There was much more, the outpouring of a mother’s love, which ran away with the mother’s pen, and covered three sheets of paper; but even this long letter did not suffice without a postscript.
“P.S.—Miss Marchant spoke to me—incidentally—of a brother, and from her evident embarrassment I fear that the brother is as undesirable a connection as the father. It would be well that you should know all that is to be known about him before he becomes your brother-in-law; so as to avoid unpleasant surprises in the future.”
Happily the idea of this brother’s existence was already familiar. In their first ramble together as engaged lovers Eve had told Vansittart a great deal about her brother. She dwelt with the younger sister’s fond admiration upon his youthful gifts, which seemed to be chiefly of the athletic order; his riding, his shooting, his rowing, his running: in all which exercises he appeared to have excelled. At Cambridge his chief sins, as Eve knew them, had been tandem driving, riding in steeplechases, with frequent absences at Newmarket. Whatever darker sins had distinguished his college career were but dimly suspected by Eve.
“My father was very proud of him while he was a boy,” Eve told her lover, “but when he grew up, and began to spend money, they were always quarrelling. Poor mother! It was so sad to see her between them—loving them both, and trying to be loyal to both; her poor heart torn asunder in the struggle.”
“And he was fond of you, this brother of yours?” questioned Vansittart, to whom such fondness seemed a redeeming virtue.
“Yes, he was very fond of me; he was always good to me. When there was unhappiness in the dining-room and drawing-room—when Harold was what father called sulky—he used to come to the schoolroom, and sit over the fire roasting chestnuts all the evening. He would go without his dinner rather than sit down with father, and would have some supper brought to the schoolroom at ten o’clock, and my good old governess and I used to share his supper and wait upon him. What merry suppers they were! I was too thoughtless to consider that his being with us meant bad blood between him and father, and unhappiness for my poor mother. She used to look in at the schoolroom door sometimes, and shake her head, and call us naughty children; but I know it was a relief to her to see him eating and drinking and laughing and talking with dear little Mütterchen and me. But I am tiring you with these childish reminiscences.”
“No, love; there is no detail in your past life so trifling that I would not care to know it. I want to feel as if I had known you from your cradle. We will go to see the old place near Beverley some day, if you like, and you shall show me the gardens where you played, the rooms in which you lived. One can always get into another man’s house by a little management.”
That Easter week was a time of loveliest weather. Even the sun and the winds were gracious to these happy lovers, and for them April put on the bloom of May. Vansittart spent almost all his days at the Homestead, or rambling with the sisters, Eve and he walking side by side, engrossed in each other’s company, as if the world held no one else—the sisters ahead of them or in the rear, as caprice dictated.
Every lane and thicket and hillside between Fernhurst and Blackdown was explored in those happy wanderings; every pathway in Verdley Copse was trodden by those light footsteps; and Henley Hill and its old Roman village grew as familiar to Vansittart as Pall Mall and the clubs. They revelled in the primroses which carpeted all those woodland ways; they found the earliest bluebells, and many a hollow whitened with the fairy cups of the wood-anemone.
One morning, as they were walking over the soft brown carpet of fir needles and withered oak leaves in Verdley Copse, Vansittart opened a little dark-blue velvet box, and showed Eve a ring—a half-hoop of sapphires set with brilliants.
“I chose the colour in memory of the blue flower of happiness that you and I found on the hilltop,” he said, as he put the ring on the third finger of his sweetheart’s slender hand. “If ever you are inclined to be angry with me, or to care for me a little less than you do now, let the memory of the mystical blue flower plead for me, Eve, and the thought of how dearly we loved each other that Easter Sunday years and years ago.”
She gave a faint, shuddering sigh at the image those words evoked.
“Years and years ago! Will this day when we are young and happy ever be years and years ago? It seems so strange!”
“Age is strange and death is stranger; but they must come, Eve. All we have to hope for is that we may go on loving each other to the end.”
After those ramblings in the coppices and over the hill, there was afternoon tea at the Homestead—a feast for the gods. Colonel Marchant, well content with the progress of affairs, had gone to Brighton for the volunteer review, and was not expected home again till the end of the week; so the sisters were sovereign rulers of the house, and afternoon tea was the order of the day. It is doubtful whether dinner had any part in the scheme of their existence at this time. The short-petticoated youngsters generally carried some hunks of currant cake in a basket, and these hunks were occasionally shared with the elder sisters, and even with Vansittart,
