It Might Have Been. Emily Sarah Holt

Milisent and my cousins, and Aunt Frances,”—but Aunt Frances was an evident after-thought—“and I dare say I shall be sorry to leave all the places I know, when the time comes. But then so many of us are going—you, and Grandmother, and Aunt Edith, and Cousin Aubrey, and Aunt Faith—and there are so many new places to see, that on the whole I don’t think I am very sorry.”

      “No, very like not, child.”

      “Not now,” said a third voice, softly, and Lettice looked up at another aunt whose presence she had not previously noticed. This was certainly no sister of the two plain women whose acquaintance we have just made. Temperance Murthwaite had outlived her small share of good looks, and Faith’s had long since been washed away in tears; but Edith Louvaine had been extremely beautiful, and yet was so notwithstanding her forty years. Her hair was dark brown, with a golden gleam when the sun caught it, and her eyes a deep blue, almost violet. Her voice was sweet and quiet—of that type of quietness which hides behind it a reserve of power and feeling. “At eighteen, Lettice, we are not commonly sorry to leave home. Much sorrier at thirty-eight: and at eighty, I think, there is little to leave but graves.”

      “Ay, but they’re not all dug by the sexton,” remarked Temperance, patting the blue kirtle to make it lie in the hole she had left for it. “At any rate, the sorest epitaphs are oft invisible save to them that have eyes to see them.”

      Edith did not answer, and the work went on. At length, suddenly, the question was asked—

      “Whence came you, Edith?”

      “From Mere Lea, whither I have been with Mother and Aubrey, to say farewell.”

      “And for why came you hither? Not to say farewell, I reckon.”

      “Nay,” replied Edith, smiling. “I thought I might somewhat help you, Temperance. We must all try to spare poor Faith.”

      “Spare poor Faith!” repeated Temperance, in a sarcastic tone. “Tell you what, Edith Louvaine—if you’d think a bit less of sparing her, and she’d think a bit more of sparing you, it would be a sight better for poor Faith and poor Edith too.”

      “I? I don’t want to be spared,” answered Edith.

      “No, you don’t, and that’s just it. And Faith does. And she oughtn’t. And you oughtn’t.”

      “Nay, Temperance. Remember, she is a widow.”

      “Small chance of my forgetting it. Doesn’t she tell me so six dozen times a day? Ask Faith to do any thing she loveth not, and she’s always a widow. I’ve had my thoughts whether I could not be an orphan when I’m wanted to do something disagreeable. What think you?”

      “I think your bark is worse than your bite, Temperance,” said Edith, smiling.

      “I’m about weary of barking,” answered Temperance, laying smooth a piece of cobweb lawn. “I think I’ll bite, one of these days. Deary me, but there are widows of divers sorts! If ever there were what Paul calls ‘a widow indeed,’ it is my Lady Lettice; and she doesn’t make a screen of it, as Faith does, against all the east winds that blow. Well, well! Give me that pin-case, Lettice, and the black girdle yonder; I lack somewhat to fill up this corner. What hour must we be at Selwick, Edith?”

      “At five o’ the clock the horses are bidden.”

      “Very good. You’ll bide to supper?”

      “Nay, not without I can help you.”

      “You’ll not help me without you’ll tell Faith she’s a snivelling lazy-bones, and that you’ll not, I know. Go and get your beauty-sleep—and comfort Lady Lettice all you can.”

      When Edith had departed, and the packing was finished, the aunt and niece went down to supper. It consisted of Polony sausages, sweetmeats, and an egg-pie—a Lancashire dainty, which Rachel the cook occasionally sent up, for she was a native of that county. During the entire meal, Faith kept up a slow rain of lamentations, for her widowhood, the sad necessity of leaving her home, and the entire absence of sympathy which she experienced in all around her: till at last her sister inquired—

      “Faith, will you have any more pie?”

      “N–o,” said Faith with a sob, having eaten nearly half of it.

      “Nor any more sausage?”

      “Oh no!” she answered, heaving a weary sigh.

      “Nor sucketts (sweetmeats; subsequently spelt succadet) neither?”

      Faith shook her head dolefully.

      “Then I’ll help you to a little of one other thing, which you need sorely; and that’s a bit of advice.”

      Faith moaned behind her handkerchief.

      “As to quitting home, that’s your own choice; so don’t go and pretend to fret over it. And as to sparing you, you’ve been spared a deal too much, and I’ve been a fool to do it. And just bethink you, Faith, that if we are now to make one family with my Lady Lettice and Edith, you’d best be thinking how you can spare them. My Lady Lettice is a deal newer widow than you, and she’s over seventy years on her back, and you’ve but forty—”

      “Thirty-nine,” corrected Faith in a choked voice.

      “And she’s leaving her home not from choice, but because she has no choice; and she has spent over fifty years in it, and is like an old oak which can ill bear uprooting. I only trust those Newcastle Louvaines will get what they deserve. I say it’s a burning shame, never to come forward nor claim aught for fifty years, until Sir Aubrey and both his sons were gone, and then down they pounce like vultures on the widow and her orphan grandson, and set up a claim, forsooth, to the estate—after all these years! I don’t believe they have any right—or at any rate, they’ve no business to have it: and if my Lady Lettice had been of my mind, she’d have had a fight for it, instead of giving in to them; and if Aubrey Banaster had had a scrap of gumption, he’d have seen to it. He is the eldest man of the family, and they’re pretty nigh all lads but him. Howbeit, let that pass. Only I want you, Faith, to think of it, and not go treating my Lady Lettice to a dish of tears every meal she sits down to, or she’ll be sorry you’re her daughter-in-law, if she isn’t now; and if her name were Temperance Murthwaite it’s much if she wouldn’t be.”

      “Oh, you can say what you like—you always do—”

      “Beg your pardon, Faith; I very generally don’t.”

      “You haven’t a bit of feeling for a poor widow. I hope you may never be a widow—”

      “Thank you; I’ll have a care of that. Now, Lettice! jump up, maid, and don your hat and mantle, and I will run down with you to Selwick while there’s a bit of light. My Lady Lettice thought you’d best be there to-night, so you could be up early and of some use to your Aunt Edith.”

      It was not Temperance Murthwaite’s custom to let the grass grow under her feet, and the three miles which lay between the little house at Keswick and Selwick Hall were put behind her and Lettice when another hour was over.

      Selwick Hall stood on the bank of Derwentwater, and was the residence of Lettice’s grandmother, the widowed Lady Louvaine, her daughter Edith, her grandson Aubrey, and Hans Floriszoon, the orphan nephew of an old friend, Mynheer Stuyvesant, who had been adopted into the family when a little child. It was also theoretically the abode of Lettice’s Aunt Faith, who was Aubrey’s mother, and who practically flitted from the one house to the other at her rather capricious will. It had become her habit to depart to Keswick whenever her feelings were outraged at Selwick; and as Faith’s feelings were of that order which any thing might outrage, and nobody knew of it till they were outraged, her abode during the last six years had been mainly with the sister who never petted her, but from whom she would stand ten times more than from the tenderer hearts at Selwick.

      Lettice’s hand was on the door when it opened, and there stood her Cousin Aubrey.