"What a handsome pair they make I" says May's mother, surveying Holme and Pansy side by side. "But of course Mr. Holme would not satisfy Mrs. Adair. A writer's earnings are so precarious, and I have heard young Holme gives a great deal away. James Thornden thinks highly of him, and I have never seen Pansy look so well content with an escort. I hope we have not been imprudent in introducing one who is only a writer to a girl with such prospects as Pansy's."
Pansy thinks she has never seen eyes smile so kindly before, as he holds out his hand in token of the pardon she has asked. She says, "Mr. Holme, before we forget my injustice I want you to let me make reparation."
"You can do so fully," says he, "if I may have that wild rose you gathered."
She yields it to him with a smile. "No, but I mean in another sense. You were very anxious to get to Masden, and I have been thinking you might have been seeking some appointment, which perhaps you lost through missing an interview. It may have meant a heavy loss for you. Would ten ... twenty pounds...?"
"No, they would not," he says gently, for he reads her distress too clearly to feel offended. "I was in search of no work that day, as concerns my pen. Some friends were inconvenienced by my unpunctuality, that is all. There was a large temperance meeting at Masden, and the speaker did not get there till the close. If you have ever arranged such meetings you will understand I was anxious not to put out the organisers by arriving late. Still, it is over now, Miss Adair, and my Masden friends have forgiven me. So banish remorse from your heart, and let us enjoy the wild flowers and these young ferns."
The woods have never seemed so charming to Pansy before, nor has a picnic appeared to pass so quickly. Somehow she feels as if she had known this young poet a long, long time, and they part that day each secretly feeling they want to know more of each other. Marlow Holme is not a society man, but is the working spirit in many a project of usefulness, many a channel of blessing difficult to open up.
"I can never understand your being a poet," she says, smilingly, to Holme one day. "People call you so business-like and practical, and you are working such splendid schemes. I thought poets lived in a dream world of their own."
"And were useless to hungry, sick, neglected fellow-creatures," he exclaims. "I cannot permit you to misjudge my brethren thus, Miss Adair. I know lives aflame with genius that count it more glory to give a practical helping hand here and there than to wear Fame's laurels, and count it more happiness than receiving public plaudits to comfort those that mourn and make straight rough and crooked pathways."
***
When young Mrs. May Thornden settles down in her Richmond home Pansy frequently spends a few days with her, for Mrs. Adair is feeling unequal to going out much just now, and is glad for her adopted daughter to enjoy herself without the cost of personal weariness. Those three or four days at Richmond are sunshiny times for Pansy.
She often sees Mr. Thornden's poet-friend, who so often chances to drop in while she is visiting there. She seldom mentions Marlow Holme, even to Mrs. Adair, for she is well aware Mrs. Adair would suspect a poor poet of fortune-hunting. But she thinks of him when alone, dreams of him, reads his poems again and again, till the beautiful thoughts and words seem graven upon her heart. And she learns to look up to him, to treasure his opinion, to revere his character in a way that never entered into her former fascination for him.
One evening Mrs. Thornden has been singing a ballad about a mother's love, and Marlow Holme remarks to Pansy on the balcony, "That is a blessing we two have missed, is it not so, Miss Adair? I can just remember my own mother. She died when I was quite a little fellow, but her face is a fadeless memory. And if I am not mistaken, you are Mrs. Adair's niece? At least, so I have heard,"
His face is full of interest, perhaps of something more. Pansy's life story concerns him in a way his secret heart is just beginning to realize. The girl flushes and trembles, not so much because his kind, clear gaze is meeting her own, as because the recollection that has become so dim of the general shop at Polesheaton rises anew before her eyes. Marlow Holme must never know of poor Aunt Piper and the shop. He is her ideal of a cultured, educated gentleman, and she prizes his good opinion more than that of any other friend. What would he think of her if he knew she were related to a second-rate shopkeeper, and had cut bacon and weighed candles, and made up packets of grocery for many a bygone year?
The perfume from her fan mingles with the scent of the lilies in the balcony as she replies with a falter that he attributes to her sense of orphanhood, "My mother -- the daughter of an officer -- -died a long, long time ago. I have never known the mother-tenderness of which May sang just now."
"But Mrs. Adair of Silverbeach has filled a mother's place as far as she can, I imagine?" he says in response. "Mrs. Thornden often speaks of your aunt's affection for you, and her pride in your musical talent."
She reflects how people often make the mistake of believing Mrs. Adair to be her aunt, so why should she enlighten Marlow Holme? Why should she tell him that Silverbeach Manor is only her home through its owner's gracious adoption of a poor girl without education, money, or prospects?
"Oh, nobody can be kinder than she is, and we are very fond of one another," answers Pansy. "Still, I often wonder what my mother was like. I often envy May her cheery, sympathizing, tireless mother."
"Yes, I have heard Mrs. Adair is easily fatigued and very delicate," says Marlow Holme. "Her weakness must be a tie to you who are bound to her by so much love and duty. Else I was thinking of asking your aid in a project one or two friends and I are just commencing."
"Please tell me about it," says Pansy, flushing with pleasure. It seems so sweet to her that he wants her to share in a scheme that is dear to his heart. "Mrs. Adair never minds my coming out. She has always plenty of fancy work and sketching on hand."
But Pansy knows that this very morning a voluntary proposal to stay at Silverbeach would have been extremely welcome to the invalid. Prosperity has not made her less selfish than in the days of need at Polesheaton.
"We are starting a mission at Masden, about five miles from Silverbeach. It would be a very short train journey for you, Miss Adair."
"Oh, we often drive to Masden. The river and canal views are so picturesque; but those dreadful brickfields spoil the place, for the labourers are just like rough savages."
"They are hard to deal with," says Marlow Holme, "but there is One with whom nothing is too hard."
Pansy looks up at him a little wistfully. She knows that society thinks him "odd" because he is not ashamed to be openly known as religious. "Please continue," she says.
"My friend, the Masden curate, and two or three others are uniting to help those who seem most neglected, and to teach their children, and the little ones that belong to the barges," he tells her. "We are anxiously looking for lady helpers in the Ragged School. Do you know anything of such work, Miss Adair?"
"I went to a Sunday school when I was a child, Mr. Holme. I was fond of the old place and the teachers."
"I am glad to hear it," he says heartily. "So many children belonging to the upper classes can be carefully kept from mixing with the little ones in Sunday schools. I am glad Mrs. Adair showed her sympathy with the grand Sunday school movement by sending you there. You will in that case be able, I feel sure, to gain her consent to helping us as a teacher. I shall be at Masden Ragged School on Monday. Might I hope to introduce you then to your little scholars?"
"If you think I can do them any good," hesitates Pansy.
"You can teach them the three Rs at any rate, and explain the Bible stories we have pictured on the walls. Do come to our aid, Miss Adair. I have this mission deeply at heart. Give me the help of your influence in the neighbourhood."
The last words are spoken softly, then he adds with a flush, "I ought not to put such a work on personal grounds. A grander motive than kindness to a friend is the thought that you will be doing something for Him whose care and love and Divine compassion yearn over these neglected
little ones."
"I will do what I can," says Pansy in a broken voice. Nobody has spoken to her personally of the Master since she bade farewell to Aunt Temperance. She goes back into the drawing room with a heart ill at ease. She feels she is deceiving Marlow Holme in permitting him to picture her as Pansy Adair, the niece whom the mistress of Silverbeach has brought up from childhood. But the shop -- the shop must be buried in oblivion. After all, she is to Mrs. Adair as a niece, and everybody has forgotten that Silverbeach was not always her home.
May Thornden calls upon them to write in her "confessional album," and Marlow Holme obediently takes pen in hand. Pansy's smile is a little forced, as she notices that he writes Deceit in any shape or form against the bidding to "Name your pet aversion."
Chapter 8
A Little Maid
MRS. ADAIR is horrified at first by the idea of Pansy's entering a ragged school. She predicts scarlet fever, smallpox, and skin complaints, and Pansy has to bring her most urgent coaxing and persuasive powers to bear before her guardian will allow her to devote one evening a week to the Masden enterprise.
"You will tire of it in a month," she says, when her reluctant permission is obtained. "Charities are fashionable just now, but the mania never lasts long. Mind you take plenty of camphor, toilet vinegar, and lavender, and on no account go too near the children."
So the luxurious carriage and the liveried servants and the two elegant bays take Pansy over to Masden, and form quite a Lord Mayor's Show in the estimation of the excited lads and lassies waiting round the ragged school.
Then the equipage, with several boys hanging resolutely behind, moves off to the hotel stables and Pansy enters the schoolroom where Marlow Holme welcomes her with his eyes even more than his lips, and speedily introduces her to her class.
"My sakes, ain't she got nice clothes!" is the exclamation that greets her entrance. Then a small child complains, "Teacher, Bobby's been and took my sugar dolly," and a daring-looking boy who has brought fireworks, challenges Pansy to put him out of the room.
"There ain't no teacher in this here place as I couldn't wallop with one hand, so there, miss!" he exclaims defiantly. "Nobody ain't a-going to put me out, they ain't. I'd just like to see them try it on."
His wish is speedily gratified by prompt ejection by means of Marlow Holme. After ten minutes or so he is led back in a state of quietude broken only by a peppermint sucked at intervals. Several of the children belong to barges, and are uneducated in every way. They are provided with reading books, and Pansy has a blackboard, but it is impossible for her to get any sort of order until the happy thought occurs to her that she will sing to them. At that moment they all become mute in intense expectation.
"Sing 'Poll on, dark stream', teacher," suggests a mite, eagerly.
"I do not know it at all," says Pansy.
"Oh! Don't you, teacher? We knows it, we does;" and soon the scholars are singing, "Roll on, dark stream, we fear not thy foam; The pilgrim is longing for Home, sweet home."
"Let's have 'Sowing the seeds'," demands another. Then the boy with the peppermint requests, "We all got mixed, And had a jolly spree."
Pansy is shocked, but she soon finds the children are impressed by the tunes, whatever the words, and the boy who is able to whistle, "We all got mixed" so tunefully turns out to be a Band of Hope child in Marlow Holme's society.
"Does you know 'Glory, glory, glory'?" queries a blue-eyed lassie in a pink sun bonnet.
Yes, Pansy remembers that hymn. Many a time has she sung it at Aunt Temperance's knee, as well as in the old Sunday school at Polesheaton. She had intended singing them her favourite song, "The Lost Chord", but at the child's request she begins the hymn, "Around the throne of God in Heaven," and the tune and words are full for herself of memories of the past.
Marlow Holme, who has come in to bring her chalk for the board, wonders at the far-away, troubled look in her eyes. He congratulates her on what she is doing, pats a few of the children on the head, and returns to his carpentry class. Pansy is bright enough to be a brisk, animated teacher, and the reading class is far from a discouraging one, though several of the children are inclined to be argumentative and conversational.
"Please, teacher, come again," cry the boys and girls as the bell sounds for instruction to cease.
Marlow Holme echoes the words, coming in to open the sliding doors which divide Pansy's classroom from the hall. "Please, teacher, come again."
"I like it very much," says Pansy, flushing and smiling. "It is such a change from dinners, dances and tennis. I always did like barge people, They are so dreamy, and gliding, and soothing."
"Well, we must teach them to do more than dream," he answers. "Now we have our closing Bible reading, the Lord's Prayer, and a hymn before school is dismissed."
The mission has now started a Sunday school, but every evening a few Bible verses and a hymn wind up the proceedings. The children shout, "There's a Friend for little children," but the flatness of a voice here and there, and the general tendency to drawl and sing too lustily cannot rob from Pansy's heart the sacredness of their hymn. She too learned to sing those words in her childhood, when their truth was near and dear to her.
Her lonely drive back to Silverbeach is a very thoughtful one, yet amid the sadness of her meditations there is an undercurrent of happiness that she scarcely understands. Mrs. Adair, half asleep on the lounge, is startled by the new element of brightness that enters with Pansy.
"Why, child," she exclaims, "this new fancy of teaching dirty children seems to agree with you. Novelty is charming, but I must say it is a strange sort of taste. Pray go and bathe your face and hands in water with aromatic vinegar and disinfecting soap before you play to me this evening. I have always had such a terror of catching smallpox."
It would astonish Pansy's guardian could she discern that the evenings at the ragged school become far dearer than any of the numerous entertainments to which she is invited. Her heart is glad with the sense of usefulness arid helpfulness to her fellow creatures, and she learns to prize the affection of the boys and girls who are so troublesome oftentimes, yet so warm-hearted, merry, and loving.
Once or twice Mrs. Adair has required the carriage elsewhere, and then Pansy comes home by train, escorted to the station by Marlow Holme who waits with her on the platform and sees her comfortably into the train. He says no word to her that others might not overhear, but those quiet moments when they pace the platform together in the starlight are memorable to both.
"He never forgets I am Miss Adair, of Silverbeach, and he is only a poor writer living in London lodgings," thinks Pansy sometimes with a half smile, for there are ways and means, she remembers, whereby her heiress-lot can let the poor writer understand he need not wholly despair of favour and success.
Mrs. Adair is much interested just now in the plans an eminent architect is preparing for her of a villa she is proposing to build in the South of France. She much prefers living abroad to England, and attributes her ill health to the climate of her native land. She proposes to spend a great deal of money upon her romantic residence, and decides to shut up Silverbeach next year, and in the end to try and let it.
Pansy's heart sinks unaccountably at the prospect of living abroad, but as regards Mrs. Adair's decision she knows she may venture so far and no farther, so she has to resign herself to travelling with what grace she finds possible.
Despite her invalidism, Mrs. Adair feels she must take upon herself the management of the reception committee at an event for which the most elaborate preparations have been made around Silverbeach. This is a floral fete in aid of a new tennis-club, and Royalty has consented to open the proceedings. All the fashionable world of the neighbourhood is in a ferment of excitement. Pansy, as a satin-skirted shepherdess, will preside in the rose tent, and Mrs. Adair sends for a milliner from a Regent Street shop to devise for herself a new and most becoming bonnet. A military band is engaged, bewitching costumes are planned, fruit and flowers and da
inty knick-knacks are profusely offered, and the occasion is altogether too magnificent and exclusive for Mrs. Adair to be absent.
"You and Miss Pansy looks like sisters, ma'am," says the maid to Mrs. Adair, adjusting the lace on the filmy costume, "except that you has the advantage as to figure. The terracotta trimmings do throw up your complexion wonderful, ma'am, and the rosebuds fastening of your bonnet just gives the whole a finish."
Mrs. Adair surveys herself complacently, knowing that her costume and her appearance will form a society paragraph in several journals. And her heart swells with pride as she notices how bright and happy-looking her beautiful charge has grown of late, and how becoming to Pansy are the rose pink ribbons on her crook, her low-cut bodice, and broad hat of rich satin.
"We are quite a success," she thinks as they drive off to the fete. There were many years of her wealth-crowned life when she deemed existence a failure, but now that a young, fair life belongs to her and brings new sunshine into her days, things do not seem quite so dreary to her tired eyes.
Royalty is late, and suspense and excitement are on tiptoe by the time the band strikes up the National Anthem. Then all is brilliance, graciousness, exclusiveness; those in the inner circle swell inwardly with elation; those on the fringe of that circle experience throbs of jealousy and dissatisfaction. Mrs. Adair and Pansy have honoured places all through, and Pansy is chosen to present roses as expensive as can be procured to the distinguished visitors. It is when the refined festivities are at their height, and Pansy's roses are universally in request, while the girl's own thoughts are away from the fete in certain quiet London rooms, that Mrs. Adair feels suddenly unwell, and asks a gentleman to find her carriage.
"I will send it back later on for Pansy," she says. "Do not spoil her enjoyment. I am only a little tired."
During the homeward drive she feels stranger still, and on reaching Silverbeach she asks the coachman to call at her doctor's and bring him, if possible, to the Manor. Some years ago, she had a serious attack of haemorrhage, which is always her secret dread when out of sorts.
Evasive answers are returned by the footman when she asks for her maid. The annoyance increases her anxiety, and it turns out that her own maid and two of the housemaids, believing her absence certain for several hours, have taken the opportunity to patronize a neighbouring circus, and are not expected home to the servants' tea.