Scenes and Characters, or, Eighteen Months at Beechcroft — A Closer Reading

ng in those times than it has since become through the multiplicity of books to be hurried over, and it was often very useful, as when it taught that such arrangement of incident was the means of developing the leading idea.

Yet, with all its faults, the children, who had been real to me, caught, chiefly by the youthful sense of fun and enjoyment, the attention of other children; and the curious semi-belief one has in the phantoms of one’s brain made me dwell on their after life and share my discoveries with my friends, not, however, writing them down till after the lapse of all these years the tenderness inspired by associations of early days led to taking up once more the old characters in _The Two Sides of the Shield_; and the kind welcome this has met with has led to the resuscitation of the crude and inexperienced tale which never pretended to be more than a mere family chronicle.

6_th_ _October_ 1886.

PAGE CHAPTER I THE ELDER SISTER 1 CHAPTER II THE NEW COURT 6 CHAPTER III THE NEW PRINCIPLE 15 CHAPTER IV HONEST PHYL 26 CHAPTER V VILLAGE GOSSIP 35 CHAPTER VI THE NEW FRIEND 52 CHAPTER VII SIR MAURICE 61 CHAPTER VIII THE BROTHERS 78 CHAPTER IX THE WASP 101 CHAPTER X COUSIN ROTHERWOOD 109 CHAPTER XI DANCING 123 CHAPTER XII THE FEVER 131 CHAPTER XIII A CURIOSITY MAP 143 CHAPTER XIV CHRISTMAS 155 CHAPTER XV MINOR MISFORTUNES 167 CHAPTER XVI VANITY AND VEXATION 186 CHAPTER XVII LITTLE AGNES 198 CHAPTER XVIII DOUBLE, DOUBLE TOIL AND TROUBLE 208 CHAPTER XIX THE RECTOR’S ILLNESS 222 CHAPTER XX THE LITTLE NEPHEW 227 CHAPTER XXI CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME 235 CHAPTER XXII THE BARONIAL COURT 249 CHAPTER XXIII JOYS AND SORROWS 256 CHAPTER XXIV LOVE’S LABOUR LOST 264 CHAPTER XXV THE THIRTIETH OF JULY 277 CHAPTER XXVI THE CRISIS 297 CHAPTER XXVII CONCLUSION 313

CHAPTER I THE ELDER SISTER

‘Return, and in the daily round Of duty and of love, Thou best wilt find that patient faith That lifts the soul above.’

ELEANOR MOHUN was the eldest child of a gentleman of old family, and good property, who had married the sister of his friend and neighbour, the Marquis of Rotherwood. The first years of her life were marked by few events. She was a quiet, steady, useful girl, finding her chief pleasure in nursing and teaching her brothers and sisters, and her chief annoyance in her mamma’s attempts to make her a fine lady; but before she had reached her nineteenth year she had learnt to know real anxiety and sorrow. Her mother, after suffering much from grief at the loss of her two brothers, fell into so alarming a state of health, that her husband was obliged immediately to hurry her away to Italy, leaving the younger children under the care of a governess, and the elder boys at school, while Eleanor alone accompanied them.

Their absence lasted nearly three years, and during the last winter, an engagement commenced between Eleanor and Mr. Francis Hawkesworth, rather to the surprise of Lady Emily, who wondered that he had been able to discover the real worth veiled beneath a formal and retiring manner, and to admire features which, though regular, had a want of light and animation, which diminished their beauty even more than the thinness and compression of the lips, and the very pale gray of the eyes.

The family were about to return to England, where the marriage was to take place, when Lady Emily was attacked with a sudden illness, which her weakened frame was unable to resist, and in a very few days she died, leaving the little Adeline, about eight months old, to accompany her father and sister on their melancholy journey homewards. This loss made a great change in the views of Eleanor, who, as she considered the cares and annoyances which would fall on her father, when left to bear the whole burthen of the management of the children and household, felt it was her duty to give up her own prospects of happiness, and to remain at home. How could she leave the tender little ones to the care of servants—trust her sisters to a governess, and make her brothers’ home yet more dreary? She knew her father to be strong in sense and firm in judgment, but indolent, indulgent, and inattentive to details, and she could not bear to leave him to be harassed by the petty cares of a numerous family, especially when broken in spirits and weighed down with sorrow. She thought her duty was plain, and, accordingly, she wrote to Mr. Hawkesworth, to beg him to allow her to withdraw her promise.