The Shadow of a Sin. Charlotte M. Brame

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СКАЧАТЬ on joining the army – much against Lady Vaughan's wishes.

      "Why could he not be content at home, as his father had been before him?" she asked.

      Captain Randall Vaughan enjoyed his brief military career. As a matter of course he fell in love, but far more sensibly than might have been imagined. He married the pretty, delicate Clare Brandon. She was an orphan, not very rich – in fact had only a moderate fortune – but her birth atoned for all. She was a lineal descendant of the famous Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, whom the fair young ex-queen of France had married.

      Lady Vaughan was delighted. A little more money might have been acceptable, but the Vaughans had plenty, and there was no young lady in England better born and better bred than Clare Brandon. So the young captain married her and Sir Arthur made them a very handsome allowance. For one whole year they lived in perpetual sunshine, as happy as they could possibly be, and then came an outbreak in our Eastern possessions, and the captain's regiment was ordered abroad.

      It was like a deathblow to them. Despite all danger, Mrs. Vaughan would have gone with her husband, but for the state of her health, which absolutely forbade it. Her despair was almost terrible; it seemed as if she had a presentiment of the coming cloud. If the war had not been a dangerous one the young captain would most certainly have sold out; but to do so when every efficient soldier was required, would have been to show the white feather, and that no Vaughan could do – the motto of the house was "Loyal even to death." He tried all possible means to console his wife, but she only clung to him with passionate cries, saying she would never see him again.

      It was impossible to leave her alone and she had no near relatives. Then Lady Vaughan came to the rescue. The heir of the Vaughans, she declared, must be born at Queen's Chase: therefore her son's wife had better remain with her. Randall Vaughan thankfully accepted his mother's offer, and took his wife to the old ancestral home. It was arranged that she should remain there until his return.

      "You will try for my sake to be well and happy," he said to her, "so that when I come back you will be strong and able to travel with me, should I have to go abroad, again."

      But she clasped her tender arms around him and hid her weeping face on his breast.

      "I shall never see you again, my darling," she said, "never again!"

      They called the unconsciousness that came over her merciful. She remembered nothing after those words. When she opened her eyes again he was gone.

      How the certainty of her doom seemed to grow upon her! How her sweet face grew paler, and the frail remnant of vitality grew less! He had been her life – the very sun and centre of her existence. How could she exist without him? Lady Vaughan, in her kind, formal way, tried to cheer her, and begged of her to make an effort for Randall's sake; and for Randall's sake the poor lady tried to live.

      They were disappointed in one respect; it was not an heir that was born to the noble old race, but a lovely, smiling baby girl – so lovely that Lady Vaughan, who was seldom guilty of sentiment, declared that it resembled nothing so much as a budding flower, and after a flower, she said it must be named. They suggested Rose, Violet, Lily – none of them pleased her; but looking one day through the family record, she saw the name of Lily Hyacinth Vaughan. Hyacinth it must be. The poor, fragile mother smiled a feeble assent, and the lovely baby received its name. Glowing accounts were sent to the young captain.

      CHAPTER III

      The news was not long in reaching England. When Lady Vaughan read it she knew it was Clare's death-warrant. They tried to break it to her very gently, but her keen, quick perception soon told her what was wrong.

      "He is dead," she said; "I knew that I should never see him again."

      Clare Vaughan's heart was broken; she hardly spoke after she heard the fatal words; she was very quiet, very patient, but the light on her face was not of this world. She lay one day with little Hyacinth in her arms, and Lady Vaughan, going into her room, said,

      "You look better to-day, Clare."

      "I have been dreaming of Randall," she said smiling; "I shall soon see him again."

      An hour afterward they went to take the little one from her – the tender arms had relaxed their hold, and she lay dead, with a smile on her face.

      They buried her in Ashton churchyard. People called her illness by all kinds of different names, but Lady Vaughan knew she had died of a broken heart. The care of little Hyacinth devolved upon her grandmother. It was a dreary home for a child: the rooms were always shaded by trees, and the sombre carvings, the satyr heads, the laughing fauns, all in stone, frightened her. She never saw any young persons; Sir Arthur's servants were all old – they had entered the service in their youth, and remained in it ever since.

      Sir Arthur and Lady Vaughan felt their son's death very keenly; all their hopes died with him; all their interest in life was gone. They became more dull, more formal, more cold every day. They loved the child, yet the sight of her was always painful to them, reminding them so forcibly of what they had lost. They reared her in the same precise, formal manner in which their only son had been reared. She rose at a stated time; she retired at a certain hour, never varying by one minute; she studied, she read, she practiced her music – all by rule.

      The neighborhood round Queen's Chase was not a very populous one. Among the friends whom the Vaughans visited, and who visited them in return, there was not one young person, not one child. It never seemed to enter their minds that Hyacinth, being a child, longed for the society of children. At certain times she was gravely told to play. She had a doll and a Noah's ark; and with these she amused herself alone for long hours. As for the graces, the fancies, the wants, the requirements of childhood, its thousand wordless dreams and wordless wants, no one seemed to understand them at all. They treated the child as if she were a little old woman, crushing back with remorseless hand all the quick fancies and bright dreams natural to youth.

      Some children would have grown up wicked, hardened, unlovely and unloving under such tuition; but Hyacinth Vaughan was saved from this by her peculiar disposition. The child was all poetry. Lady Vaughan never wearied of trying to correct her. She carefully pruned, as she imagined, all the excess of imagination and romance. She might as well have tried to prevent the roses from blooming, the dew from falling, or the leaves from springing. All that she succeeded in was in making the child keep her thoughts and fancies to herself. She talked to the trees as though they were grave, living friends, full of wise counsel; she talked to the flowers as though they were familiar and dear playfellows. The imagination so sternly repressed ran riot in a hundred different ways.

      It was most unfortunate for the child. If she had been as other children – if her imagination, instead of being cruelly repressed, had been trained and put to some useful purpose – if her love of romance had been wisely guarded – if her great love of poetry and beauty, her great love of ideality, had been watched and allowed for – the one great error that darkened her life would never have been committed. But none of this was done. She was literally afraid to speak of that which filled her thoughts and was really part of her life. If she asked any uncommon question Lady Vaughan scolded her, and Sir Arthur, his hands shaking nervously, would say, "The child is going wrong – going wrong."

      It was without exception the dullest and saddest life any child could lead. At thirteen there came two breaks in the monotony – she had a music-master come from Oakton, and she found a key that fitted the library door. How often had she stood against the library windows, looking through them, and longing to open one of those precious volumes; but when she asked Sir Arthur for a book, he told her she could not understand them – she must be content to play with her doll.

      There were hundreds of suitable books that might have been provided for the child; СКАЧАТЬ