CHAPTER XXXII.

PALMAM QUI NON MERUIT.

All North Aston rang with the story of little Fina's peril, Josephine's admirable devotion and Leam's shameful neglect—so shameful as to be almost criminal. It was the apportionment of judgment usual with the world. The one who had incurred no kind of risk, and had done only what was pleasant to her, received unbounded praise, while the one who was of practical use got for her personal peril and discomfort universal blame. They said she had allowed the child to run into danger by her own carelessness, and then had done nothing to save her: and they wondered beneath their breath if she had really wished the little one to be drowned. She was an odd girl, you know, they whispered from each to each—moody, uncomfortable, and unlike any one else; and though she had certainly behaved admirably to little Fina, so far as they could see, yet it was not quite out of the nature of things that she should wish to get rid of the child, who, after all, was the child of no one knows whom, and very likely spoilt and tiresome enough.

But no one said this aloud. They only whispered it to each other, their comments making no more noise than the gliding of snakes through the evening grass.

As for Fina, she suffered mainly from a fit of indigestion consequent on the shower of sweetmeats which fell on her from all hands as the best consolation for her willful little ducking known to sane men and women presumably acquainted with the elements of physiology. She was made restless, too, from excitement by reason of the multiplicity of toys which every one thought it incumbent on him and her to bestow; for it was quite a matter for public rejoicing that she had not been drowned, and Josephine, as her reputed savior, leapt at a bound to the highest pinnacle of popular favor.

It made not the slightest difference in the estimation of these clumsy thinkers that the thing for which Josephine was praised was a pure fiction, just as the thing for which Leam was condemned was a pure fiction. Society at North Aston had the need of hero-worship on it at this moment, and a mythic heroine did quite as well for the occasion as a real one.

No one was so lavish of her praise as Adelaide. It was really delightful to note the generosity with which she eulogized her friend Joseph, and the pleasure that she had in dwelling on her heroism; Josephine deprecating her praises in that weak, conscious, and blushing way which seems to accept while disclaiming.

She invariably said, "No, Adelaide, I do not deserve the credit of it: it was Leam who saved the child;" but she said it in that voice and manner which every one takes to mean more modesty than truth, and which therefore no one believes as it is given; the upshot being that it simply brings additional grist to the mill whence popularity is ground out.

Her disclaimers were put down to her good-natured desire to screen Leam: she had always been good to that extraordinary young person, they said. But then Josephine Harrowby was good to every one, and if she had a fault it was the generalized character of her benevolence, which made her praise of no value, you see, because she praised every one alike, and took all that glittered for gold. Hence, her assurances that Leam had really and truly put herself into (the  appearance of) actual danger to save Fina from drowning, while she herself had done nothing more heroic than take the dripping pair of them home when all was over—she forgot to add, sit in the carriage and scream—went for nothing, and the popular delusion for all. She was still the heroine of the day, and >palmam qui non meruit the motto which the unconscious satirists bestowed on her.

She did not mean it to be so—quite the contrary—but wrong comes about from good intentions to the full as often as from evil ones. Her design was simply to be truthful, as so much conscientious self-respect, in the first instance, and to do justice to Leam in the second; but between her good-natured advocacy and Adelaide's undisguised hostility maybe the former did Leam the most harm.

The child's past danger was quite sufficient reason why Josephine should come more frequently than usual to Ford House. It was only natural that she should wish to know how the little one went on. The cold, sore throat, rheumatic fever, measles that never came, might yet be always on the way, and the woman's fond fears were only to be quieted by the comforting assurance of her daily observation. Leam did get a cold, and a severe one, but then Leam was grown up and could take care of herself. Fina was the natural charge of universal womanhood, and no one who was a woman at all could fail to be interested in such a pretty, caressing little creature. And then Sebastian Dundas loved best the child which was not his own; and that, too, had its weight with Josephine, who somehow seemed to have forgotten by now that little Fina was madame's child—false and faithless madame—and was not part and parcel of the man she loved, as also in some strange sense her own. Madame's initial dedication had touched her deeply both at the time and ever after; the likeness of name was again another tie; and that subtle resemblance to herself which every one saw and spoke of seemed to round off all into an harmonious whole, and give her a right which even Mrs. Birkett did not possess.

It was about a week after the accident when Josephine went one morning, as usual, to ask after Fina, and be convinced by personal inspection that the pretty little featherhead, the child of many loves, was well. She was met in the drawing-room by Mr. Dundas, who when he greeted her took both her hands in his in a more effusive manner than he had ever permitted himself to show since Pepita's death, save once before he had decided on madame and when Josephine had one day touched an old chord tenderly.

Holding her thus, he led her to the sofa with a certain look of purpose in his face, of loving proprietorship in his bearing, that made poor fond Josephine's foolish heart knock loudly against her ribs.

Was it then coming at last, that reward of constancy for which she had borne so much suspense, so many delays, such long dull days and tearful nights? Was the rickety idol of her whole life's worship really about to bless her with his smiles?

She cast down her eyes, trembling, blushing. She was thirty-five years of age, but she was only a great girl still, and her love had the freshness which belongs to the cherished sentiment of girlhood ripened into the confessed, patient, unchanging love of maturity.

"You have been always good to me, Josephine," began Mr. Dundas, still holding her hand.

Josephine did not answer, save through the crimson of her telltale cheeks and the smile akin to tears about her quivering mouth.

"I think you have always liked me," he went on to say, looking down into her face.

Josephine closed her hand over his more warmly and glanced up swiftly, bashfully. Was there much doubt of it? had there ever been any doubt of it?

"And I have always liked you," he added; and then he paused.

She looked up again, this time a certain tender reproach and surprise lying behind her evident delight and love.

"Had not my darling Virginie come  between us you would have been my wife long ago," said Mr. Dundas, the certainty of her acceptance at any time of their acquaintance as positive to him as that the famished hound would accept food, the closed pimpernel expand in the sunlight. "I was always fond of you, even in poor Pepita's time, though of course, as a man of honor, I could neither encourage nor show my affection. But Virginie—she took me away from the whole world, and I lost you, as well as herself, for that one brief month of happiness."

His eyes filled up with tears. Though he was wooing his third bride, he did not conceal his regret for his second.

By an effort of maidenly reserve over feminine sympathy Josephine refrained from throwing her arms round his neck and weeping on his shoulder for pity at his past sorrow. She had none of the vice of jealousy, and she could honestly and tenderly pity the man whom she loved for his grief at the loss of the woman whom he had preferred to herself. She did, however, refrain, and Sebastian could only guess at her impulse. But he made a tolerably accurate guess, though he seemed to see nothing. He knew that his way was smooth before him, and that he need not give himself a moment's trouble about the ending. And though, as a rule, a man likes the excitement of doubt and the sentiment of difficulties to be overcome, still there are times when, if he is either very weary or too self-complacent to care to strive, he is glad to be assured that he has won before he has wooed, and has only to claim the love that is waiting for him. Which was what Mr. Dundas felt now when he noted the simplicity with which Josephine showed her heart while believing she was hiding it so absolutely, and knew that he had only to speak to have the whole thing concluded.

"And now I have only half a heart to offer you," he said plaintively: "the other half is in the grave with my beloved. But if you care to ally yourself to one who has been the sport of sorrow as I have, if you care to make the last years of my life happy, and will be content with the ashes rather than the fires, I will do my best to make you feel that you have not sacrificed yourself in vain. Will it be a sacrifice, Josephine?" he asked in a lower tone, and with the exquisite sweetness which love and pleading give to even a commonplace voice.

"I have loved you all my life," said Josephine simply; and then dissolving into happy tears she hid her face in his breast and felt that heaven was sometimes very near to earth.

Sebastian passed his arms round her ample comely form and pressed her to his heart, tenderly and without affectation. It was pleasant to him to see her devotion, to feel her love; and though he disliked tears, as a man should, still tears of joy were a tribute which he did not despise in essence if the method might have been more congenial.

"Dear Josephine!" he said. "I always knew what a good soul you were."

This was the way in which Sebastian Dundas wooed and won an honest-hearted English lady who loved him, and who, virtue for virtue, was infinitely his superior—a wooing in striking contrast with the methods which he had employed to gain the person of a low-class, half-savage Spanish girl, whom he had loved for her beauty and who took him for her pleasure; also in striking contrast with those he employed to gain Madame de Montfort, a clever adventuress, who balanced him, in hand, against her bird in the bush, and decided that to make sure of the less was better than to wait for the chance of the greater. But Josephine felt nothing humiliating in his lordliness. She loved him, she was a woman devoid of self-esteem; hence humiliation from his hand was impossible.

Just then pretty little Fina came running to the window from the garden, where she was playing.

"Come here, poppet," said Mr. Dundas, holding out his left hand, his right round comely Josephine.

She came through the open window and ran up to him. "Nice papa!" she lisped, stroking his hand.

He took her on his knee, "I have I given you a new mamma, Fina," he said,  kissing her; and then he kissed Josephine for emphasis. "Will you be good to her and love her very much? This is your mamma.".

"Will you love me, little Fina?" asked Josephine in a voice full of emotion, taking the child's fair head between her hands. "Will you like me to be your mamma?"

"Yes," cried Fina, clapping her hands. "I shall like a nice new mamma instead of Learn. I hate Leam: she is cross and has big eyes."

"Oh, we must not hate poor Leam," remonstrated Josephine tenderly.

"I cannot understand the child's aversion," said Mr. Dundas in a half-musing, half-suspicious way. "Leam seems to be all that is good and kind to her, but nothing that she does can soften the little creature's dislike. It must be natural instinct," he added in a lower voice.

"Yes, perhaps it is," assented Josephine, who would have answered, "Yes, perhaps it is," to anything else that her lover might have said.

"Where is Leam, my little Fina? Do you know?" asked Sebastian of the child.

"In the garden. She is coming in," answered Fina; and at the word Leam passed before the window as Fina had done.

"Leam, my child, come in: I want to speak to you," said her father, with unwonted kindness; and Leam, too, as Fina had done before her, passed through the open window and came in.

The two middle-aged lovers were still sitting side by side and close together on the sofa. Fina was on her stepfather's knee, caressing his hand and Josephine's, which were clasped together on her little lap, while his other arm encircled the substantial waist of his promised bride, whose disengaged hand rested on his shoulder.

"Leam," said the father, "I have given you—"

He stopped. The name which he was about to utter, with all its passionate memories, was left unsaid. He remembered in time Leam's former renunciation of the new mamma whom he had once before proposed.

"I have asked Josephine Harrowby to be my wife," he said after a short pause. "She has consented, and made me very happy. Let me hope that it will make you happy too."

He spoke with forced calmness and something of sternness under his apparent serenity. In heart he was troubled, remembering the past and half fearing the future. How would she bear herself? Would she accept his relations pleasantly, or defy and reject as before?

Leam looked at the triad gravely. It was a family group with which she felt that she had no concern. She was outside it—as much alone as in a strange country. She knew in that deepest self which does not palm and lie to us that all her efforts to put herself in harmony with her life were in vain. Race, education and that fearful memory stood between her and her surroundings, and she never lost the perception of her loneliness save when she was with Edgar. At this moment she looked on as at a picture of love and gladness with which she had nothing in common; nevertheless, she accepted what she saw, and if not expansive—which was not her way—was, as her father said afterward, "perfectly satisfactory." She went up to the sofa slowly and held out her hand. "You are welcome," she said gravely to Josephine, but the contempt which she had always had for her father, though she had tried so hard of late to wear it down, surged up afresh, and she could not turn her eyes his way. What a despicable thing that must be, she thought—that thing he called his heart—to shift from one to the other so easily! To her, the keynote of whose character was single-hearted devotion, this facile, fluid love, which could be poured out with equal warmth on every one alike, was no love at all. It was a degraded kind of self-indulgence for which she had no respect; and though she did not feel for Josephine as she had felt for madame—as her mother's enemy—she despised her father even more now than before.

Also a rapid thought crossed her mind, bringing with it a deadly trouble. "If Josephine was her stepmother, would  Major Harrowby be her stepfather?" They were brother and sister, and she had an idea that the family followed the relations of its members. She did not know why, but she would rather not have Major Harrowby for her stepfather or for any relation by law. She preferred that he should be wholly unconnected with her—just her friend unrelated: that was all.

"Thank you, dear Leam!" said Josephine gratefully; and Leam, looking at her with large mournful eyes, said in a soft but surprised tone of voice, "Thank me!—why?"

"That you accept me as your stepmother so sweetly, and do not hate me for it," said Josephine.

Leam glanced with a pained look at Fina. "I have done with hate," she answered. "It is not my business what papa likes to do."

"Sensible at last!" cried Mr. Dundas with a half-mocking, half-kindly triumph in his voice.

Leam turned pale. "But you must not think that I forget mamma as you do," she said with emphasis, her lip quivering.

"No, dear Leam, I would be the last to wish that you should forget your own mamma for me," said Josephine humbly. "Only try to love me a little for myself, as your friend, and I will be satisfied. Love always your own mamma, but me too a little."

"You are good," said Leam softly, her eyes filling with tears. "I do like you very much; but mamma—there is only one mother for me. None of papa's wives could ever be mamma to me."

"But friend?" said Josephine, half sobbing.

"Friend? yes," returned Leam; and for the first time in her life she bent her proud little head and kissed Josephine on her cheek. "And I will be good to you," she said quietly, "for you are good." She did not add, "And Edgar's sister."

The families approved of this marriage. Every one said it was what ought to have been when Pepita died, and that Mr. Dundas had missed his way and lost his time by taking that doubtful madame meanwhile. Adelaide and her mother were especially congratulatory; but, though the rector said he was glad for the sake of poor Josephine, who had always been a favorite of his, yet he could not find terms of too great severity for Sebastian. For a man to marry three times—it was scarcely moral; and he wondered at the Harrowbys for allowing one of their own to be the third venture. And then, though Josephine was a good girl enough, she was but a weak sister at the best; and to think of any man in his senses taking her as the successor of that delightful and superior madame!

Mrs. Birkett dissented from these views, and said it would keep the house together and be such a nice thing for Fina and Leam: both would be the better for a woman's influence and superintendence, and Josephine was very good.

"Yes," said the rector with his martial air—"good enough, I admit, but confoundedly slow."

To Edgar, Adelaide expressed herself with delightful enthusiasm. She was not often stirred to such a display of feeling. "It is the marriage of the county," she said with her prettiest smile—"the very thing for every one."

"Think so?" was his reply, made by no means enthusiastically. "If Joseph likes it, that is all that need be said; but it is a marvel to me how she can—such an unmanly creature as he is! such a muff all through!"

"Well, I own he would not have been my choice exactly," said Adelaide with a nice little look. "I like something stronger and more decided in a man; but it is just as well that we all do not like the same person; and then, you see, there are Leam and the child to be considered. Lean is such an utterly unfit person to bring up Fina: she is ruining her, indeed, as it is, with her capricious temper and variable moods; and dear Josephine's quiet amiability and good sense will be so valuable among them. I think we ought to be glad, as Christians, that such a chance is offered them."

"Whatever else you may be, at least  you are no hypocrite," said Edgar with a forced smile that did not look much like approbation.

She chose to accept it simply. "No," she answered quite tranquilly, "I am not a hypocrite."

"At all events, you do not disguise your dislike to Leam Dundas," he said.

"No: why should I? I confess it honestly, I do not like her. The daughter of such a woman as her mother was; up to fifteen years of age a perfect savage; a heathen with a temper that makes me shudder when I think of it; capable of any crime. No, don't look shocked, Edgar: I am sure of it. That girl could commit murder; and I verily believe that she did push Fina into the water, as the child says, and that if Josephine had not got there in time she would have let her drown. And if I think all this, how can I like her?"

"No, if you think all this, as you say, you cannot like her," replied Edgar coldly. "I don't happen to agree with you, however, and I think your assumptions monstrous."

"You are not the first man blinded by a pair of dark eyes, Edgar," said Adelaide with becoming mournfulness. "It makes me sorry to see such a mind as yours dazzled out of its better sense, but you will perhaps come right in time. At all events, Josephine's marriage with Mr. Dundas will give you a kind of fatherly relation with Leam that may show you the truth of what I say."

"Fatherly relation! what rubbish!" cried Edgar, irritated out of his politeness.

Adelaide smiled. "Well, you would be rather a young father for her," she answered. "Still, the character of the relation will be, as I say, fatherly."

Edgar laughed impatiently.

"Society will accept it in that light," said Adelaide gravely, glad to erect even this barrier of shadows between the man of her choice and the girl whom she both dreaded and disliked.

And she was right in her supposition. Brother and sister marrying daughter and father would not be well received in a narrow society like North Aston, where the restrictions of law and elemental morality were supplemented by an adventitious code of denial which put Nature into a strait waistcoat and shackled freedom of action and opinion with chains and bands of iron. Perhaps it was some such thought as this on his own part that made Edgar profess himself disgusted with this marriage, and declare loudly that Sebastian Dundas was not worthy of such a girl as Josephine. His hearers smiled in their sleeves when he said so, and thought that Josephine Harrowby, thirty-five years of age, fat and freckled, was not so far out in her running to have got at last—they always put in "at last"—the owner of Ford House. It was more than she might have expected, looking at things all round; and Edgar was as unreasonable as proud men always are. With the redundancy of women as we have it in England, happy the head of the house who can get rid of his superfluous petticoats anyhow in honor and sufficiency. This was the verdict of society on the affair—the two extremities of the line wherefrom the same fact was viewed.

As for Josephine herself, dear soul! she was supremely happy. It was almost worth while to have waited so long, she thought, to have such an exquisite reward at last. She went back ten years in her life, and grew quite girlish and fresh-looking, and what was wanting in romance on Sebastian's part was made up in devotion and adoration on hers.

Sebastian himself took pleasure in her happiness, her adoration, the supreme content of her rewarded love. It made him glad to think that he had given so good a creature so much happiness; and he warmed his soul at his rekindled ashes as a philosophic widower generally knows how.

Only Leam began to look pitifully mournful and desolate, and to shrink back into a solitude which Edgar never invaded, and whence even Alick was banished; and Edgar was irritable, unpleasant, moody, would take no interest in the approaching marriage, and, save that his settlements on Josephine were liberal, seemed to hold himself personally  aggrieved by her choice, and conducted himself altogether as if he had been injured somehow thereby, and his wishes disregarded.

He was very disagreeable, and caused Joseph many bitter hours, till at last he took a sudden resolution, and to the relief of every one at the Hill went off to London, promising to be back in time for "that little fool's wedding with her sentimental muff," as he disrespectfully called his sister and Sebastian Dundas, but giving no reason why he went, and taking leave of no one—not even of Adelaide, nor yet of Leam.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]