Chapter X: A Voice of Warning

"Life's little stage is a small eminence,
Inch high the Grave above: that home of man,
Where dwells the multitude: we gaze around;
We read their monuments; we sigh; and while
We sigh, we sink; and are what we deplored;
Lamenting or lamented, all our lot!"
YOUNG.

MINA had been spending that evening with Alice Grandpont. It had been somewhat against her mother's wish; but the young lady was gradually developing such a strong will of her own that it began to require considerable courage to offer resistance, once an intention was fixed in her head. Mina had found out how to get her own way; and her mother being a weak, foolish woman, failed to recognise the irreparable mischief she was doing to her child's character in thus yielding to her petulance.

Mina had been rather vexed that Horace was not at home. The tennis-courts were just marked out on the lawn, and she had been looking forward to an opportunity of showing off her skill. But young Grandpont had other amusements besides those which home society afforded, and it happened that on this particular occasion, he had found them more enticing. Neville, too, had been enjoying the additional importance which the prospect of his college career gave him in the eyes of the "swells," into whose society his intimacy with Grandpont had introduced him. He had promised, however, to fetch Mina home; so, shortly before the limit countenanced by his father, he and Horace turned their steps homeward.

Mina was getting fidgety.

"What 'should' I do if Neville were to forget me?" she said. "Papa is so strict about his being the least bit behind time that if he chanced to be hurried, he might very easily forget to call here. Neville finds it an awful bore. He wishes papa were as easy as mamma. He thinks I have a fine time of it; but he doesn't know what it is to be a girl." And Mina looked as if she felt terribly ill-used; but Alice took a different view of the matter.

"I think you're a very lucky girl," she said, "considering that you are only just 'out.' Why, at your age, I was still at school, and as strictly kept as waxwork. We did manage to have some fun, unbeknown to the Lady Abbess; but it was all amongst ourselves, of course. As to Neville, he will not forget to come."

And Alice involuntarily bridled her neck in a manner which plainly told that her reasons for this conviction were of a somewhat personal nature. "If he should," she added, "I daresay Horace will not object to a moonlight stroll. Look!" And drawing the curtain aside from the French window, she pointed to the glimmering light which was rapidly spreading over the eastern sky.

"There they are!" cried Mina, as footsteps on the gravel caught her ear.

Alice threw open the window, and the girls stepped out on to the terrace; and the young men, hearing their voices, came round from the drive to join them.

"Ready, Mina?" exclaimed Neville. "I nearly overlooked you. What! No hat on? I expected to find you waiting. Time's up."

"And he's not ambitious of practising up for the proctors by flying shoeless and hatless through the town, like a certain young party whom I chastised for his insolence in the stable-yard this afternoon," said Horace. "What do you think is the latest novelty, Sis? Your much-admired knight of Good Friday tearing down street barefoot, with his hair bristling in the breeze."

"I can't think what he was about," remarked Neville.

"I only know he pretty nearly knocked the breath out of me," returned Horace.

"Well, but who? Who?" cried Mina and Alice in a breath.

"Who but Joseph Adams, the carpenter's son, the cousin of whom Miss Mina is so proud," replied young Grandpont.

But time was getting on, so Neville hurried Mina off, Alice insisting that she and her brother should accompany them to the turn of the road, where they parted.

Mr. Adams was on the steps looking out for them when they reached Aylesdere. His displeasure relaxed somewhat on seeing them together, and he contented himself with a mild remonstrance at the lateness of the hour.

He had scarcely put up the bars and followed them to the dining-room, where their mother was dozing by the fireside, when a single knock at the door was heard.

"Who can that be at this time of night?" said Mr. Adams. "The servants are in bed, I suppose, my dear?"

His wife replying in the affirmative, he went himself and undid the bolts. He remained so long absent, however, that Neville—declaring the mysterious caller must be some person of evil intent—could not long repress his curiosity. He was just on the point of going to satisfy it, when his father returned. His brow was knit, and his face wore a pained expression. He walked into the room and right up to the hearth without speaking. Then, as he stood, with his head bent and his hands behind him, he said,—

"Bad news, wife!—My brother Joseph—His heart, they say—He is—"

"What?" inquired his wife.

"It was quite sudden. He is dead."

A profound silence followed these words. No one spoke, and the jasmine on the outer wall rattled with a strange, mysterious sound against the window panes. Mr. Adams stood with bent head and contracted forehead. Sudden death is always awful; and although of late years, the dead man had been no more to him that a workman, in this supreme moment, the tie of brotherhood, with its many memories of school and early days, held good.

Mrs. Adams had roused from her nap at the intelligence, and now sat looking before her in uncomfortable gloom. Her husband's brother was nothing to her—had not so much as once crossed her threshold since the house was finished; but he had passed that bourne whence no traveller returns.

Mina glanced first at the mirror, wondering whether black would be considered necessary, then at Neville, who walked moodily to the window to part the curtains and peep through the venetians, less to ascertain the cause of the tapping than to break the spell. Then the marble timepiece in the hall struck half-past eleven.

Mr. Adams heard it, and raised his head with a deep-drawn breath.

"Poor Joseph!" he said to himself. "I must go round at once, I suppose." And with these words, he left the room.

Directly he was gone, Neville left the window and sauntered slowly across the room with his hands in his pockets, kissed his mother on the forehead, nodded to his sister, and escaped to his room, where he had soon forgotten that he, too, was mortal.

As for Mina, she waited about for some time, longing to broach the subject of the hated mourning, but held back by a feeling that it was scarcely decent to do so while the warmth of life was yet in her uncle's body. At length, ascertaining that her mother had no objection to being left to wait alone, she followed Neville's example and went to bed, where she occupied herself with regretting the probability of having to lay aside one and another of her favourite costumes, until eventually she fell asleep, to dream that Horace Grandpont thought black far more becoming to her creamy complexion than colours.

By the morning she would have forgotten the whole occurrence, had it not been for the dream.