Chapter I: Left Alone

"By the fireside there are youthful dreamers,
Building castles fair with stately stairways,
Asking blindly
Of the future what it cannot give them."
LONGFELLOW.

IT was a grey dreary afternoon. Steady rain, leaden skies, and a flat straight road bordered by leafless hedges did not provide a cheery outlook to the solitary walker. She stepped along bravely, a slim little figure in a grey ulster and a black straw hat. Her thoughts were far away from her surroundings, and it was not until she had reached a wooden gate leading up a drive that she roused herself with a start.

"How wet I am!" she murmured. "And here have I been carrying my umbrella unopened in my hand, and spoiling my new hat! What will Abigail say?"

She passed through the gate and up the drive edged by tall shrubberies, and then came out before an old-fashioned red-brick house which had something forbidding and grim in the look of its ivy-clad walls and tall narrow windows.

She paused in the porch and shook out her damp garments with a grimace of disgust. Then quietly opening a glass door, she entered a small square hall. It was dusk, and the dark oak walls and stone-flagged floor seemed cold and dreary. An old-fashioned oak staircase rose from the centre of it, and some oil portraits and a few antlers were dimly discernible on the walls.

The girl opened a door on the right, and shutting it behind her said in a quick clear voice—

"Bluebell, are you here?"

There was a bright wood fire in the wide open fireplace, and the contrast to the dull greyness of the atmosphere without was striking. It was a long low room, with casement windows in deep recesses facing east and west. The walls were covered with a deep crimson flock paper; all the furniture was oak, dark with age; and the flickering firelight played on some massive silver plate on a sideboard behind the door. A dark crimson cloth on the square centre table, and crimson curtains to the windows, gave a most cosy look to the room. And perhaps the pleasantest picture in it was that of a young girl seated on the hearthrug, her elbows on a leather chair, and a book before her in which she was engrossed.

She raised her head at her sister's entrance, then sprang to her feet.

"Oh, are you back already? I've been having a splendid time!"

Looking from one sister to the other, one would have had no difficulty in deciding that they were twins.

Each possessed the same bright brown hair which curled naturally round their broad white brows, and was fastened in a careless fashion of their own in loose coils on the top of their heads. Their eyes were grey, with long curling lashes, but whilst Bluebell's twinkled irrepressibly and continually, Heather's seemed to be looking out into the future with a soft dreaminess that was characteristic of her. Both had the same delicately cut features and clear pale skin, both the same determined little mouth and rounded chin. And the pair of them, in spite of country-made garments and a quaint old-fashioned air, were interesting in the extreme.

"I don't doubt you have," was Heather's reply, as, taking off her wet ulster, she came over to the fire and seated herself in an easy chair. "It is a dreadful day out. Look at my boots! They're soaked through. I am so glad to be home again."

"Why did you go? Rachael said she would go for you to-morrow."

"Yes, I know." And Heather gave a little sigh as she leant back and warmed her damp toes.

Then, after a minute, she added abruptly, "I went because I felt it would be right. Grandmother would have wished it. I have been thinking, Bluebell, that we have been wasting our time rather lately, and I think we ought not to read so much."

Bluebell laughed a little consciously, then she looked down at her black frock and shook her pretty head.

"It is just six weeks since grandmother died, and it seems a year. I don't think we could have lived through this time, Heather, if we had not found these books. It has made such a change in the house, hasn't it? No invalid to read to or amuse, no one to watch over our words and actions. Suddenly we find ourselves our own mistresses, and our daily round of occupation all swept away. For three weeks we haven't seen a soul to speak to—I mean outside the house. Every day is the same, and I suppose it always will be now. I am getting and enjoying fresh life in 'Ivanhoe,' so don't you say it is waste of time."

Heather glanced at the book in question, then spoke rather hesitatingly.

"Of course I know it is delicious. I am dying to get to the end of 'The Monastery' myself, but I think we're rather overdoing it. Sir Walter Scott won't run away from us; we have plenty of time before us, and—and I think it unsettles us for our daily life."

"No; it brings fresh thoughts into our heads, I allow, but I don't feel unsettled. I went over the store cupboard this morning with Abigail, made a fresh list for you to take into the town with you, then I mended some table-napkins, and fed the canaries. And I also put our myrtles out into the rain, and watered the greenhouse plants. After that, I settled myself with a good conscience to my reading, and, oh, how I wonder that grandmother never told us what treasures were in her bookcase!"

"Perhaps she did not think them suitable reading for us," said Heather, thoughtfully. "You see, we have not been brought up like other girls; she was so particular!"

"Well, we can do as we like now. There is no one in the wide world to give us any advice. How do you like the sensation of it?"

Bluebell looked across at her sister with a gleam of mischief in her eye.

Heather met her gaze gravely, then clasping her hands behind her neck, she rested her head against them, and said with much emphasis, "Oh, it is dreadfully and awfully lonely. I have been thinking of it out in the rain. You and I with youth and health, and just enough money to live comfortably here, and only Abigail and Rachael, not a friend or relative belonging to us. And I suppose we shall live on here all our lives, and will never see a bit more of the world than just this corner of it. We have each other, but we shall never have any one else. And we shall go on growing older and older, and our days will be just the same; and Abigail will order us about and manage us as if we were still children up to the very last."

Bluebell's laughing lips took serious curves. "I don't think we shall always live like this. I am looking for a benighted traveller, a prince in disguise to arrive one day, and then suddenly, we shall find our lives changed. Joking apart, don't you think we have a single relation in the world? Everybody has some relations, however distant; why should not we?"

"We will ask Abigail. Grandmother never would talk to us about our family, but I always understood from her we had none. Father was her only son, and mother was an only daughter."

There was a pause.

Then Bluebell said, "I don't think our lives will be empty. We have a lot of interests here—all the poor people that grandmother used to relieve. You have your old blind man to read to every week. I have my Band of Hope with the children, and—and when we want a little dissipation, we can pull up the river and have a picnic or spend a day in town, and I don't see why we shouldn't take an excursion by train now and then."

Heather gave a little impatient sigh.

"It is people I want to know—people in our own class of life, girls like ourselves, women and men."

"We never shall know people here," said Bluebell; "there are none to know. The doctor, the rector, and grandmother's lawyer from London are the only ones we have seen for years, and they're all over sixty."

Suddenly Heather started up, an inspiration having come to her. And her soft eyes sparkled as she said, "What is there to prevent us going up to see the sights of London? We have the money to do it."

"London!" exclaimed Bluebell, opening her eyes at her sister's audacity. "Grandmother said Paris and London were the most wicked cities in the world! Do you think Abigail would let us go? Never!"

A pink flush had come into Heather's cheeks, but her face fell at the thought of Abigail. Then she said recklessly, "If Abigail tried to prevent us, we could send her away. She is only a servant, after all, and we are not children. We are of age, and can please ourselves!"

Bluebell gave a little gasp. Life without Abigail as the controlling power seemed vague and impossible.

"We are our own mistresses," said Heather, with warmth, but she was stopped by the entrance of Abigail herself.

Abigail was a tall severe-looking woman, the personification of neatness and order; her white cap and apron proclaimed her position, otherwise the authority in her voice and demeanour would have led one to suppose she was the mistress of the house.

"Miss Heather, is this your wet ulster flung down on the chair? I did not hear you come in."

Heather's tone was meekness itself as she replied, "Yes, I was so tired that I have been resting."

"And you have not changed your damp boots?"

"No, I am going upstairs to do it now."

She slipped out of the room, and Abigail, taking up the ulster, followed her upstairs to the pretty bedroom that both girls shared together.

Everything was very simple, but the white dimity curtains and bed-hangings were spotless in their freshness. Two small beds, a toilet-table draped in snowy muslin, a round table with devotional books and writing materials upon it, and two old-fashioned wardrobes were the chief pieces of furniture in it. The floor was covered with an old Brussels carpet, and the casement windows, with their deep window-seats, were the facsimile of the dining-room ones below.

Abigail came up to her young mistress and felt the edge of her skirt.

"You must change your dress at once, miss. You are too old to be so careless. It is just the way to get a severe cold—coming in and sitting down in your damp things and letting them dry on you!"

"Oh, what does it matter?" Heather said, a little petulantly.

But she obeyed Abigail at once, watched her close the shutters and light the wax candles, and then detained her just as she was leaving the room.

"Abigail, you lived with grandmother before our father married, did you not?"

"I did," responded Abigail, grimly.

"Well, you ought to know. Have we not a relation in the world?"

Abigail's brows contracted.

"Why do you ask, miss?"

"Oh," said Heather, a little confusedly, "we have only been wondering, that is all."

"None that would improve your manners, or edify your souls," the old servant said dryly. Then after a pause she added, "Your grandmother had one niece, but she left the Society of Friends and went into the gay world and married a worldling. We heard she had one daughter, and later on, she died."

"Who? The daughter?"

"No, your grandmother's niece."

"And what became of the daughter? She would be about our age, would she not?"

"A good ten or twelve years older. We saw her marriage in the paper some years ago. She married a soldier, and you know what we think of them."

"I should like to find her out, and know her."

Abigail looked startled at the quiet determination in Heather's tone.

"Your grandmother would not wish it," she said sternly. "I promised that things should go on after her death as they had done in her life, and I am ashamed of your wishing otherwise."

Heather said nothing.

Abigail waited with her hand on the door-handle for some response. Finding there was none forthcoming, she went out.

But there was a look of care and perplexity on her face as she joined her fellow-servant in the kitchen. Rachael was a great contrast to Abigail. She was a short, stout little woman with a cheery face and manner, and though Abigail had a real and deep affection for the twins, Rachael showed hers by terms of endearment and an outward demonstrativeness that was very acceptable to the young girls.

Bluebell termed the two women "Sugar" and "Salt." Perhaps the terms were not inappropriate.

An hour later, and the two girls sat down to a solemn dinner; one at the head of the long dining-table, the other at the foot, and Abigail waited upon them in silence.

Neither of them felt at ease this evening. They had a consciousness that Abigail was criticizing every word and smile, and they were longing to be able to talk freely to each other, without her taciturn presence.

When at length she left them, and they were finishing their substantial meal with some grapes and nuts, they relapsed into easy and perhaps startling confidences.

It was a delicious sensation to be planning out audacious schemes for their future, and Heather talked with rapidity and animation of the possibility of a wider and fuller life before them.

They left the table at seven, for their dinner-hour was the old-fashioned one of six. And they demurely walked into the drawing-room to renew their talk over the fire.

The drawing-room might have been a pretty room. Every article in it was real and good of its kind, but for thirty years it had remained the same, and the handsome blue damask chairs and couches were shrouded in brown holland covers bound with blue braid. The orthodox round table, with photograph albums and a case of carved ivory chessmen upon it, stood in the centre of the room. Old china and valuable paintings hung upon the walls, which were adorned with gilt and white paper. The carpet and curtains were covered with large bouquets of impossible-looking flowers, but age had softened and mellowed their tints. Screens of wonderful wool-work stood about, depicting rosy-faced milkmaids and children disporting themselves under green trees with baskets of fruit; and white crochet antimacassars were placed in profusion on all the chairs. The two slight girls, in their black silk evening dresses heavily trimmed with crape, looked sadly out of keeping with their gaudy surroundings.

They laughed and talked in the firelight as only young girls can do, and then as the clock struck nine, Abigail wheeled in a small table, upon which tea, bread and butter, and cake were placed. Heather poured out tea. But after they had finished it, they took out their books and read on in silence till ten o'clock.

Abigail came in then, bearing a large Bible and Prayer-book in her hand, and Rachael followed her.

Bluebell sat up, and in her soft clear voice read and prayed. The twins divided their honours very evenly. Heather led the morning devotions, and this they had done for some time previous to their grandmother's death.

After prayers were over, Abigail went up to their room with them, and brushed and plaited their hair, after which the girls performed their private devotions in silence, and were soon enjoying a sweet and sound slumber in their white dimity beds.