66 No, no, indeed! I should feel that to be a most dreadful thing. I hope and trust it is not wrong in me to say so.' Mr. Dowlas now took his leave, and the great subject was discussed between Eva and her two faithful friends. Mr. Ballow, adhering to his opinion that Mrs. Roberts's story was susceptible of a very opposite inference, yet acknowledged that many things appeared to identify Eva with the infant who so strangely fell, in the very first hours of her life, into the hands of Mr. Ferrier. He therefore inclined to the belief that Eva was judging aright when she felt it her duty to go with the Dowlas family that day, and he urged his opinion upon Mrs. Ballow. "You see this, my dear," he said, "by insisting on some further proof of the story by referring, for instance, to Mr. Campion himself- Eva might (to say the least) be doing a great injustice, and acting with what would appear like a sullen hardness. Now by going to see the person who is probably, though not certainly her mother, she can do no injustice to anybody, and may be taking the only right and good way which lies open to her." How sensibly, as all will surely acknowledge, was this decision put! How grievously fallacious it was destined to prove! Eva, convinced that she could not escape from owning herself to be Mrs. Roberts's daughter, was rather comforted in thinking that, by acting accordingly, she could do nobody injustice. There came a day, and that was not very long in coming, when she writhed bitterly at the thought of the in justice which, in taking this course, wrought against the innocent. she But the future is not given to us to read. And, considering with what little profit both the past and the present are often perused by us, were it not outrageous in us to aspire for a knowledge so far too excellent for us? Eva made up her mind to set out for Wales along with her newly found kindred that very afternoon. Mr. Ballow approved, and Mrs. Ballow withdrew her disapproval. They promised that no effort should be wanting to make further inquiries, and to ascertain the truth beyond a doubt. Meantime, their home at Minchley, to which they would return on the Monday, was as freely open to her as to any daughter of their own. She might calculate on a hearty welcome whenever (which was likely to happen only too quickly) she found her uncle's house unpleasing to her. A very sufficient sum of money was put into her hands, and she might at any time obtain any reasonable amount for any needful purpose. No more was said, and the necessary preparations for her departure were commenced at once. But there was yet something harder to be done. There was a farewell interval with Richard. He came shortly after Mr. Dowlas had departed. He besought Eva to ignore and cast aside the supposed discovery as the joint invention of his mother's prejudice and Mrs. Roberts's madness. Eva dared not do this. She felt the proofs to be strong enough to outweigh many more improbabilities than she actually detected in the story. Richard bitterly called upon her to testify how faithfully he was observing his promise. Eva had strength to say that she knew he would as religiously keep it always. And so they parted, exchanging the vows, not of mutual constancy, but of a mutual surrender. It made her far more indifferent than she would otherwise have been to the probable discomforts of her new life. What mattered it whose she was to be, if she could not now justly aspire to be his? When the Dowlases, husband and wife, arrived at the station that afternoon, they found Eva already awaiting them, under the escort of Mr. Ballow. On her two boxes she had written the name of "Miss Roberts" with her own hands. For such a name she felt she must now resign herself to bear through life, alas! too surely, through life. They started on their way, and arrived at Liverpool that evening. Rebecca Jane was fetched away from the friends with whom she had spent the interval occupied by her parents in visiting Leamington. She was presented to her cousin Eva, and with something at her cousin Eva's hands. When we last beheld her she was about seven years old; she was now entering her thirteenth year. She was really a much nicer child than, with such a mother, you could have expected her to be. To do bare justice to Mrs. Dowlas, she was much less savage to her children than to her muchenduring husband. She had her own system of education. It was briefly comprehended in giving her children their own way altogether until they were six or seven; in assuming a sort of spasmodic severity towards them as soon as that age was attained; and in giving them up as hopelessly vicious when they entered their teens. Rebecca Jane was accordingly just now passing out of the purgatorial stage into the stage of final reprobation. Mr. Dowlas grew in favour with Eva the more she saw and heard him; but her horror of her new aunt was increased in a greater ratio still. The supper of which they partook in the Liverpool hotel involved one dreadful revelation, and Mrs. Dowlas's red face, loud voice, and bravado manner proved all to be referable to one vulgar and degrading cause. They were to start by the steamer in the forenoon of the morrow. The total change of place and of associates had really a most consoling influence on Eva. It seemed to place the dreadful parting of the previous day at the distance of several weeks. Perhaps the disgust with which almost every word and act of her aunt inspired her was, at this time, of service to her. The Saturday morning came. Mr. Dowlas went out before breakfast, and came back with the account that the wind was fair, and that a calm and rapid passage might be expected. So Mrs. Dowlas gave her final decision for making the journey by water instead of by land. As the time for departure drew near they gathered their packages together, and prepared to walk towards the steamer. "Take care, my dear," said Mr. Dowlas to his daughter; "you'll bring upon yourself a very strong remonstrance from your mamma if you lose that shawl." "That she will, I promise her! That she will, I promise her! answered the redfaced lady for herself. And then, with a celerity which argued long and varied experience, Rebecca Jane dodged round the table as her mother approached her. In all due time they were on board and sailing down the Mersey into the Irish Sea. Mrs. Dowlas had treated herself to a breakfast, very varied as to quality, and very satisfactory as to quantity. A hint thrown out by her husband as to coming. dangers ensuing therefrom had been by her most scornfully slighted and despised. The sea, when they got into it, proved not quite so placid as had been expected. Therefore it is no such great wonder if, before the firing of the gun which announced their passing off Great Orme's Head, Mrs. Dowlas was about the most suffering of all those suffering people whom that steamer contained. Rebecca Jane was about as much to be pitied as her mamma; much more so, indeed, if the greater pity be due to the greater patience. Eva was not decidedly ill, though not entirely well. Mr. Dowlas did not suffer at all; not, that is to say, in his own individual stomach. His wife provided ample suffering for him out of that which fell to her own share. Some twenty times he was screamed for down into the cabin, to procure or administer some imagined remedy. As many times, also, he was screamed away back again, as one whose presence was more sickening than the sea. About two in the afternoon (I think it. was) they entered the Menai Straits, passed nigh to that bridge, one of the wonders of its own time, but now superseded by so many greater wonders; and finally they came to Bangor. And Eva saw mountains for the first time in her life. Mrs. Dowlas, very far from well even now, crawled up from the cabin, and prepared to go on shore. Sea-sickness had played fantastic tricks with her florid complexion. The bilious yellow and the fiery red united to form what an artist would have considered" a study." She really appeared (it is a shocking simile, I am "Well, I am sorry, my dear. But, really and truly, the wind got suddenly up just after we started." "Got up after we started, did it? My goodness me, Rebecca Jane! But you do deserve whipping, if ever a child did! Now, then, come along with you! Don't make it worse, but come along directly!" very beautiful, though not, perhaps, so beau- Our friend and companion of that night is now a Cambridge Don, and likewise a member of the Alpine Club. Should he, by any unlikely chance, cast his eye on this page of ours, he will forgive this personal allusion, we are assured, and will cast his thoughts back to that night on which he, and eke a fourourselves, and the guide More dead than alive, and with houses and hills dancing before her eyes, as though chaos were come again, and the earth were but another sea, Rebecca Jane attempted to walk from her seat on deck to the pier hard by. The moral agency of her mamma's exam-footed personage of the name of "Nip". ple, and the physical agency of her mam- awaited, on the cold mountain's top, the arma's knuckles, sustained her in her first ef- rival of the king of day. forts, and some assistance from her cousin Eva accomplished the rest. And very shortly they were all four of them inside an hotel facing the beach. Mr. Dowlas ventured to propose a short walk to his wife; which proposal she acknowledged by desiring him, if he did indeed wish to kill her, to take a knife and do it at once. Mr. Dowlas then proposed that they should go out by themselves, and leave her to benefit herself by a little rest. To the proposition, returned in this amended form, she told him that, if he were really brute enough to leave his wife while she lay at the point of death, it was a great deal better he should go. Mr. Dowlas, with his two other companions, did go. But before he went he ordered dinner for the party. They rambled about for more than an hour, looking in at the cathedral, and ascending an eminence near to the town. When they came back to the hotel they found Mrs. Dowlas not only still alive, but very demonstratively alive, and calling out for bottled porter. And then they dined, and towards evening started off in an open chaise for Llynbwllyn. That village, the destined scene of new and unimagined trials to our heroine, lay somewhere between Bangor and Carnarvon. But for a few English ramblers, who haunted it summer after summer, Llynbwllyn would have been the Welshiest place in all the Principality. It stood girt with sheltering mountains, Through the cloudy summer's evening, and slowly, from the steepness of the roads, the chaise bore Eva and the three others towards the parsonage of Llynbwllyn. They entered the village, and Eva's heart throbbed painfully fast at thinking she was going to meet a mother whom she might in vain endeavour to love. They stopped before the door. A middle-aged woman was ready to greet them. Could she be Mrs. Roberts? But a word or two from Mr. Dowlas informed his niece that the woman was only their servant Winifred. Winifred Williams had served in the family many years. Her long service was a perpetual puzzle to all who knew the character and temper of Mrs. Dowlas. How came it that Winifred, whose excellent qualities entitled her to pick and choose out of the most eligible places, was contented to serve where so little was to be gained, and where even that little was spoilt by the detestable mistress of Llynbwllyn Rectory? The true answer should be given, in justice to Winifred. She remained there in selfdenying consideration for her master and his children. She was not withheld from seeking a better service by a blindness to the merits possessed by herself. A genuine pity for her master's most unhappy life, and a wish to lighten his load if she could, induced her to tolerate the discomforts from which many a less accomplished servant had turned in disgust away. But, alas! not to the best amongst us is it given to be Christians altogether. Mrs. Winifred was submissive enough to her mistress, who might turn her away in any moment of anger. But she was not nearly so patient with Mr. Dowlas and his sister-in-law, compassion towards whom (and towards the children) was her only motive for enduring such a mistress. It was this good woman, and I do not believe she had much idea of being better than other people, it was she who admitted them into the house. Mrs. Dowlas was tired and sleepy, and a little less ready than usual with her tongue. Mrs. Roberts, as Winifred informed them, was anxiously awaiting them in the parlour. Mr. Dowlas whispered to Eva as they went in, "I know your mother is very poorly, from her not coming to meet us; pray excite her as little as you can." They entered the parlour - Mr. Dowlas first, Eva directly after him, while Mrs. Dowlas and her daughter lingered in the passage. A pale, frightened-looking woman, dressed like one recently widowed, got up from her chair to greet them. Eva came towards her; she held out her arms, as if to receive her long-lost daughter. But before they touched Eva they were withdrawn with a low scared cry. Then recovering once more, Mrs. Roberts kissed Eva and cried over her. "You are not like him," she said; "you are not at all like him!-should he ever come back to do me justice, he may not believe you are his child. But I thank you for coming to me, notwithstanding; and, indeed, indeed, my poor dear child, what I did, cruel as it seemed, was done for the very best." best - for the "There you go!" 'exclaimed her sister, who now had entered the room. There you go! For ten years and more you've been looking for the rascal to come back and marry you. Why, what if the wife he had when you went away with him be really dead now? Very likely he has twenty others by this time. Oh, what a fool you are, Susanna!" Eva tried to say a comforting word or two to her mother. "I know," she said, "that you did the best you could for me, and I have met with the kindest friends, and had a very happy childhood, so you have nothing to reproach yourself with. Let us try and make one another as happy as we can." But poor Mrs. Roberts, with the weak waywardness which had made her the dupe of others through life, went on maundering about the man whom she had once considered her husband. "He would do me justice if he could but see you now," she kept repeating to Eva; and Eva devoutly hoped that, whatever fate had overtaken her unhappy father, he might never come back to disturb her mother more deeply still. Least of all could she desire to see her parents bound together by a still closer bond than before. "Come, now, have you almost done talking? for I want my tea." From whom this seasonable interruption proceeded we need hardly specify. And, in truth, such talk as poor Mrs. Roberts kept up was little likely to serve any useful purpose. So it was broken off on account of tea, and they all retired early to bed. Eva had a very small but clean apartment, looking out on the Welsh hills; and but that her thoughts would fly backwards to Leamington, she might have found something not unlike happiness in the resolve to bear with the infirmities of her mother, and with the more guilty infirmities of her aunt, and to follow in the path of duty which her new and strange circumstance smight indicate to her. The next day was Sunday. There was morning service at Llynbwllyn Churchin Welsh; and (in consideration of several English sojourners now abiding there) af ternoon service in English. Eva attended both. There was a collection in the afternoon, as was usual during the visitors' season in every year, for the expenses of the church. Eva could not help thinking her uncle's appeal a model of pulpit solicitation. Having ended his sermon in the usual manner, he quietly said, "We are accustomed to ask strangers who attend this church to contribute towards the salary of the clerk and of the sexton. And I think when you learn that the clerk has only one pound a year, and the sexton nothing whatever, you will be liberal in supplying the deficiency." There was one piece of gold in the plate that day. Little or nothing which deserves recording took place for a week and more after Eva's arrival at Llynbwllyn. It was a thankless task, the offering to comfort her mother; for the more she urged on the poor woman to forget the past, the more loudly and dolefully did she persist in deploring the folly which had blighted her life. When Mrs. Dowlas would angrily interpose with, "Oh, you are a fool, Susanna!" Eva, great and increasing as was her dislike of Mrs. Dowlas, could understand that her temper might have acquired some of its acidity little confidential monkey. Well, now, just from the constant contact with her sister's let me put it before you. Suppose you aggravating feebleness. were a very pretty young lady or thought yourself a very pretty one, of twenty years of age, or no we'll say of eighteen-eighteen years and four months, let us say (and Mrs. Dowlas chuckled audibly at the ingenious sarcasm of her hypothesis), "and if some young gentleman were to ask you to marry him; what should you do then?" It required more patience in Eva to endure her aunt's vicious taunts, when (as was frequently happening) her mother was alone, and nursing one of her customary headaches. Eva had rapidly acquired the goodwill of her young cousins: there were four of them altogether, including Rebecca Jane, and as many more of them had died in infancy, or in very early childhood. But Mrs. Dowlas was rather resentful than grateful for the kindness with which Eva had sought and obtained the children's affection. The woman had an instinctive belief that she was an object of general contempt, and she was very jealous of the popularity her newly found niece was winning in the household, and would be likely to win wherever she became known. Her greatest satisfaction was to address obliquely, through her eldest daughter, the abuse she did not venture to cast more directly at its object. "Rebecca Jane," she would say, when a long series of covert sarcasm had failed to provoke a return from Eva-"Rebecca Jane, I do hope to goodness that you'll never get into the way of sitting sulky hour after hour, and never speaking when you're spoken to by others. It's just the most unbecoming habit you could have." Or else it would be, don't "Rebecca Jane, if any rich lady or gentleman should ever take a fancy to you, and give you a bringing up above your station, you set yourself up on that account, and give yourself conceited airs, when you're sent back to come and live with your own relations again." Or occasionally the lady's humour would break forth in a manner which indicated some preparation beforehand. As, for instance, in this manner, "Rebecca Jane, do you know what it looks like when young ladies sit still and don't talk?" Rebecca Jane, timidly looking askance at her cousin Eva, said she was sure she did not know. "I should go and tell papa," said Rebecca Jane, after a moment or two of consideration. "Go and tell mamma,' any decent girl would have said, I suppose. But it wouldn't make you turn up your nose at the relations you'd got already, I should hope? Never let anybody teach you to be proud, Rebecca Jane. There are people in the world that have got vagabonds for their fathers, and yet are proud with it all. Don't follow every bad example you may come across. I tell you what, child, giving you all this advice has made me quite exhausted. must get the bottle out of the cupboard." Thus Eva was now quite at home. You On Tuesday, the 29th of July, Mrs. Dowlas astonished Eva by coming down to breakfast in a mood most marvellously amicable. She suggested, of her own accord, that while the weather was fine, and the days long, Eva should take an excursion or two, and acquaint herself with some of the beauties which are the most enduring glories of Wales. Suppose Eva and her mother were to spend that day and the next in visiting Llandudno and Conway, and the other most northerly places of the Principality, making Bangor their headquarters for the night? Eva gladly seconded the proposal. Mrs. Dowlas might have some selfish and secondary motive for thus proposing, but there was no visible reason for refusing to gratify her if she had. Mr. Dowlas approved, but his wife seemed more than usually anxious to keep him out of the conversation this morning. Roberts was prevailed on to undertake the expedition, and she and her daughter spent an almost happy day among the mountains and along the shore. In the evening they put up at the hotel in Bangor, in which Eva had rested on the day of her arrival in Wales. Mrs. It wanted still an hour or so to twilight, but the rain was coming on, and they looked on their day's excursion as over. But the great event of that memorable day was (for both of them) to come still. They had had their tea, and were seated |