“He comes, the herald of a noisy world;   News from all nations lumbering at his back.
  .       .       .       .       .    Messenger of grief
  Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some:
  To him indifferent whether grief or joy.
 
THE TASK.
 
                                   “Art than dead?
  Dead?        .        .        .        .        .        
  Could from earth’s ways that figure alight
  Be lost and I not know ‘twas so?
  Of that fresh voice the gay delight
  Fade from earth’s air, and I not know!”
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
 
 
 
IT was not, certainly, a pleasant change from Altes to London, for poor Marion. For a day or two she was perfectly alone, her father, as she had expected, absent; and she herself too anxious and dispirited to care to announce her return to the few friends, so-called, with whom she was on anything like intimate terms.
 
On the third day Mr. Vere made his appearance. Marion was sitting alone, late in the afternoon, in the same room in which we first saw her, when he returned. She heard him enter the house, she heard his step on the stair, and rose, half trembling, to greet him. Oh, how she wished she could feel glad to see him! What she had of late gone through had both softened and widened her heart. She was very ready to love this father of hers, if only he would let her, but alas, it was too late in the day for anything of this kind!
 
He came in. A tall, slightly bent, grizzled man. Looking older, considerably so, than his age, and giving one, somehow, the impression that he must always have appeared so.
 
He shook hands with his daughter in what he intended for a cordial manner, and then in a jerky sort of way kissed her forehead, as if he were half ashamed of what he was doing.
 
Still, for him, this was a good deal, and Marion tried her best to respond to it heartily.
 
“So you’re back again, my dear,” he remarked by way of greeting.
 
“Yes, Papa,” she replied; “I arrived here on Tuesday morning. Poor Cissy went on to Cheltenham at once to begin her preparations. I have been so happy at Altes, dear Papa, so very happy. I shall always be so grateful to you for having allowed me to go with Cissy. And now that I have come back, I am so anxious to do what I can in return for your kindness. You must let me be of use to you, Papa—more than I have been hitherto.”
 
“Ah, yes, humph, just so!” half grunted, half muttered Mr. Vere. “Very glad you have enjoyed yourself. I wish I could get a holiday myself. I am more knocked up than I ever remember feeling before.”
 
This was wonderfully communicative and gracious! “I am so sorry. I thought you were not looking very well,” remarked Marion. But her father didn’t encourage any further expression of filial solicitude. His head already half hidden in a newspaper which he had brought into the room with him, he appeared lost to the world outside its folds.
 
Suddenly he startled Marion by speaking again.
 
“What’s all this nonsense about Cecilia Archer setting of to India just now?” he asked; “At this season it’s utter madness! She’ll kill herself before she gets there. I thought she had more sense.”
 
“The doctors have given her leave,” replied Marion: “I believe they thought the risk would be greater of detaining her at home, when she is in such anxiety. And besides, she is going to Simla, which is a very healthy place.”
 
“Anxiety, fiddlesticks!” growled Mr. Vere, “what good did anxiety ever do any one? Simla, humbug! To get there she must pass through the very worst and unhealthiest part of the whole continent—at this season, that’s to say; as you might know if you would speak less thoughtlessly.”
 
“I am very sorry,” began Marion, but the head had again retired behind the newspaper, and she said no more.
 
In another moment it appeared again.
 
“There have been a lot of invitations for you. I did not think it worth while to send them to Altes. You can look them over, and tell me if there are any you wish to accept. What gaiety you wish for, you must be content with early this year, for Lady Barnstaple is going abroad in a few weeks to some German baths, and I don’t care about your going out with any one else.”
 
“Thank you, Papa,” said Marion, really grateful for the unusual interest he expressed in her concerns, “I shall look over the invitations but I don’t think I care very much about going out this year. A very few times before Lady Barnstaple leaves town, will quite content me. I have a letter from Harry,” she went on, feeling unusually bold, “he wants to know if he may come up from Woolwich for next Saturday and Sunday to see me. It is so long since we have seen each other,” she added deprecatingly, for something in the way the newspaper rustled, frightened away her newly found audacity.
 
“Harry wants to know if he may come for next Saturday and Sunday, does he?” said Mr. Vere, very slowly, distinctly emphasizing each word of the sentence, “then, you will perhaps be so good as to tell him from me that most certainly he may not come here for Saturday, Sunday, or any other day, fill I see fit to send for him. Idle young idiot, that he is! I wonder he is not ashamed to propose such a thing. Had he worked as he should have done years ago, he might now have been at the head of the Woolwich academy, instead of being, at seventeen, obliged to cram at a tutor’s to obtain even a Line commission. And now, forsooth, he thinks he is to have it all his own way and run up and down to town, whenever the fancy seizes him! I tell you, Marion, you mean well, I believe, but if there is to be peace among us, you must be careful what sort of influence you exert over your brother. I give you fair warning of this. See that you attend to it.” And so saying, he marched out of the room, newspaper in hand, without giving his daughter time to reply.
 
It was well he did so, for the fast coming tears would have choked her voice. Though by no means a woman of the lachrymose order, Marion’s self-control had of late somewhat deserted her, and she had so longed to see Harry! Not only this, she had come home, though anxious and depressed, thoroughly determined to fulfil to the best of her power, her daughter’s duty. The hope that no very long time would elapse, before she might be taken to a more congenial home, naturally encouraged her to the better performance of her present duties, before they should be beyond her power—among the things of the past: and joined to this, was a half superstitious, hardly acknowledged belief, that according to her present earnestness in well-doing, would be the measure of her future happiness.
 
Was she more of a heathen, poor little soul, for so thinking, than many, in their own opinion, far wiser people? Doing good for good’s own sake is a doctrine not often inculcated, even by those who think themselves the most “orthodox” and spiritual-minded.
 
“Surely, surely,” cries the eager, anxious heart, “if I but bear this patiently, and to the best of my poor power perform these hard and uninviting duties, surely I shall at last meet with my reward? The Father above ‘is not a man that he should lie,’ and has he not promised ‘good things’ to the patient doer of present duty; ‘long days and blessedness to such as honour his commandments?”
 
Such is the unexpressed, unacknowledged hope of many an aching, longing heart. A hope which perhaps strengthens to do bravely, and bear uncomplainingly, at times when higher motives might be powerless.
 
Vain hopes, unwarranted expectations, are they? Nay, not so. The “good things” are no dream, the “blessedness” no delusion, though they may not indeed consist of the one thing craved for by the anguished heart, that one gift, whatever it be, which at such seasons seems to our dark and imperfect vision the only blessing worth having, without which existence itself were no boon!
 
And now to poor Marion. Full, as I have said, of her ardent resolutions, her self-administered incentive to exertion, the thought that if she were not a good daughter at home, she would never deserve to be placed in a happier sphere, where duty, become so sweet and attractive, would no longer be a hard taskmaster, but a smiling handmaiden—now, full of all these earnest thoughts and aspirations, it was indeed hard upon her, very hard, to be thus chilled and repelled by her father.
 
And at first he had seemed so kind, so much gentler and less reserved than usual! There was certainly some change in him, which she could not understand. He was no longer so calm and unbending as he had been—more impulsive in both ways—kinder, and yet so much more irritable than she had ever known him. What could be the meaning of it? He looked ill too, and confessed to not feeling as well as usual. Marion felt anxious and concerned, and almost forgave him the harshness of that last speech, though her eyes filled with tears as she recalled it.
 
“Oh how sorry Ralph would be for me if he knew it!” she thought. “Oh, if only I could see him and tell him all my troubles, and ask him to take care of me for always!”
 
And she longed for him so intensely, that had he suddenly entered the room and stood beside her she would not have been surprised!
 
And had she only known it—ah! it tears me even to write it—after all these years since that dreary March afternoon; and though long since then, these hopes and sorrows of my poor child’s have faded and softened into the faint shadows of the past; all, even now, I can hardly bear to think of it—at that very moment Ralph was in a house on the opposite side of that very square, closeted with Sir Archibald Cunningham, while they discussed the business which had brought the younger man to England, and of which the successful conclusion was sending him back to Altes the next morning hopeful and elated, feeling strong enough to face all the world in general, and his mother in particular, now that no insurmountable obstacle stood between him and the only woman he had ever loved.
 
But this Marion did not, could not, know.
 
So she stood by the window in a half dream of vague hope and expectation. Something, she felt sure, was going to happen: a sensation often the result of over-strained nerves, or excited imagination, but for all that none the less consolatory in its way while it lasts.
 
What happened was a ring at the bell! It was almost too dark to distinguish the form of the visitor as he ran up the two or three steps that separated the hall door from the pavement; in vain Marion strained her eyes. She could perceive nothing clearly, so she took to listening breathlessly.
 
The door was opened, but shut quickly.
 
“No visitor, then,” thought Marion, and her heart sank. But another moment, and it rose again.
 
“Two letters for you, ma’am,” said the servant entering, but as hastily retreating in search of a light. Letters; ah, yes, good news often comes by the post, so what may not these contain?
 
One from Harry. A few rough, kindly words, begging her not to take it to heart if her request for his Saturday’s visit was refused by her father.
 
“He has been so queer lately,” wrote Harry, “so changeable and irritable, I am afraid of putting him out, and almost sorry I suggested it. “Never mind, if he won’t let me come. We are sure to meet before long. It is a comfort to know you are near at hand.”
 
So much from Harry. The other was from Cissy, but it felt thick—was there, could there be, an enclosure? Yes, sure enough, inside Cissy’s few loving words of last farewell, it lay. A foreign letter, in an unfamiliar hand, addressed to,
 
MISS FREER, care of Mrs. Archer,
23, West Parade,
Cheltenham.
She tore it open. What a disappointment! A large sheet of thin paper covered with the text-hand she knew so well. A child’s letter, from poor little Sybil in fact, folded and directed by the new governess already installed in place or her dear Miss Freer.
 
That was all! Ralph folded the letters. His own to Miss Fryer he destroyed.
 
“Miss Brown is very kind,” wrote Sybil, “but I cry for you when I am in bed. Uncle Ralph has not come home, but I think he will be very sorry you have gone away.”
 
That was all!
 
There was, however, a certain amount of satisfaction in the fact of the letter come safe to hand. It showed that she need fear no postal delay or miscarriage, owing to the roundabout manner in which her letters must come. For Cissy added in a postscript, “I forward the only letter for Miss Freer that has come, and I am leaving with my mother-in-law (a very careful and methodical person) most particular directions to forward at once to you all letters that may arrive to my care, for that same mysterious young lady.”
 
Marion would much have liked at once to reply to poor, affectionate, little Sybil; but as things were, she thought it better not.
 
This, and more important matters, would all be set straight soon—or never. In the latter case it was better for the child to forget her; in the former, a short delay in thanking her little friend would be immaterial.
 
For the next few weeks the soul of Marion’s day was the post-hour.
 
How she woke and rose early to be ready to hear the ring she came to know so well.
 
How she composed herself to sleep by the thought of what might be coming in the morning!
 
But the weeks went on—the weeks, so easy to write of—but each, alas with its appalling list of days, and hours, and minutes! Looking back to the time of her return from Altes, six weeks later, Marion could hardly believe that mouths, if not years, had not passed since the evening she parted with Ralph. Her life at this time was strangely solitary. She saw little of her father, though she had forgotten none of her good resolutions, and in many hitherto neglected ways, endeavoured to show him her daughterly affection and anxiety for his comfort.
 
He was, on the whole, kinder in manner to her than had been his wont, but still strangely irritable and uncertain in temper. The change was remarked by others besides herself; and once or twice commented upon by some of the more intimate of Mr. Vere’s friends and allies, who now and then visited at his house.
 
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