Chapter VI: Daughter of the House

SEVENTEEN years had passed away, bringing and leaving changes with them as they came and went. But the changes had at Woodleigh Hall been gentle and gradual in kind. George Rutherford dwelt there still as master, and Dulcibel as mistress. No earthquake had shaken the foundation of Dulcibel’s being. They had lived on year after year, feeling themselves and things around to be always much the same; only of course everybody was growing a little older. And Joan was a daughter of the house—not the daughter, since they had a child of their own. Somehow Joan Brooke always took her stand as the eldest daughter, although of course the position belonged by right to her junior in years, Nessie Rutherford. But Nessie was not self-asserting, and Joan undoubtedly was. Nessie did not mind being second, and Joan did. Dulcibel might object for Nessie; but that was a different matter.

Joan never seemed to realize her own true condition in life, as a forsaken waif, disowned or unknown by her own relations, and dependent on strangers. She no more thought of George Rutherford as a stranger, or of herself as his dependent, than if he and she had been veritable father and daughter.

George Rutherford was the best of husbands, the kindest of fathers. But there were sides to his nature which had no chance of expanding towards Dulcibel or Nessie; and in those directions the companionship of Joan proved especially satisfying.

Joan habitually called George and Dulcibel “father” and “mother.” She had been brought up to do so; and nothing pleased her better than being taken for “Miss Rutherford.” The very word “Brooke” called a frown to her face.

Within the spacious drawing-room of Woodleigh Hall sat three silent people, one afternoon in the early autumn.

Of the three silent individuals one was George himself. Seventeen years had brought a few grey lines into the tawny beard; but they had not detracted from his vigorous strength of frame. At fifty-three he was almost as fine a specimen of manhood as he had been at thirty-six—some said finer. There was a mellowed, softened calmness about the lion-like face not often to be seen. He seemed deeply interested in his book.

These years had not dealt quite so kindly with Dulcibel as with her husband. Instead of rounding and softening, she had grown thinner and more angular. While the fair hair showed as yet small signs of turning color, the features had become rather sharp, the two eyebrows were lifted into permanent arches of anxiety, and troubled lines were stamped around eyes and mouth.

Not that Dulcibel had undergone any unusual amount of trial in the seventeen years of her married life. Facial lines have more to do with inside than outside circumstances. And, after all, it is quite as wearying to be perpetually expecting trouble as to be perpetually enduring it.

The third person was a girl, very young, for she could not have been more than sixteen, and singular in appearance. Nobody except her mother counted Nessie pretty, and Dulcibel thought her lovely, but Dulcibel stood alone in her opinion, as mothers are apt to do sometimes. If George Rutherford was fair in coloring, and Dulcibel fairer still, Nessie supplied a superlative to her parents’ degrees of comparison.

She was rather small, of slender make and colorless complexion; with eyes of the lightest blue, lashes and eyebrows of almost invisible paleness, and limp, long hair of dull flaxen-white. The beauty of which Dulcibel loved to discourse lay in the delicate features, the pure, transparent skin, and the tiny snow white hands. But the cheeks had no tinting; the lips had only a faint hue of pink; the eyes did not sparkle; the face as a whole was devoid of animation. It was tender and refined, perhaps capable of sweetness, but too statuesque. Nessie seemed to have inherited nought of her father’s energy or of her mother’s restlessness.

“Dulcie, I have been thinking—”

“Just in a moment, Georgie dear. I must finish this note. It is almost post-time.”

George was silent, and the pen scratched on vehemently.

“Believe me, yours sincerely, D. Rutherford,” murmured Dulcibel, half aloud, as she wrote the concluding words. “There, that is done! What a bother; I have blotted the last page! Well, it must do.”

“Hurry doesn’t save time in the end, Dulcie.”

“I know what does save time,” retorted Dulcibel, ringing the bell, “and that is, not being interrupted. Take these at once, please.”—as the servant appeared.

“Anything important?” asked George.

“Yes; you wouldn’t think it so, but I do. What were you going to say to me just now?”

“Leo is coming home, for one thing.”

“When?”

“Almost immediately.”

“What for?”

“Various reasons. Indian fever for one. I have a long letter from him by this mail.”

“Was that what you wanted to tell me just now?”

“No,” George answered, smiling, “it was not, Dulcie. I have been thinking that Nessie looks pale; and I should like to take you all a little trip into Wales.”

“Why Wales?”

“I have a fancy for revisiting sometimes old scenes.”

Dulcibel faced round upon him.

“You mean that you want to go to the valley where we found Joan?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you may as well know one thing beforehand,” said Dulcibel, in a resolute voice—“and that is that I will not walk over the shaking bridge, and Nessie shall not either.”

George’s moustache twitched slightly, and he smoothed out his beard.

“The terrors of that bridge seem to have made a strong impression on you, my dear.”

“I wouldn’t cross it again for anything—not for anything you could mention—or let Nessie. What makes you want to go there?”

“I think a little change would do you and Nessie good before the winter; and I should like to show the said bridge to Joan. I have a fancy that it might recall something more of her early days than she can remember now.”

“Has Joan been asking—”

“No, dear. I have evolved the idea entirely out of my own inner consciousness.”

“It seems to me rather absurd. Of course if you mean to do it, we shall do it, though I would rather take a trip into Scotland. But, anyhow, Nessie and I will not walk over the bridge; and if I could have my way, you would not either.”

“You and Nessie shall only stand and look on at our perilous feat.”

“It is all very well to laugh, but bridges do break down sometimes,” retorted Dulcibel, with the least touch of tartness. “What makes you think Nessie unwell?”

“I don’t; I only think her pale.”

“She never is anything else. And she has had no walk to-day. Why don’t you go out, Nessie?”

“Joan promised to go out with me, mother. I would rather wait for Joan.”

The very voice was colorless and languid, like the face and figure. Dulcibel sat looking at Nessie. Then the door opened to admit as complete a contrast as could well be conceived.

Joan at twenty-one was not greatly altered from Joan at four. There were the same rich eyes of black velvet, under restless brows ever in motion, and the same dark, clear skin, flushed in checks and lips with a healthy red. Perhaps the features were not so regular as might have been expected in her childhood; but the upright, well-made figure showed off her good looks to the best advantage. People sometimes said it mattered little what her features were, for there was no getting beyond those eyes. Her manner was swift, direct, eager, full of readiness and impulse; and when she smiled her whole face lighted up into real beauty. Joan was a warm-blooded, warm-handed, warm-hearted creature—no lack of animation in that quarter.

“Ready to go out, Nessie? Why, you are not dressed.”

“I didn’t know when you meant to come back,” responded Nessie, not stirring.

“Three o’clock, I told you; and it is past three. You had better make haste—though of course you won’t,” added Joan, laughing, as Nessie slowly found her feet. “It’s a lovely afternoon. Father, don’t you want a little turn in the garden? Nessie always takes half an hour to put on her hat.”

“To be sure I do,” George answered promptly; and the book was forsaken at once. Dulcibel sat looking after the two, as they passed out through the low French window.

“Come to the copse,” Joan suggested, clinging to George Rutherford’s arm. “It is delicious there. Oh, I wish I had not offered to take out Nessie to-day!”

“My dear, why?” asked George.

“I’d rather be with you, father; and I thought you had an engagement.”

“So I had, but it has fallen through. We can’t always have our own way in everything, Joan.”

“But I like to have mine—always,” responded Joan. “And I do want to have a walk or a read with you to-day. Only I have promised to take out Nessie—so I must.”

“It gives Nessie enjoyment.”

“Poor Nessie! We shall just plod, plod, along the high roads in a sort of indefinite way, and everything will be ‘nice’ and ‘pretty.’ Nessie is so provokingly good and dear and tiresome and fond of me. Of course I am glad she is fond of me; but I do wish I could shake her up into something different. If only she were like you.”

“Everybody can’t be that, Joan.”

“No, indeed. I wish everybody could. It would be a different sort of world. Not that it isn’t a nice enough world now. I haven’t anything to complain of—anything really to trouble me.”

“If you can say so much, you are better off than most people,” George observed musingly.

“Yes; most people seem to be always wanting something more than they have. But then I have you, and that makes all the difference. I have you, father!”

The black eyes looked up with a suppressed rapture of affection, and a sudden keen pain shot through George Rutherford’s heart, he could not have told why.

“Joan, that is not enough,” he said.

“Not enough to have you? Yes, it is, father dear. I don’t want anything else besides in the world.”

“Or—in heaven?”

Joan’s eyes fell.

“Father, I hope I shall be in heaven some day—because—because you will be there.”

“Because Christ your Lord will be there, Joan darling.”

A little pause, and then “No, father!” came distinctly.

“You do not love him, Joan?” The pain sounded in George’s voice this time. They had reached the copse, and were walking in a path amid young trees, all tinted with their autumn coloring.

“I don’t know,” Joan said, after a pause. “Yes, I think I love him, because he has made me your child. I always thank him for that—every day.”

“But you don’t love to think much of him?”

“Father, I’m always thinking of you,” Joan answered calmly. “Always—all day long. And when I’m not with you I only want to come back to you again. I do love God for giving you to me; and I always shall. But I don’t keep thinking of him, because I keep thinking so of you. How can I possibly help it?”

“God can teach you how, my dear,” he answered. “There is no other way.”