CHAPTER I. THE FAMILY AT THE RECTORY. "Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, GRAY. Ir fell upon a day-the last of July, 18**—that there was unwonted stir and bustle at Carleton Rectory. The young folks had a holiday; James was expected home from Eton for the last time (being in his nineteenth year); and all the hay in the rector's two fields was to be carried and stacked before night. It was about noon, and all the family was resting under the great walnut-tree in one of the fields, while the professional haymakers ate their dinners in the distance, and looked picturesque. The Hastings family looked picturesque, too, only in a more polite fashion. Mrs. Hastings and her eldest daughter, Sophia, the beauty-were seated on the top of a hay-cock, with the trunk of a tree rising close behind them. Mrs. Hastings wore the Moslem head-dress, then the mode among middleaged Christian ladies. Her turban was of white muslin, and her gown was blue. Sophia's gown was white, and the only ornament of her head (in every sense) was the pride of her heart-her long auburn ringlets. As both these ladies were dignified and elegant, they were frightened at creeping things, and had spread a shawl between their persons and the hay; and as this shawl happened to be of a dingy red, it improved the colour of the group. Master Tom and little Clara in rustic costumes, and papa in a black frock-coat, lay at the feet of the ladies. Mr. Hastings stretched his listless length there, and was happy. A straw hat was beside him. He lay on his back and gazed up into the rustling branches of the tree-thinking of things I will not venture to indicate because I do not know. He had, at Clara's special request, put his head into her lap. But he soon began to perceive that his pillow had disadvantages. Little Clara was quiet for some time, awed by the "honourable load" which encumbered her knees: but in ten minutes the awe began to pass away, and she showed symptoms of mistaking papa for a gigantic doll. First, she begged leave to cover his face with a handkerchief, tucking it down tightly to keep him "from catching cold;" so that he was fain to remonstrate against such suffocating kindness. 66 Clara, my pet, I can't breathe!" gasped the half-stifled rector. "Never mind, papa, dear! You look so funny! There, then!" letting loose a corner of the handkerchief. "There's a corner for you to breathe through. Now lie still, you good, dear, darling papa, and let me hush you to sleep!" 66 'But, my dear child, I don't want to go to sleep. I can't have that thing over my face any longer. I want to look about me. There! Give me a kiss. Ah! now I can see you, and mamma, and Sophia, and Tom. But where are Maggie and Naldo, and William Grey? I don't see them.” "Oh, they are just there, a little farther round the tree, papa." Clara was quiet for a minute, and then the sound of a girl's voice reading aloud was heard on the other side of the tree. It was Margaret, or as my aunt was called in her youth, Maggie Hastings, reading to William Grey and her little crippled brother Reginald. Reginald-little Naldo, as he was called-was in early infancy the pride of his mother, for he had been more beautiful than all her other children: now, he was beloved beyond them all, for he was grievously afflicted with physical weakness and deformity. When Dr. Ward could not find an ailment in all my grandfather's family, Reginald was but four years old. Very soon after, a fall from a tree injured his spine, and at the age of ten he was dwarfed and crippled in his lower limbs, and his poor little body was frightfully twisted. His arms, on the contrary, grew strong, and his hands were well shaped. His head grew large, and the brain was very active; while the features lost their prettiness, and looked old. The vital power seemed to have concentrated itself in the brain and hands. He was precociously intelligent, and showed a power of skilful and delicate manipulation that was extraordinary. He played cleverly on the violin. His mother loved him with a love unspeakable. But that was its fault-it was unspeakable and unspoken. The child soon knew that he was unlike other children. He had a soul eager for love and sympathy, and he did not meet with it where it should have been found, welling forth as a refreshing fountain, from which he might drink at all times. Mrs. Hastings acted upon a mistaken principle with her little child. She concealed from him as much as she could the difference between him and others: and, therefore, never allowed herself to condole with him on his privations. She did not encourage him to confide his griefs or his repinings to her; she was uniformly kind, and gentle, and forbearing with him; but she was never tender nor sympathetic in manner. She dreaded to show him what she felt, lest she should awaken in him a consciousness of the truth, and thus cause a suffering which she believed he would escape-at least in childhood-if she and those about him refrained from the expression of their pity for him. Alas! poor mother! she must have put a strong check upon her heart. None but her husband knew how dearly she loved Reginald. That love was the only passion of her life. It was an exquisitely painful pity-a timid reverence for the affliction of the child of her bosom, which threw, as strong passion so often does, a restraint or an unnaturalness into her manner. She was never playful with him; she could not lift smilingly that poor distorted body; she could not talk gaily to him the childish nonsense that soothes a childish ear, for the tears came up into her throat as she saw his feeble signs of merriment. At such times she would look upon him with a sad kind of awe, praying internally that God would "temper the wind to her shorn lamb;" and the child, seeing only the grave face, mistook the sadness for severity. By degrees, little Reginald shrank from his grave mother, who eyed him so seriously, and took refuge with Margaret, the wag of the family. He loved to be with Maggie, because she made him laugh, and sang to him, and told him funny tales, and listened to the tales he told in return. But besides her drollery, Maggie had 66 qualities which Reginald, like most sensitive children, discovered very early—she had unselfish habits, and a generous, warm heart. He could unfold his little griefs to her―talk to her about himself, and his difference from other people. He could sit in her lap and weep on her shoulder, because he was not able to run about with the others, and because he was “so ugly.” Oh, yes," he would say, on such occasions, "he knew he was ugly. He often looked in the glass to see. Oh! It was all very well for her to say that people would love him just the same, though he was ugly. He knew better than that, though! She might, perhaps; but other people would not. How did he know they would not? Oh, very well. He knew by their faces. Besides, he knew by himself. He did not like people that were ugly. He did not like William Grey— he was so ugly." "Then he could not like her,” his sister observed. "Oh, it's different about you, Maggie; you are my own, own sister. But you won't mind my saying so, will you, dear? I do wish, very often, that you were pretty; as pretty as Sophia." On the day of the hay-making, as Margaret and Naldo were waiting for his little chaise to draw him into the hay-field, they happened to get upon this very subject, and he wished again that Margaret "looked as nice and pretty as Sophia. Her cheeks were too red! Her arms and neck were too tanned! If she would take care of herself, she might grow up as pretty as Sophy." Margaret laughed at him, and said, "That if it would please him she would certainly try and grow up pretty; but of all the people she ever knew, there was not one who thought so much about good looks as he did. There were Lord Merle and Arundel Raby, great big boys now, more than fourteen years old,—they had lived in Italy, where the people were all beautiful, they said; and in London, and at Eton, and Windsor, where they saw numbers of fine and handsome people :-and then, they saw each other—and Naldo would allow that that was a beautiful sight?" "Ah, yes!" said Naldo. "If one could find a good fairy to make us as strong, and graceful, and beautiful as they are!" "And yet, when they come down to the castle in the holidays, and come here for their lessons with us, they don't seem to think only about the beautiful ones." 66 "Oh, no!" said Naldo. 'They seem to like you better than Sophia, though she is so much older, and quite a pretty girl -so tall and straight, and such beautiful ringlets. But then, Maggie, you are clever at lessons, and are able to do some of the things they do, and I suppose they like that." "Oh, no, they don't, though!" laughed Maggie, merrily. "At least Frank didn't like my being able to construe the Eneid as well as himself the last holidays." Naldo laughed too. "Better, you mean, Maggie. Papa said that you translated Virgil a great deal better than Lord Merle. You, a girl, too! No. He got very red when you took his place. He didn't like that, I am sure. He thought it a disgrace." "I don't see why it should be," replied Maggie. "It would be an odd thing, I think, if I couldn't translate Virgil, when I've been taught Latin by such a Latinist as papa, almost ever since I could read. Now, Frank never began Latin properly till he was more than ten years old. I wish I knew French and Italian as he and Arundel Raby do! If Sophia and I had gone to a London boarding-school, like Charlotte Grey, we should have been learning French instead of Latin all this time, and the wiseacres hereabouts would not see anything wonderful in young ladies learning French! If we could translate Racine better than the boys, nobody would hold up hands in astonishment. Now, I'm sure Racine is ten times more difficult than Virgil. French puzzles me very much." say "That's because it's as strange and new to you as Latin is to other girls. But what were you going to about my caring so much for good looks, and Lord Merle and his brother not seeming to think about them ?" "Why, that is precisely what I was going to say, Naldo. |