Chapter III

NEW RELATIONS.

ave they come yet?” asked a man’s voice, which sounded through the house the moment the door had been opened by the latch-key in his hand.

A girl had darted out of a room upon the ground-floor at the sound of the opening door, and she gave quick reply.

“No, but we are expecting them every minute. I’m glad you are back, North. Father always likes to see you first thing.”

The young man was divesting himself of his overcoat in the hall. He was a broad-shouldered muscular fellow, with very much the same stamp of features as his father, only that as he was clean-shaven, all but a moustache, the square outline of the jaw could be more distinctly seen. It was not a handsome face, but it was a strong one, and there was a gleam of humour in the brown eyes which redeemed it alike from heaviness and sternness.

The sister was a merry-looking girl of about twenty, with the family features, a little square in outline, but she had a tip-tilted nose, “a snub,” as the brothers called it, which gave her an expression of sauciness not at all contradicted by the dancing light in her eyes.

“Come in and warm yourself. The wind has been bitter all day. We must wait tea for the travellers. Any news in town?”

North walked into the long drawing-room, which occupied all the space through the house on one side of the hall. The house, though it now stood in a street, was detached from its neighbours, and showed in many of its arrangements that it had once been a gentleman’s country abode. It was old-fashioned and a little dark, but it wore a homelike aspect; and the room, which was panelled half-way up in sombre oak, was filled with the dancing light from a blazing fire of logs.

There were three persons in the room when the brother and sister entered. Mrs. Thomas Cossart (who was generally known in the place as Mrs. Tom, on account of the other Mrs. Cossart up at the big house) was knitting in her arm-chair with a book beside her. She was a matronly lady, with a pleasant face, which had been beautiful in youth, and was still quite comely. Her elder daughter Raby stood with a screen in her hand shielding her face from the blaze, and another son lounged upon the sofa, his hands clasped behind his head.

It was sometimes said of the Cossarts by their friends, that North and Ray were the useful ones in the family, and Raby and Cyril the ornamental. Raby was tall and slight, and took after her mother. Without being a beauty she was a decidedly good-looking girl, and had many admirers of both sexes. She dressed always a little better and more carefully than her sister; but she was not really either useless or idle. She had plenty of fun in her, and good nature too. But she had a greater love of admiration and amusement than that possessed by Ray.

Cyril presented a contrast to all the others of the family by being very fair where they were all inclined to be dark. As a child he had been singularly beautiful, with big blue eyes and a cloud of golden hair about his softly tinted face. His mother had been devoted to him from his babyhood, and even his father had found it difficult not to make something of an especial darling of him.

Now at three and twenty he was a very good-looking fellow, although some declared that he was girlish and effeminate in his looks. Certainly the golden hair and big blue eyes were rather suggestive of a fair girl; and this likeness was perhaps a little intensified from the fact that he was quite clean-shaven, and did not grow even a moustache, as Ray had often begged him to do. But he had inherited sufficient of the Cossart type of features to redeem the face from the charge of weakness. It was a refined and etherialised face, but something of the square outline of the jaw remained, although the lips did not close over each other in the firm way that was noticeable in North and Ray, but were a little inclined to fall apart, giving the face a dreamy and abstracted expression, which was much admired by many of the young ladies of Isingford, who were fond of making studies from Cyril Cossart’s profile, and turning them into pictures called “Sir Galahad,” or “The Knight without fear and without reproach.”

“Here they are!” cried Ray, who was still lingering about the half open door, “I hear wheels stopping. They have come! Mother, I shall go and open the door? It will look more friendly.”

She was across the hall before she had finished speaking, and had thrown the front door wide open before the maid could arrive upon the scene. North followed her and stood full in view. The next minute their father led in a girl dressed in deep mourning, whom he pushed towards his daughter saying—

“There Sheila, there is Ray. She will take care of you and make you feel at home.”

“To be sure I will!” cried Ray, kissing Sheila’s cold face. “Come along in and see mother and Raby. I’m so glad you have come all safe. It feels just as though it would snow. But it won’t matter if it does, now that you’re safe home.”

Sheila, a little shy and bewildered in her strange surroundings, was led into the warm drawing-room, where she was kissed by Mrs. Tom and Raby, and installed beside the fire in a comfortable chair, almost before she had time to get out a word.

Mr. Tom had come in with North and Oscar, and there was a considerable confusion of tongues, kissing and welcoming. For the moment Sheila was left in her cosy corner; and it was then that she heard a gentle voice at her elbow saying—

“You must let me add my welcome to the rest; though I am afraid it is really a sorrowful time for you. We are inclined to forget that what is our gain is your loss.”

She looked up quickly, and saw that a stranger was slipping into the seat beside her. She did not guess for a moment that he, too, was a cousin. He looked so different from all the Cossarts she had seen so far. Perhaps the startled look in her big wistful eyes showed this, for the voice continued speaking.

“I am your cousin Cyril. Probably you know our names from our father by this time. I think I can feel for you better than the rest—coming into this strange life, which is so different from anything you have known before. They had been used to it all their lives—they know nothing else. But I do, and I can understand how you must feel about it.”

“I don’t think I feel anything yet,” said Sheila slowly, “I have not had time. But Uncle Tom has been very kind. I think—I hope—I am sure I ought to be very happy.”

Yet even as she spoke Sheila felt the tears suddenly spring to her eyes. She did not know how it was; but just this arrival at a strange house, this feeling of being suddenly cast into the midst of a number of strange people seemed to bring before her her loneliness in a way she had never felt it before. She looked round for Oscar, but Ray had got him in her care, and was chattering gaily to him. Her uncle was for the moment engrossed with his wife and elder son. The wave of loneliness seemed to rise higher and higher about her. She felt the sob in her throat, and turned her face towards the fire to get rid of the welling tears before they should be seen.

“I know so well what you feel,” said Cyril’s sympathetic voice in her ear. “Often when I have come home from college, or from other people’s houses, the same feeling has come over me. If I had been a girl I should have cried too. It seemed like stepping into a new world where one had no interests, no heart, no sympathies.”

“Oh, but I don’t want to feel like that!” said Sheila quickly. “That would be wrong and ungrateful. Uncle Tom has been so kind. You are all kind. Only—only—I haven’t often been away from home; and it seems all so strange; and there isn’t any more home left behind—that is what is the strangest thing of all!”

Her voice broke for a moment, and Cyril put out his hand and laid it on hers in token of comprehension and sympathy; but there was no time for more words, for the group in the middle of the room broke up.

There was a stir at the door, and two maids appeared with the tea-table and equipage; and Sheila found herself the centre of attraction as the lamp shed its light over the darkening room, and everybody gathered round the fire to discuss hot cakes and steaming cups of tea, whilst they “took stock” of the new cousins and tried to make them feel at home.

Cyril spoke the least now; but Sheila was conscious that he looked after her wants with a gentle consideration, and she felt grateful to him, and stole glances at him from time to time, wondering what made him so different from all the rest. All were kind and cousinly, and seemed interested in her, and liked to hear her talk; but there was a difference—a quiet sympathy about Cyril’s manner which was totally distinct from the friendliness of the rest. He reminded her of the world in which she had been accustomed to move. Everything else was different, the very atmosphere seemed changed, though she could not have accounted for or defined the change.

Ray took her upstairs at last.

“I am glad you are to stay a day or two here. This is our spare room. Oscar has the little one. We could not take you in for good, or it would have left us no spare room at all. Besides, they want you up at Cossart Place. I wonder how you and Effie will get on. This cold spell has made her breathing bad; but she is beginning to look forward to your coming.”

“Didn’t she like it at first?” asked Sheila, reading something between the lines.

“Well, you know, Effie is a bit crossgrained. If she thinks of a thing herself, she’s as keen after it as possible; but if somebody else suggests it, she takes a dislike to it directly. It’s partly because she’s out of health, and partly because she’s been so spoiled. I get along with her very well, though she’s not always in the sweetest of tempers. But then perhaps none of us are!” And Ray laughed, showing her white even teeth.

Ray stayed and helped Sheila to unpack the one box which had come to River Street. Her heavy baggage had been sent straight to Cossart Place.

“We don’t have a maid here; but Effie has one. I daresay she’ll share with you. You’ve been used to one, I expect. You have been county people, I know. We are only bourgeoise, of course. I expect our ways will seem funny to you!”

It did seem rather strange to Sheila to come down and find the father and elder son in morning dress. Cyril and the girls dressed for dinner; but had never got the rest of their men-folk to do so. Indeed, it was but within the last few years that they had been able to get the father to consent to a seven o’clock dinner. It had been the fashion in Isingford for business men to leave their works about five, and dine at six or earlier, and have a supper later. The girls had had something of a fight to get afternoon tea and seven o’clock dinner, and with that they had to be content without further concessions to more fashionable habits.

In the evening there was music, for the Cossarts were fond of singing and had good voices, though they had only been trained by local teachers, and lacked finish and culture. Cyril was the exception. He had been a chorister in his boyhood, and had been carefully taught both at school and afterwards. He generally declined to assist at the family concert; but to-night he sang several times, and got Sheila to sing duets with him, though she told him she had no voice, and was only good at playing accompaniments.

It was true that her voice was not powerful, but it was very sweet in tone, and had been carefully cultivated by a good master.

Cyril appreciated this, and Sheila enjoyed his approval and friendliness; and went to bed feeling more cheered and less lonely than she would have believed it possible.

The next day was a very interesting and rather exciting one, for they were both taken to the works by their uncle and North, and Oscar was shown something of what was expected of him in the future. There was to be a good deal of desk-work at first, which was not much to his taste; but he was to receive training in the electrical branch which was being established in connection with the works, so that when the new buildings were opened, he would be able to take a position there as assistant manager. Meantime it was essential that he should learn the routine of office work and book-keeping; and he assented to the drudgery willingly, his common sense telling him that there was nothing like beginning at the bottom of the ladder. He had seen too much of the evil effects of not understanding business not to be ready and willing to acquire the power himself of understanding it thoroughly.

“North is a capital fellow,” he said to Sheila that night, following her into her room for a talk in private; for in that busy, merry household there was little time for confidential conversation, and Sheila had been taken possession of all the afternoon by her girl-cousins, and introduced right and left to a bewildering number of their friends. “He isn’t one to make professions; but I know he’ll do what he can to help me. It will be dull work, some of it, and I may be rather stupid at it; but I mean to do my best, and get on if I can.”

“I hope you will. I think they all mean to be kind; but, Oscar, do you call our cousins—well, what shall I say? If we had met them at home, do you think we should have called them quite ladies and gentlemen—except Cyril?”

Oscar laughed, and made a little expressive grimace.

“Since they are our cousins, perhaps we’d better not put the question quite so straight, Sheila. But, indeed, it’s better not to think too much about rank and station and the gloss on the top. It’s very nice when one can get it too; but the great thing is whether people are really good and honest and kindly, as our relations are. And our mother was one of them; we must not forget that. It would be awfully snobbish of us to look down on them—as though we were better than they—after all they are doing for us too!”

“Oh, yes—indeed, I don’t mean to do that. Only things do seem funny sometimes; and, you know, Cyril feels it too. I think he feels it more than we do. He is so very different from all the rest.”

“Yes,” assented Oscar slowly; “but I’m not sure that I like him as well as the others.”

“Oh, Oscar, I like him much the best!”

“Yes, I can see you do. Perhaps I shall when I know him better. I feel rather as though he gave himself airs.”

“Oh, no! It’s only that he feels more as we do—he would like things different. He has been to college, and stayed with people who live differently. I am quite glad he is here. He has promised to come often to see me when I go to The Grange. He likes to call it The Grange, too. He thinks Cossart Place sounds vulgar. Cyril and I think alike in a lot of ways.”

“And when are you going to The Grange? I thought Aunt Cossart was to come and see you this afternoon?”

“Yes; but Effie had one of her attacks, and so she couldn’t. She will write to-night and say if I am to go to-morrow, or wait for another day. I hope I shall get on with Effie; but, from what Cyril says, I think she is very difficile.”

“Don’t let Cyril set you against people and things!” said Oscar, rather gravely.

“Oh, no, I won’t!” was Sheila’s eager answer.

(To be continued.)