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| - Originally published in " The Queen." 1893 "A heart unspotted is not easily daunted." Shakespeare. " My cousin, Miss Chichester," said Tom Langton, with a wave of his hand. The three men to whom he thus presented the shabby little girl, whom he called " My cousin. Miss Chichester," bowed in their several turns and in their several fashions. They were all brother officers of Tom's, who had accompanied him to Brook House that they might share in the pick of the shooting, beginning on the immortal 12th. They were naturally all very good shots (had they been otherwise, they might have whistled, so to speak, for invitations to Brook House at that particular time of year), and last, but not least, they were all very tolerable looking. " My cousin, Miss Chichester," looked frightened. She was a tiny creature, pale and slim, with dark hair, blue eyes, and brows and lashes of midnight Her features were small, and the nose had a tendency to turn upwards rather than downwards. She was very shabby and was dressed in a scanty frock of black stuff, very much the worse for wear. She looked doubtfully at Tom and at Tom's friends, and very much as if she was not sure whether she ought to go or stay. " Where are all the others. Pussy ? " Tom asked, putting an end to her idea of flight. " Aunt Agnes did not expect you until the seven o'clock train, Tom," she replied, in a rather quavering voice. " Then I suppose they are all out ? " said Tom, in a matter of fact tone. " Yes, Tom; they have gone to a garden-party at Lady Northam's, and my uncle is on the Bench to-day." " Oh, well, we shaD manage to exist till they come back," said Tom, with the xmf eeling tone that only a brother can assume. " They'll be home soon enough. By the bye, couldn't you give us some tea or something ? We are all famished and thirsty." " Certainly, Tom ; FU go and send it at once," she replied, eagerly, and moving towards the door as she spoke. " Can't you ring and order it from here ? " Tom asked, impatiently. "Oh, yes" — ^then doubtfully — " but I think I will go; it is just the servants' — " " Sit still," said Tom, imperiously, under his breath. He rang the bell, a good sounding peal, as he spoke, and turned towards the door when the servant came, without waiting for his cousin to speak. " Oh, William, bring us some tea as soon as you can," he said. " Certainly, Mr. Tom," replied that functionary, in his most urbane tones. When Mr. Tom was at home, his presence always had the effect of quickening the service of the house, not because he was hard to please, or not absolutely civil to his inferiors, but because there was always a ring in his voice which meant command. In an incredibly short time the stately William returned with the tea and set it in front of Miss Chichester, who had subsided on to a chair, with her little hands clasped together before her, in an attitude of patient waiting. She poured out the several cups of tea, and Tom got up and ministered to his friends in very hospitable style, finally going back to his cousin's side for his own cup. " William has brought a cup short," he remarked and, before she could speak, went to the bell and rang it again. " I don't want one," she stammered, nervously. "Nonsense ! Oh, William, another cup. Thanks." They had barely finished the small meal, when the door was opened and three ladies came into the room. " Oh, my dear Tom," cried the larger and elder of these, " what made you come by so much earlier a train than you said ? We would not have gone out for worlds if we had known. Why, you had not even a carriage sent to meet you." " It did not matter, mother, thank you," said Tom, kissing her. " We are here ; that is the great thing, you know. Let me introduce Captain Fox to you," taking one of the men by the arm, " and this is Mr. Griffiths, and this Mr. Ryan." Then he turned from them to scrub his cheek for a moment against the cheek of both his handsome sisters in turn. " And you have had something to eat ?" said Mrs. Langton, looking at the tray. " Oh, yes, many thanks ! " cried the three visitors in the same breath. " Yes, Pussy looked after us splendidly," answered Tom. Her attention thus called to her niece, Mrs. Langton tifrned to Pussy. " You may take my sunshade upstairs for me, Mary," she said, in a cold voice. " Yes, Aunt Agnes," Pussy replied, looking more frightened than ever. Tom raised his eyebrows as she disappeared, and glanced significandy at his mother, as if to ask a question of her. But Mrs. Langton either did not or would not see the look, and kept up a steady flow of conversation with the newly-arrived guests. Tom's eyebrows went up almost to the roots of his hair, but just then he could not say anything more plain than to ask the reason of the tone by a look. But half an hour later, when the guests had all been shown to their rooms, he knocked at his mother's door, and, receiving permission to enter, went in and put a question plump and plain to her. "What's wrong with littie Pussy ? " he asked, bluntly. "I did not know that anything was wrong with little Pussy, as you call her," Mrs. Langton replied, in an icy tone. " Has Mary been complaining to you, pray ? " Tom sat down impatiently, with his hands thrust deep down into the pockets of his coat. " Complaining — no, of course not. Is it likely ? " " Yes, very Likely," returned his mother, dryly. " Well, likely or not, she did not complain in any way," Tom declared. " But I've got eyes in my head ; I can see like other people." " And what do you see ? " demanded his mother, sharply. Tom looked in some surprise at the tone — ^more at the tone than at the actual words. " Well, my dear mother," he answered, mildly, " I see that nny cousin, my father's only niece, is very shabby for one thing." " Beggars must not be choosers," retorted his mother, quickly. " I don't think that the child of my father's only sister ought to be looked upon as a beggar in this house," said Tom, gravely. " And the poor child could not help her father and mother dying and leaving her as they did. Bless me, they didn't do it on purpose, did they ? " " I really cannot say," replied Mrs. Langton, in a very un-sympathetic tone, '^ but, be that as it may, I have quite as much as I can do to dress myself and your sisters on my allowance, without spending a fortune on an interloper like Mary Chichester. So, pra^ let me hear no more of this exceedingly unpleasant topic." She waved her hand, as if to show that she wished him to go, and Tom, with a vexed feeling that he had probably done more harm than good by his well-meant interference, went hurriedly out of the room, almost wishing that he had not said anything about his little cousin at all. He thought about her a good deal while he was dressing for dinner; yes, a good deal. Hang it, it was a shame that just because a poor little girl did not happen to have been bom under the same roof, or not of the same branch of the family, she should be treated as an interloper if not actually as an outcast. He was just in the midst of wondering whether he could not manage to screw a few pounds a year out of his own allowance that she might look a little more like his sisters, when the door opened and young Ryan came in. " I may come in, old chap ? " he asked. " Why, yes, to be sure," answered Tom, heartily. So young Ryan, who was but little more than a boy, came in and wandered about the room, looking at the various pictures, chiefly representations of Tom at different stages of his school career. " I say, Tom, old fellow," he said after awhile, " you're a sly dog ! " " For why ? " Tom asked, pausing with a brush in either hand. " Well, you never told me a single word about the pretty cousin, and she is pretty, by Jove, no mistake about that" " Look here, Ryan," said Tom, suddenly growing as grave as a Judge, •* you are to let my litde cousin alone, do you hear ? " " Eh ? " said the other, in an inquiring tone. " Yes, I know exactly what you mean," said Tom, steadily ; " but you're wrong, quite wrong, I haven't such a thought in my head. Still, I am not going to have her played with and flirted with, so you had better understand that from the beginning. You can flirt to any extent with my sisters : they can take care of themselves far better than you can. But my cousin is to be let alone, do you see ? " "My dear fellow, no one could possibly help seeing," said Ryan, with a laugh, " you make it too devilish plain for any mistake. And what if I should get seriously hit in that quarter, eh ? " " You've got to marry money," said Tom, grimly,"< you tell me so about a hundred times a day. And my cousin hasn't got any money, so the ide^is no good." " Very well ; I will take care to give the young lady a wide berth," said Ryan, in much amusement, thinking that Tom was desperately hard hit in that quarter, and that he had hidden the fact very cliunsily. " There's the belL By Jove we're late. Come along. To be late for dinner is the first and almost the only crime in this house; " and even as he uttered the words, the thought flashed across his mind that another and more awful crime in that house was to be unprotected and poor. A fortnight soon goes over, and the two weeks that Tom Langton and his conu-ades spent at Brook House seemed to go by with the rapidity of magic. It was wonderful to Tom that he saw so little of his cousin, Mary Chichester. Even to him, knowing as he did his mother's indomitable resolution in carrying out any coiu^e of action that she had laid down as suitable to any particular occasion, it came as a smprise that he could live under the same roof with one of his own kin, and yet see so remarkably little of her. She never appeared at dinner, nor even in the evening afterwards. If ever he chanced to come across her before the men went off to shoot, she always told him that she had had breakfast long ago. '' I can't think where you get it," he said one morning, half fretfully, " I came down the other morning ever so early, and there was not a sign of you to be seen." " Oh, but I get fed all right," cried she, laughing heartily, and holding out a plump little hand to show what good condition she was in. "I'm not so sure about that," Tom retorted, crossly; "I don't see why you should be shoved away out of sight as you are. Pussy. It's a burning shame ; that's what I think about it" She looked at him in a strange, startled kind of way, and a vivid blush spread itself over her pale face, staining it scarlet from chin to brow. " Don't say it," she said, under her breath. " I am quite content — I am very happy here. Aunt Agnes could not take me out when she has two daughters of her own. It is out of the question. I do not expect it, not even wish it. I am more than content." « Pussy," said Tom, in a queer, strained kind of voice, and catching her small hands in his larger clasp, " Do you know what you are? You are " " Mary ! " exclaimed a voice, in higli staccato accents of extreme astonishment. " What are you doing here ? I thought I told you " " Yes, Aunt Agnes," gasped the girl, and, wrenching her hands free from the clasp of Tom*s, she fled away as if she was trying to catch back the five minutes that she had been talking to her cousin. Tom stood looking after her, and Mrs. Langton stood looking at Tom. " I think you ought to know, Tom," she said at last, very sternly, "that neither your father nor I would ever give our consent to anything of that kind, so you had best dismiss any such idea from yom* mind at once." Tom looked up at his mother. " My dear mother," he said, in great amusement, " I was not making love to Pussy. Nothing was further from my thoughts — or hers — I assure you." " I am glad to hear it," said Mrs. Langton, coldly. " But I wish you would oblige me in one thing, Tom. It cannot be necessary to call Mary by the ridiculous name of" Pussy.' It is most unsuitable, and is very misleading." " I always have called her Pussy," said Tom, obstinately — Tom was very like his mother in some things. " Very absurd of you to do so ; the sooner such a silly habit is forgotten the better," remarked his mother, with more acidity than the matter seemed to be worth. Well, although Mrs. Langton did not refer to the child again and the subject was not mentioned any more between them, she had been put on her guard, and Tom had no more chances of speaking alone to his cousin during his not very long visit home. He had not the smallest notion how it was managed, but the fact remains, nevertheless, that she seemed to have been positively spirited away. He spoke to his father about it once. " Don't you think, sir," he said, one afternoon, when they were toddling slowly around the stables together, " don't you think that little Pussy might be let to have a better time on the whole than she does ? " " Yes„I do," answered the old Squire, promptly ; " but when I hinted as much, your mother and the girls really made my life such a burden to me, that I was glad to drop the subject entirely." " Your life ought not to be made a burden," said Tom, indignantly, " not over anything. / think that the little girl is shamefully treated all round. Why doesn't she come in to dinner as the other girls do? Why doesn't she have pretty frocks and things, as the others do ? It is not right to have such a difference made between girls in the same house. I wouldn't allow it, if I were you, sir." " My dear lad," said the Squire, smiling, yet with a certain sadness, “ when you have been married as many years as I have, you won't talk about allowing this or not allowing the other. No, no, my boy; you will do just what your wife decrees, and be very thankful if she gives you a good and peaceable time on the whole." " I don't quite think so," said Tom, with conviction in his tones. " No ; / didn't once^^ returned the Squire, quizzically. " Ah, take my advice, my dear lad, and never interfere in women's affairs any more than you can help. It don't pay ! Besides, in this case, I asked the httle girl herself about it, and she told me she was perfectly happy, and begged me to say nothing on her account All girls are not cracked on going to parties, you know," he added, sagely. Tom did not attempt to argue the question further. He jerked his head back several times and said nothing. As he remarked to himself, it was no use arguing any longer with such an old fool. He was fond of his father in a way, but the dominant figure in the establishment was not the Squire, but the Squire's wife. And at the expiration of his leave he went back to his regiment without having spoken alone with Pussy. Many months went by ere he saw her again. His long leave he spent that year in Algiers, going there on a somewhat wildgoose expedition, along with several other men of his regiment, in search of certain curios with a fortune in them. Their especial quest was black amber — that most rare of treasures ; but though they had much definite information, said to be of a most exclusive character, and spent a good deal of time and also a good deal of money, they did not light upon any black amber among the hundreds of mouthpieces brought forth for their inspection in the various bazaars. And before he was lucky enough to get any more leave, a double calamity had fallen upon the whole family of Langton ; for the kind old Squire was stricken down and died in a fit, brought on by the news that a large and very risky speculation had failed, and failed in a way that meant positive beggary for the rest of his life. The entire family, with the exception of Tom, seemed to be stunned. For days Mrs. Langton neither could nor would understand that, instead of being mistress of Brook House, she had nothing but her settlements to live upon for the rest of her life. Her settlements amounted to about eight hundred a year; and, although that is a very substantial buffer between three ladies and the poverty of the workhouse, it did not seem a particularly large income to one who had been mistress of as many thousands. However, at last Tom made her understand that it was useless for her to rail against fate, and that the best thing she could possibly do was to accept the inevitable with as good a grace as she could, and be thankful that things were no worse. " My dear mother," he said, sensibly, " it isn't of the least use to tell me that last year you had eight thousand a year at your command. You never had anything like that sum, though you have lived at the rate of it, which is a vastly different thing. As a matter of fact, the estate brings in about three thousand a year now, and it will take at least ten years for me to clear off my father's liabilities. I have arranged it all with the creditors, and I shall only take four hundred a year for myself until everything else is paid. If it falls hard on you, it doesn't fall exactly lightly on me." " And how are your sisters to get suitably settled ? " Mrs. Langton cried. " They had a pretty good spell at the eight thousand a year scale," answered Tom, unfeelingly. " Well, at all events, I will not have Mary Chichester staying on here in idleness," Mrs. Langton exclaimed. " Mary is not to be tiuned out; I won't have it," Tom cried, in a sudden access of passion. " I cannot possibly afford to keep her," Mrs. Langton persisted. " I will give you a hundred a year out of my income," said Tom, hurriedly. " I will never consent to her being turned out." So it was settled, and, after a very few more days had gone by, Mrs. Langton and the three girls left Brook House with many tears and took up their abode in a small villa at Brighton — it must be confessed with an eye to the property of an old aunt of the late Squire's who lived there, and was worth nobody knew what. And for Mary Chichester, if life had been hard and dull in the lavish establishment at Brook House, existence was still harder for her in the villa at Brighton. She worked like a slave, without either the wages or the consideration of a servant. She had no recreations, no pleasures, no new frocks— not even second-hand ones handed down to her by her cousins; and when Tom came, which was not very often, she was kept more busily employed — out of the way of mischief, as Mrs. Langton put it — than ever. But she did contrive to see Tom, all the same — ^Tom, who to her was the soul of honor and chivalry, the embodiment of all the virtues. It was the only thing that made such a life worth hving. Once or twice she went, by command of that imperious old dame, to take tea with the rich old aunt, and then in her innocence and loyalty she let out far more of the real state of affairs than she herself had any notion of. For she told how good Tom had always been to her, how he had given up a hundred a year of his modest income that she might stay on with her own people, instead of going out into the world to earn her bread among strangers. And the old lady heard all these litde scraps of information and pondered over them when she was alone, with a very startling residt; for at last she died, and in due course was buried, and then her very affectionate relatives gathered themselves together in the handsome hbrary of her house, that they might hear the reading of her last will and testament. It was brief and to the point, and it left everything of which she died possessed to her great-niece, Mary Chichester. I may as well say at once that the news burst upon the four ladies with the force of a thunderclap. Tom was not present, being, indeed, occupied on a long court-martial— which had prevented his getting leave to attend his old relative's funeral. Well, yes, possibly the plentitude of defunct relatives which abounds in Her Majesty's Service might have had something to do with it. So, Tom being absent, only Mrs. Langton and her daughters and Mary Chichester were present at the funeral, and at the reading of the will. Mrs. Langton had had no thought of her niece's being present, but the old lady's lawyer had requested her presence in such plain terms that there was no preventing it. And when all was over, and they were back once more in their villa, then the vials of Mrs. Langton's long pent-up wrath burst out, and she told the girl in plain, nervous English what she thought of her. So long as the torrent of angry words lasted, Mary stood without speaking, speechless, indeed, with astouishment and dismay. But Mrs. Langton's last furious taunt stung her to the very quick. " I hope you are satisfied," the old woman screamed. " Right well you have rewarded my boy for his fooHsh sacrifices — ^the sacrifices made to keep you here in idleness, instead of letting you go out into the world to earn your own hving. You have stolen his birthright from him, and may your ill-gotten gains be a curse to you and yours for ever." " I think you had better not say any more, mother," put in the elder Miss Langton, quietly; she had an eye to future benefits to be got out of Mary Chichester. " What I are you two going to turn against me for the sake of this ingrate ? " Mrs. Langton began, passionately. But Mary heard no more. With a cry she turned and fled, never stopping till she had reached the shelter of her own tiny bedroom. Once there, however, her resolves were soon made. She counted the money in her shabby purse, and, putting on her hat again and taking her coat over her arm, she slipped quietly out of the house, and disappeared among the crowds walking along the sea-front. *** The time was half-past seven that same evening. Tom Langton was sitting alone in his quarters, tired out with a long day passed at the court-martial — the last. Heaven be thanked — wondering, if the truth be told, how the old aunt had disposed of her property and dreaming of what he would do if she happened to have left a good share of it to him ; dreaming of how he would go down to Brighton and ask a certain little girl called Pussy to marry him and let him make up to her for the wretched years which had gone by. "Well, what is it, Jones ?" he asked, as his servant entered and stood just within the door, evidently with something to say. " A lady to see you, surr," said Jones, stolidly. " A lady — what does she want ? " " Must see you very partic'lar, surr," Jones replied. " Oh, d ,". groaned Tom. " Well, show her in." Accordingly, Jones showed the lady in, and discreetly closed the door behind her. "Tom! " she cried. "Pussy!" Tom cried in turn. "What is it? What has happened ? What are you doing here ? " " Oh, Tom," she said, mournfully, " I'm so unhappy. She has left everything to me — everything — hundreds of thousands of pounds. And your mother is so angry. She says I have stolen your birthright — /, who owe you everything in the world, I was obliged to come, I wanted to see you before they could write to you. I don't want it, Tom. I shouldn't know what to do with it. I'll give it all back to you, Tom ; only don't let them be angry with me any more, and say such dreadful things to me," She paused, breathless with the vehemence of her torrent of words. Tom drew a long breath, and looked at her. " Pussy," he said, gently, " there is only one way in which I could take it," " And that ? " she cried, eagerly. " Do you know what I was thinking just as you came in ? " he asked. " No ; how should I ? " " Well, I was thinking that if the old lady had left me any of her money, I would go down to Brighton to-morrow, and ask you to marry me " Me I " cried Pussy, beginning to tremble. "And you would have said ? " he asked, "I should have said — Yes! " she cried, with a great flood of joy coming into her blue eyes. " Pussy, Pussy ! " he cried, holding out his hands to her. " Dear Tom," answered she, softly.
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