six children. But L.rs. Clifford considered it quite providential that the chance had turned up. So much was expected of governesses nowadays. Girls with University degrees were a drug in the market. It was a pity Pamela's education had not been more complete. But then, of course, no one could have anticipated that she would ever need to earn her bread. And so, on, and so on. Pamela only caught a word here and tliere. Her mind was too dazed by suffering to be receptive; and she was passive in Mrs. Clifford's hands.

Friends of her father and mother would have done better for the poor stricken girl if but she had given them

the opportunity. As it was, she saw no one, wrote to no one. (She had lost everything. The world could show iier nothing but a cold face, no matter where she turned It was kind of Mrs. Clifford to take the trouble. If. she could have any wish about herself it would be to creep away into a corner and- be alone with her trouble.- But since that might not be, since slie had to earn her bread, it was kind of Mrs. Clifford to find her that place of- six children and thirty-five pounds a year to keep her from starvation." She was never going,to see Ardmore again. /Well, what matter for that, since all -that had made Ardmore a heaven was gone? Yet the last night before her journey to Dublin, when she slept at the Cliffords' house, Ardmore, empty -and desolate, cried to her like .a lonely ghost.; What «~is going to become of it? ffn *-„._+£ While she waited on the platform for herHraiii Hext day— at the last moment Mr. Clifford himself had decided to see her off, although he had intended to depute the duty to one of his clerks — she spoke about Ardmore. 'I wish the La Touches would take it/ she said. ' You know, they came, to see us seven years ago— Captain La louche and his aunt. Miss La Touche wanted papa to sell it to her nephew.' . ' Seven years ago. A good many things have happened in seven years. It is unlikely they would want the liouse now. They may be dead for all we know.' ' Captain La Touche was quite young.' Why should her heart have given that sudden throb of pain at Mr Clifford's words? What could it matter to her who lived" and died, seeing the things that had happened to her? He was quite young,' she repeated. 'Perhaps he would take Ardmore now, if he knew.' 'It will be widely advertised. Of course, you know that nothing will come to you out of the sale-r-not one penny. <The bank takes all: - You need not trouble about the house.' . - . No, of course she need not trouble from his point of view, yet she troubled. That night, and many a night the house cried to her, haunted her, called her like those new graves in Ardmore churchyard that helcl all her iov on earth. " J J Her new abode was in a tall, dark house in a city square. The houses had': been great houses" at one time. Now decay lay upon them as upon all the' neighborhood. For the present their size and commodiousness and the little of their former glory which clung to them kept them from the doom of the tenement-house, which had overtaken many like them. They were still rented and owned by people of a moderate wealth and.some social pretensions. Still the name meant something on V visiting-card as an .address. - But the houses were • iU-kept. While the summer months remained Pamela and her charges were kept -in the country, in a lonely house, among fields, with a background of hills, and the sea lying beyond a stretch of- boglands. 'It was so lonely that servants could not be induced lo stay there. People had a way. of developing nerves. ■ When Mrs. Quinlan, the children's mother, came for a few days, she declared that the loneliness affected- her; that tho sudden song of a blackbird or a lark rising Jrom the long grass were' enough to make her- shriek. Her visits were never very long. A couple of times a day, while she stayed, she used to go out in the overgrown front lawn to listen for the' shriek of an engine, to watch for the column cf light smoke of the Dublin train"." It was always a joy to her when she could turn, her back on Cruddockstown and take the train. . To Pamela the quiet of- the place, when -Mrs. Quinlan was not there, was grateful enough. Her charges found nothing amiss in the space and loneliness. They were out of doors for the greater part of the day. They amused themselves with occasional -.squabbles. There was no danger in the wide fields, .and they were, dull, unadventurous children. Pamela- could be with them and think her own sad thoughts almost undisturbed. It was worse when they* went back to town at "the beginning of October. The dark street, the gloom of the high house, deepened the girl's depression. She went through' her duties with the sense of a dead weight clogging her heart, and her brain. She did her best to do them well, but it was with an aching sense of effort. The children were fond of her and tractable enough, but slowwitted. The mother complained. Miss Langford must really make an effort. She had -had trouble, of course, but we had all trouble, and there was no use giving way to it. The children were making little progress. Mrs. Quinlan went on to a reminiscence of governess she once had who had managed the children wonderfully, and had made, their clothes, as well as Mrs. Quinlan's blouses.

Pamela knew she was dull and inefficient. She supposed, it would not he easy,, if Mrs. Quinlan were dissatisfied with her, to find anyone else willing to give her a home and thirty-five pounds a year. The prospect of being

thrown on the world terrified her. Where would she go? Where turn for shelter in this dark, .unfriendly city? She had an idea that if Mrs. Quinlan were to dismiss her she would go back to Ardmore. She knew it was not sold yet. She would obtain admittance somehow -into the empty house. She would see it once more, and then she would creep away and die on her mother's grave. She did make the effort Mrs. Quinlan desired. If she had no great mental attainments she had clever fingers^ and the fingers worked mechanically of themselves. She added the role- of seamstress to that of nurse and governess. She sat up at nights to get the work done. She rose in the dark of .the cold, dark mornings, and worked in a fireless room till her fingers were benumbed beyond working any more.. Mrs. Quinlan was pleased with her. The only thing was that she looked so ill. It would be too bad if she were to fall ill and have to go to hospital now that she had begun to make an effort. Things were more miserable as the days turned round towards Christmas. The short days, the long darkness in the airless, melancholy house, the spells of weakness and f aintness that came more and more frequently," the drowsy intervals of semi-consciousness in which Ardmore and its memories haunted her with increasing persistency, made her lot heavier. She dreaded Christmas and, its memories. No one "would think of her. The children talked of presents and festivities -and pantomimes; but there would be nobody in all the world to remember her with even the kindness of a letter. She was utterly bereft and desolate — she who had had such love. " For the thousandth time she cried oir her hard bed to her mother to take her to be with her. . That night she dreamt of Anthony La Touche, in, the garden at Ardmore, he and she walking together, he debonair as she remembered him, she young and light-hearted, not the sad, pale, heart-broken girl she had come to be. It was no infrequent thing for her to dream of Anthony La Touche. She had dreamt of him often .of ' late, and had ascribed it to her longing that the La Touches should be back again at Ardmore. With La Touches there the house would be no longer -desolate. The thought of it need not wake her up at night. The next day, returning from an errand to a draper's shop, which she had undertaken for Mrs. Quinlan — there was a deal of sewing to be done to the new garments for the Christmas festivities — she came face to face with Anthony La Touche. He had seen her as she passed under 'the great electric globe outside his hotel, which he was just leaving. A quick step or two brought him to her side. ' Miss Langford !' he said, holding her hand in a warm, friendly clasp. 'We have only just arrived, Aunt Matilda and I. We have been talking of you, of your^ dear, delightful mother. But . . • . what is the matter ? You poor child!' He took the big parcel she had been carrying, and, gently compelling, led her back into- the hotel. On the second floor he opened a 'door and led her within a warm, fire-lit room. AS they came in Miss Matilda La Touche looked up from her book. ' Here, Aunt Matilda,' said her nephew, c I hare brought you this poor child. You remember Miss Langford. We have talked of her often enough. There is something terribly wrong. You will help her, if anyone can.' Then Pamela found herself sitting in a chair before the fire, having her cold hands chafed between Miss Matilda's warm ones. Captain La Touche had retired into the background, where he listened quietly while- she faltered out the story of all her sorrows. No one could have believed that Miss La Touche could have been so tenderly sympathetic. Her commiseration, her soft expressions il pity and regret seemed to draw the arrow from the wound in poor Pamela's breast. As her tears flowed it was us though the blood had begun to flow cleanly from a wound where an arrow had lain threatening mortification. Captain Anthony sat so quietly in the background that he need hardly have been present. ' He sat staring before him and twisting his moustache. Yet somewhere at the back of his sorrow for the girl, and the personal grief which touched him s that one so kind and warm as Mrs. Langford should be dead,~there was a quick joy in the presence of Pamela Langford crushed and stricken as she Avas, but yet the girl who had revisited his thoughts again and. again during those years since he had met. If lie had found her happy — in the dear, beautiful old house, in the warmth and love of her horne — the feeling which now sprang to life full-grown in his heart might -have been of slower growth. As it was, the extremity of his pity moved him to sudden passion. Now and again he glanced towards Pamela's fair, bent head, where the lamplight made a cloudy glitter about it: he listened to her low voice broken by sobs. If his aunt had not been present nothing could have prevented him from comforting Pamela in his arms.

The clock struck six with a little silvery tinkle, and Pamela sprang to her feet with a cry of dismay. 'I must go,' she said; *I must go. What will -Mrs. Quinlan think of me? I ought to be putting the children to bed.' She mopped at her wet eyes, turning away the disorder of her face from Captain Anthony; who had come forward impulsively. _.. , 'I am coming with you,' he said. .' Do you suppose I am going to allow you to load yourself with that parcel? Something, even more than the natural- grief,, has been killing you. You look tired to death. Aunt Matilda ' 'My dear boy, let me speak. You will come to us, Pamela. For the matter of that I need a companion quite as much, as your preseni. employer needs a governess. My dear, there is an affinity of affection between us. When I think of that dear woman, your mother. We loved her, Anthony and I. And I can never forget how she respected the traditions of the La Touches at Ardmore. The spirit was the same. A- little modernisation, to be sure; an introduction of the conveniences which have come with the years. For the rest, everything the same. Ah, child, what a mother you have lost! What a woman the world has lost! What a friend, that rose of womankind ! ' Miss La Touche would have held- Pamela there and thon; would have confronted Mrs. .Quinlan with the amazing intelligence that her governess had been seized upon by. the La Touches, and that there was positively no one, unless it might be Mrs. Quinlan herself, to put the children to bed. But-Pamela pleaded that for this one evening things should be as they had been. She must have time' to prepare Mrs. Quinlan's mind. She was conscious of a strange singing in her ears and giddiness as she bathed the children. In fact took all the will-power she could summon up to enable her to get through with the task. She looked so .white and tottering as she told Mrs. Quinlan she was about to leave her that the indignation died in the lady's heart and on her lips. If Miss Langford was' going to be ill it was better she should be ill - with the La Touches than with her.

'Of course, it's an inconvenience,' she said, ' and I'm disappointed about the blouses: I don't know where I'm going to get anyone to _ finish" them.' ' If you would let me take them,' Pamela said humbly, ' I will try to get them done by Christmas.' That night for the first. time she dreamt of Ardmore under its old aspect of unclouded happiness. The rooms were warm and bright as of old ; the gardens in full f ruvtw age and flowering time. She was there, and she was happy. She did not see her mother indeed, but she had all the time an ineffable blessed^ sense "of her presence. She woke from her happy dream to the murky dawn looking through the sooty windows. Sparrows chirped in

the black boughs outside. To-day the La Touches were to claim her; but it was characteristic of her that in her bewildering new happiness she looked around at the little beds and their sleeping occupants, and was sorry to leave the children, who had been fond of v her. After all, the illness which threatened her was aver-

It was so easy to turn back on that dark way with

all the petting and comfort which surrounded her. She - lay on the 'sofa, or she was taken for a drive by Miss La Touche — the December weather was' like May — and the We and comfort were as though she had been frozen nearly to death, cast out homeless, shelterless, and suddenly had been caught back into the light and warmth. Captain La .Touche was out a great deal those days, but ho was always in in the evonings, and Pamela used to lie on her sofa drawn close to the lamplight, working at Mrs. Quinlan' s blouses, while he and Miss La Touche talked in low tones, and Pamela listened in a dreamy happiness. Her mother had won those "< hearts' for- her; this haven of peace and ease r was a - direct gift from the beloved mother in Heaven. . „ Even a week did a deal to bring back the color to her cheek "and the -light to her eye. The thin places began to fill out ; there was an " elasticity in her stop ; she grew impationt of lying any longer on her sofa. (To be concluded.)