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There is a broad river in the West, which from its source among the moors flows down between banks of dark granite rock and chestnut wood, with a wide curving bend now and then, where a rushy meadow comes down and pushes itself out into the stream, but keeping throughout its steady stately course to the sea. Other rivers flow into it, and at the salmon weir, where the rocks draw near and hang over it, and the water above the weir lies in dark, still, shadowy pools, that below rises and falls with the tide, so far inland does the strong salt-water make its way. But still for miles the river flows down between varied banks of meadow and rock and wood, with low gray cottages peeping out among the green, and here and there a great house high up above, its long lawns and flights of steps stretching to the riverside. Then the banks draw back, and the river spreads out broad and strong, with a ripple of small waves on its surface, even in the summer weather; fit to carry great ships; a home for the fishing-boats that lie and rock on its bosom, and for the light little pleasure steamers that pass up and down day after day through more than half the year.
And now the river takes the colours of the sea; it is
There are many rivers in England better known, but none better worth knowing, than the Mora and her sister the Penyr; true rivers of the West, in their grandeur, solemnity, and cheerfulness. They are valued highly enough at Morebay, where they flow together into the sea; but if you wish to know and love them well, St. Denys is the place to learn that lesson.
It is a little stony town, on the opposite bank to Morebay, and three miles inland, standing not far above the rocky point where the Penyr flows into the Mora. From the quays on the river-bank, always alive with fishermen and women and children, who are perhaps more at home on the water than on land, a labyrinth of narrow stone streets or lanes, some of them literally as steep as the roof of a house, go climbing up the side of the hill. They look as if a push given to one of the topmost houses would send them all tumbling and crumbling together down into the water. They are all gray, with here and there a red-tiled roof; but, of course, in that country, a hundred dashes of bright colour are ready to delight one's eyes and make one quite sure that gray is the best of backgrounds. Walls and roofs are gay with red and yellow stonecrop; any bit of wayside bank is draped with delicate fern; from the window of the most tumbledown house a garland of flowers is hanging out, drooping and trailing over the rugged wall. Fore-street is itself as
That June evening the Mora was gleaming blue, and the distant houses were pink and gold, and the soft deep green of woods and fields seemed to make the picture quite perfect. A little puff of steam on the other side of the river, between her and the soft hazy distance of the hills, told Miss Northcote that the train was coming, and that she must set off at once to the station. For there was a railway at St. Denys, winding into it from More-bay, crossing the great iron bridge and coming at once into the little station, passing above the roofs and chimneys of a great many of the houses, so much older than itself. Thirty years ago the only way of crossing the river had been by boats, and the old inhabitants were quite satisfied. Now they had a railway and a chain-ferry, and they found themselves none the better for it.
Miss Northcote walked along her own stony lane, and turned into the nearest road leading down to the station. Old General Hawke, of Pensand Castle, drove past in his
The General having got out of his carriage at the station gate, walked few steps to meet her, and turned back with her to the platform. He was a handsome man still, though near eighty, with a long nose and a long white moustache.
‘It is a long time since we met,’ said he. ‘I ought to have called, but you must forgive me. I seldom go out. I am a prisoner in my house and garden. At my age one is odious to one's self and everybody else. Don't you think so?’
‘Not at all,’ said Miss Northcote, laughing. ‘I quite disagree with you.’
‘Thank you: you are very kind, but I feel—ah! I won't talk about my feelings. A more agreeable subject—I am delighted to see you looking so well. I declare you are younger every year. I can't believe in time, when I look at you. Now the girls of the present day—but I am boring you.’
‘O, no, I am much obliged to you,’ said Miss Northcote, who had looked away for a moment from her admirer. ‘We lose a great many pretty things, General Hawke, when you shut yourself up at Pensand. I thought the train was coming.’
‘Not yet, is it? But I'm getting terribly deaf, so Randal tells me. I am very nervous, too—and, by the bye, I am glad I met you. You and I are old friends, are
‘I shall be very glad, indeed,’ said Miss Northcote, with the slightest shade of hesitation. ‘I am expecting somebody, too, by this train. My nephew Dick, from New Zealand.’
‘Dick! Hang the fellow! Back already. That's rather a bad sign. Why, he only went out the other day. It is the way with all these young fellows; they won't stick to anything.’
‘Why, he has been gone ten years. Don't you think he has earned a holiday?’
‘Ten years! is it possible? But what's that? I was forty years in India, and never dreamed of coming home. Dick ought to be ashamed of himself.’
‘I don't think so,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘I am afraid he will go back again; but he is coming home to see me. It is my wish as much as his. I can tell you he will be very welcome.’
‘No doubt of it,’ said the General, shrugging his shoulders. ‘You will do your best to spoil him; you always did. But here they are.’
The train glided slowly across the last piers of the bridge, and round the curve into the station. Miss Northcote moved a few steps away from the General, and stood looking at it as it stopped, and the doors began to open. Her mouth and eyes were smiling, but there was a little doubt in her manner, and she did not hurry forward to meet any one. She was not quite sure about a
The young lady stood in the centre of the group, looking very pale and grave. She was a mere slip of a girl, with a small thin brown face, and features too thin and pinched to be pretty. She seemed to have fine dark eyes, but the large eyelids and long black lashes that drooped over them only added a little melancholy to her whole appearance.
The young man had not quite done with his fellow-travellers. He took off his hat, looking at General Hawke, who had already given him a curious glance or two.
‘Do you remember me, sir?’ he said to the old man.
‘Are you Dick Northcote? Mind your own affairs, sir. Don't you see your aunt?’
‘Is she here?’
He turned away, and the next moment was grasping his aunt's hand. She could hardly feel sure about him yet; it was a pleasant puzzle to find out the old Dick in this completely changed face. The bright dark blue eyes which smiled at her were the same, however, and after the first minute she felt quite at home.
General Hawke hurried his ward and her belongings away to the carriage, without stopping to introduce her to Miss Northcote, and very soon she and her nephew were walking away up the hill.
‘I Should be sorry to have such a temper as General Hawke's,’ said Dick, looking contentedly round at his aunt, who had established her spoilt boy in the pleasantest place by the prettiest window in her drawing-room. From his low chair there Dick could look over the green slopes and trees which made the upper sides of the Combe. The Penyr was shut out of sight by a rocky bank opposite, running parallel with that on which the houses were built; but there was a long expanse of the Mora to be seen, glowing with deeper and more brilliant colours as the sunset approached. All the water was alive with ships and boats; old men-of-war laid up, steamers gliding swiftly by: the houses and spires of Morebay on the distant shore shone like gold, and the hills beyond stood out faint and clear against the south-east horizon.
Miss Northcote's long old-fashioned room, with its two south windows, was in shadow. She herself sat away from the window, for she cared more to look at Dick just now than at the view, and he was in the fullest light as he sat with his head thrown back and his arm on the sill, quite in his right place and quite happy. She supposed he was not handsome; he never had been that; his face was too square, his nose was far from being classical. But nobody could help liking the thick brown wavy hair that clustered over his low broad forehead, or those good pleasant eyes of his, or could deny that the beard and the sun-brown and the general manliness of his looks made up for the disappointment that his nose and mouth had formerly been to his friends. Miss
‘Is it so bad?’ said Miss Northcote.
‘Horrid, I am sure. A regular old Turk. Never mind: you shall go and call there with me, for that poor girl's sake. I promised her that you would. He might have behaved rather differently, after ten years. However, I forgive him.’
‘Explain to me about the girl,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘Did you make friends with her in the train? She looked wretched, poor thing. Who was that formidable person with her?’
‘A governess from the school. She is going back almost directly—a good riddance. Well, we all got in at Paddington. I jumped in at the last moment, and she looked daggers at me; she thought they were going to have the carriage to themselves. I thought the girl seemed very unhappy, so of course I did what civil things I could, without pushing. The governess kept awake as long as she could; but it was very hot, and at last she dropped off, and after we left Bristol the girl and I talked a great deal, at intervals. We found out that we were going to the same place, and she was charmed to find how well I knew Pensand Castle, and all the places and people about here. She has been at school all this time—horribly strict—and she thinks being at General Hawke's may be better than that, though she does not like him at all. I am so sorry for her,’ said Dick, in
Miss Northcote felt as if she hardly knew her nephew well enough to laugh at him, so she controlled her amusement, and said sympathisingly,
‘Poor thing! how very sad!’
‘So I thought,’ said Dick. ‘I tried to comfort her, you know. I told her the General was sure to be good to her, and I talked to her about you. I told her you were an angel, aunt Kate, so you must keep up the character. You'll go and see her, won't you? Never mind the General.’
‘But the General himself invited me,’ said Miss Northcote, smiling. ‘So I think I should have gone, even if you had not been in the question at all.’
‘O, very well, that's all right. If you take her in hand, I shall not mind so much. Poor little thing!’ said Dick thoughtfully. ‘She is so young, and so weak, one can't help pitying her.’
‘How old is she? Did she tell you?’
‘No. Fifteen or sixteen, I suppose.’
‘Nineteen at least, I should say.’
‘You don't mean it? “Why, Mrs. Herbert, my partner's wife, is only one-and-twenty, and she certainly looks ten years older than Miss Ashley. Nineteen! Is it possible!’
‘Of course I have no more means of knowing than you have. You found out her name, it seems.’
‘I heard it,’ said Dick.
There was a pause, during which he stared out of the window, and Miss Northcote watched him as she sat with some work in her hands. If she had been fond of moralising, she would have said that this relationship of
‘I call this peace,’ he said presently. ‘Here, you know, one could read poetry. I used to read lots when I was at home that year—do you remember? Tennyson—I thought there was nobody like him. Afterwards, at Auckland I thought he was all stuff—but since I have been with the Herberts I begin to understand him. Herbert says it is just his perfection that makes it difficult to appreciate him. Do you see? One takes more fancy to things that are rugged, and have ups and downs and faults in them: but his things are splendidly cut like a gem, every word in its right place, the thoughts and the words just belonging to each other, and not too much of
‘But not to meet Flora Lancaster there, I trust,’ thought Miss Northcote, remembering those twilight appointments with a pang as if they were yesterday, and the late half-hours she used to spend at that very window, listening for his slow reluctant steps coming up over the stones.
‘There are plenty of old friends hoping to see you,’ she said. ‘You must go over to Carweston one of these days. Mrs. Strange was so glad to hear that you were coming.’
‘To be sure. Very good of her. Is Anthony Strange as mad as ever?’
‘Yes, and as nice as ever.’
‘Ah, aunt Kate, he was always a flame of yours. What a fool he has been!’ said Dick, smiling.
Here their talk was interrupted by a message from an old sick man in the village: he was taken worse, and would Miss Northcote come down and see him? The sun had set, and the soft lovely twilight was stealing over everything, when she and Dick left the house together.
‘You don't often walk about by yourself after sunset, I suppose?’ said Dick.
‘Now and then. Are you come home to keep me in order? You will find it a hard task, Dick. I am so used to liberty now; and you must remember that every creature in the place knows me.’
‘But when I was young,’ said Dick, ‘there were often ragamuffins from Morebay hanging about here. And I remember that you used to object very much to my being out after dark.’
‘That was quite a different thing. You were sixteen, and I'm sixty.’
‘A very well-preserved old woman,’ said Dick, laughing.
Old Fenner lived half-way down one of the lanes, a steep winding one, partly overarched by trees. He and his granddaughter inhabited two small low rooms at the top of an old house that was let in flats.
Miss Northcote turned in at the open door, and mounted the broad, clean, uneven stairs, leaving her nephew outside. He lighted a cigar and walked up and down. It was so pleasant to breathe native air again, to see the purple shadows advancing and the lights beginning to flash out on the old river, to hear the familiar accent of the people as they talked in the streets down below, that it never occurred to him to be bored by his aunt's charitable doings. Aunt Kate was always running after the poor people. She spoilt them, of course, but that had never mattered to Dick, as long as she continued to spoil him. And now, with his older ideas, he was inclined to think that she was quite right. They were very much to be pitied, though certainly not for living in St. Denys, which to him was still the prettiest and most homelike place in the world. How jolly it used to be in those old times, when all the boatmen were his friends, and he knew the rivers as well as any of them!
‘I'll pull aunt Kate round to Pensand to-morrow,’ Dick decided. ‘The tide will be right in the afternoon.’
He had strolled some yards up the lane, as far as the shadow of the trees. As he turned to come back, advancing slowly into the clearer light, a lady, who was climbing the hill with some fatigue and trouble, stopped short as she passed him.
‘Dick! Mr. Northcote—I don't think I am mistaken.’
‘O, Miss Cardew!’ said Dick, quite taken by surprise, and beginning to blush, hardened old traveller as he was.
‘Mrs. Lancaster, please,’ she said gently.
‘Yes; I beg your pardon. I heard, of course, but I forgot for the moment,’ said Dick, taking her hand, and squeezing it with quite sufficient emphasis.
It was a very pretty face that was looking up at him in the twilight, fair, with soft blue eyes, and the red-gold hair that the old painters loved—the face of Dick's first love, for whom he had dared his grandfather's anger and his aunt's alternate laughing and remonstrance. She had been everything to him for a few months then—all the heroines of romance rolled into one; and she, a clever ambitious girl, four or five years older than himself, whose relations were nobodies, had seriously thought of marrying him, simply because he was a gentleman. Aunt Kate, by some wise strategy of hers, had prevented any sentimental parting, at which Dick might have sworn eternal constancy; and Flora Cardew had soon after consoled herself with one of the curates. They went away at once from St. Denys, and report said it was not a happy marriage. Anyhow, the curate died within a few years, and Flora, having quarrelled with his relations, came back to her own. She now lived quietly at home, and was kind to her old father and mother. No one in St. Denys liked her, and yet no one had much to say against her; perhaps, as she herself calmly remarked, it was jealousy. One attraction in Flora was, however, that she never seemed conscious of her own beauty. Her eyes, as they looked up curiously, gently, almost tenderly into Dick's face, were not asking for any admiration. They only said, ‘How we are both changed! but you, my old friend, are very much improved, and I should hardly have known you.’
All the confusion was on Dick's side. In the moment of dead silence, as they stood there looking at each other, he caught himself wishing several bad things about Mrs. Lancaster. Did she suppose he was the same fool that went away ten years ago? Then he
‘Not very well, thanks. I see you think I am sadly altered. We can't be young for ever. I daresay I look like a ghost to-night; but I have been shopping at Morebay all day long, and this hill is such a drag when one comes home tired.’
A great pity for weak things was one of the strong points in Dick's imperfect character. He looked down, saw that she was carying a basket and a large parcel, and took them out of her hands at once, quite with the authority of an old friend.
‘O, never mind—thank you,’ said Mrs. Lancaster faintly.
‘How can you attempt to carry such a load up this hill?’ said Dick.
‘There was nobody else. Our little maid was too busy to come down and meet me. But I can't let you do it. You are waiting for your aunt; and you only came to-day.’
‘My aunt is safe for ten minutes at least. Yes, I got here this evening. Did you come up by the boat?’
‘I did. It was so lovely on the water. I was thinking of you as I came up, because I heard you were expected. Do you remember frightening me so terribly one night?’
‘What, by dropping into the water down at Morebay—awkward ass!’ said Dick, with a slight laugh. ‘But you were not frightened; you laughed at me.’
‘O, but indeed I was. I wonder now you were not drowned, or did not strike your head against something. I have been nervous at stepping on board ever since. Frightened! how little you knew!’
‘Well, it might have been a bad affair, as I was out without leave. However, as no harm came of it, suppose we forget it. Except Mrs. Cardew's kindness in drying me so thoroughly before she sent me home. What a plague I must have been! How are Captain and Mrs. Cardew?’
‘They are very well. They will be glad to hear that you have not forgotten them.’
‘One does not forget old friends so easily.’
‘Don't you think so? Then I hope you will prove it by coming to see us.’
‘I shall be most happy,’ said Dick, now quite secure of having conquered himself, and placed his old acquaintance on a thoroughly unsentimental footing.
Mrs. Lancaster's behaviour was as good as could be expected from a born flirt, and a good deal of Dick's security was based on being pretty well able to meet her on her own ground. He had it in him to become one of those idle wasters of the best thing in this world, and probably might have done so had he stayed in England; but the truth and freedom of his colonial life had both hardened and softened his heart in the right way; and I think one may say for Dick, at this time, that he only flirted with flirts.
When she had got the promise of a visit, Flora became much more cheerful, and discretely avoiding old times, asked many intelligent questions about New Zealand and his doings there.
They turned to the right, still strolling slowly up the hill, and stopped at the iron gate of a little square garden. Here Dick gave up the parcels; but after he had opened the gate and shut it again with the old familiar catch, there were still a few last words to be said, and he stood leaning with his elbows on the top bar, the stars coming out over his head, the air full of roses and jessamine, till one would certainly have fancied that those ten years had vanished like a dream. At last came the final goodnight, with a very cordial shake of the hand; and Dick, remembering his aunt, walked off in a great hurry.
‘As silly as ever, but very nice,’ was Mrs. Lancaster's verdict, as she went into the house.
Miss Northcote had come down-stairs, and was standing
‘He'll be tired of waiting, and gone home,’ she suggested. ‘I'll be proud to walk up with you, ma'am.’
‘No, Polly, thank you. Here he is, I think.’
Dick came striding down the hill with the haste of a bad conscience.
‘I hope you have not been waiting long,’ he said politely.
‘O, no. Good-night, Polly;’ and Miss Northcote stepped down into the road and took his offered arm.
‘It was good of you to hurry back,’ she said, as they walked away. ‘Were you visiting some of your old haunts?’
‘No; not exactly. I met an old friend, and walked home with her. Flora Cardew: odd, wasn't it?’
‘Mrs. Lancaster.’
‘Hang Lancaster! I beg his pardon, poor fellow. I forgot he was dead,’ Dick added penitently. ‘But I am always forgetting his existence. I never saw him, you know. He came the very day I sailed.’
‘Yes, I believe he did,’ said Miss Northcote.
She would not either laugh or remonstrate now. Dick was his own master, and if he chose to be so terribly foolish, there was no help for it. Any remark might only make things worse. But her heart sank very sadly as she walked up the hill, leaning on her nephew's strong arm. She need not have hoped that Mrs. Lancaster would lose the opportunity;—still she might have waited a few days, Miss Northcote thought, before she pounced upon him. The very first evening—it was almost too hard. Aunts, if they are unmarried, ought to be the least selfish of human beings; and to do Kate Northcote justice, though Dick was the only
Though his aunt said nothing, Dick understood that the subject was not a welcome one. He thought she need not be afraid, but did not tell her so. He began to talk rather eagerly about his plan for pulling up the Penyr to Pensand Combe, and then went back to his companion in the train. He felt sure she could not be more than sixteen.
‘Well, you may be right, Dick,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘I have not talked to her. But I did not think it such a very young face.’
‘But she had none of the ways of a grown-up person. She was just like a schoolgirl. I wonder how she will get on at Pensand. I suspect the life there will be dreadful to her, for she told me she cared for nothing so much as being free. And General Hawke makes everybody in his house go on by clockwork. Randal used to tell me so. He never could bear it. By the bye, where is Randal?’
‘In London, I think,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘He is here sometimes. He grows more like the General in some things, but he never will be so good-looking.’
‘What a brute he was!’ said Dick reflectively.
‘Was he, Dick? We always look upon him as a respectable character.’
‘Do you? Well, he may be respectable now. But I used to hear things about him in the village that I never told you. I'm not going to rake them up now, so peace be with him. You will go to-morrow afternoon, aunt Kate? We ought to start at half-past three.’
‘Yes; I should like to go very much. You used to be a good boatman.’
‘That's settled, then.’
It says something for the beauty of St. Denys that Mabel Ashley forgot all her troubles, her shyness, and her dislike of General Hawke, and exclaimed enthusiastically several times as they drove from the station.
From the top of the hill there was the view of the broad Mora with its varied banks, and the background of blue and purple hills. Then there were the lanes going down and down, twisting round in strange curves, ferns drooping from their high rocky banks, among a tender embroidery of red wild geranium leaves, and blue and purple and yellow flowers bending forward on their slight stems, while the hedges up above were bright with wild roses and honeysuckle, roses of so deep a pink that they looked to Mabel's uneducated eyes like some rarity of the garden.
The General smiled at her exclamations; he was not otherwise than pleased to see his ward's grave eyes light up, and a faint flush of colour come into her sallow cheeks. The drive was too short; hardly two miles from the station, and they were at the foot of the last hill, in Pensand Combe. Here the small old cottages, some whitewashed, others rough gray stone, nestled each in its corner under the hill, surrounded and overgrown with flowers. They were everywhere, from the gay stonecrop on the walls and roof to the great red fuchsia overhanging the gate. By an old stone bridge of several arches, the carriage crossed the head of a little salt-water creek, from which the tide was now going down, leaving a bed
They turned up a lane, past a gray old mill, whose wheel was now silent, and began at once to mount up under the deep shade of trees, till they came to a lodge and gate, and entered an avenue which seemed to skirt the hill.
Nearly all through the drive, looking out of the window, Mabel had seen this hill in front of them, covered with trees to the summit, where a row of gray battlements looked out above their heads. Now, as the carriage wound slowly up the hill, in the deep mysterious shade of the oak and chestnut woods, with great ferns growing about their feet, and hanging over the edges of the road, with here and there, as they went up, a glimpse of a glade full of roses, and then the crumbling old wall of a garden on the slope, where there were peeps of raspberry and currant bushes, and a scent of strawberries in the air, Mabel began to think that all this was rather pleasant, that it might not be so bad, after all, to live in such a romantic old place and such a smiling country.
She had been silent for some time, but now she looked up at the General with a little more confidence, and asked,
‘Is this Pensand?’
‘This is Pensand,’ said the General graciously. ‘A lonely spot, you see.’
‘It is beautiful,’ said Mabel. ‘The gentleman who was in the carriage with us told me it was built by the ancient Britons.’
‘Impossible! The aborigines lived in caves,’ said Mabel's schoolmistress, who had been keeping up a conversation with the General while her charge looked about, and trying to hide her terror at the steepness of the hills.
‘The early Cornish castles were without doubt of British origin,’ said the General, stroking his moustache. ‘But I myself know nothing about it, and should like the place just as well without its ruins. If you are fond of antiquities,’ he went on, looking at Mabel, ‘I must introduce a neighbour of mine to you, who is really learned in those subjects. Pensand is the idol he worships, so you can study it together. But as to my friend Dick Northcote, I would not advise you to put much faith in him.’
‘I know nothing at all about antiquities,’ said Mabel, colouring slightly.
‘Dick had the honour of escorting you all the way, then?’ General Hawke went on.
‘From Paddington,’ said the elder lady, with some irritation in her tone. ‘It was a great vexation to me, but what could I do? I must say that he and Miss Ashley made a little more acquaintance than was necessary, under the circumstances. I thought him a rather forward young man.’
‘Well, we must not be hard on young people,’ said the General, looking at Mabel with a smile, which made her blush a good deal more. ‘Not on young ladies, at least. They never mean to do wrong themselves, and so of course never suspect any one else. But young men are generally rascals, and we can't be too severe on them. Dick is a forward fellow, I have no doubt. He has been roughing it in New Zealand, too, and knows nothing of the ways of society. Yes. His aunt is a charming person, and I hoped you would see a good deal of her. But I don't know, now that Dick has made his appearance. I have not much confidence in him.’
The General smiled so kindly as he said this, looking at Mabel all the time, that her fear of him melted away fast, and she began to feel quite happy and natural. He evidently understood her so much better than Miss
‘I thought he was very polite and nice, and not at all forward,’ she said, looking bravely up at the General.
‘My dear, your ignorance—’ began Miss Wrench; but the General made her a little bow, which seemed gently and courteously to remind her that he ought to be heard first, in right of his white hairs.
‘It was very natural that you should like him, Mabel,’ he said, with frank paternal kindness, and yet a shade of gravity. ‘He always was a pleasant fellow to talk to. I like him myself. But before he went out to New Zealand he was not at all a good boy; and I must be convinced that he has changed very much before I can encourage him here. That is all I have to say about him.’
Miss Wrench nodded approval. Mabel looked rather downcast, but recovered herself immediately, and forget Dick, in the delight of going under the archway of an old gate-tower nearly covered with ivy. A little way off, high up on a mound of its own, at the very top of the hill, the ruined keep of the castle frowned down upon them, over a wilderness of roses and flowering shrubs, through which a minute more brought them to the door of a long, low, quaint house, not to be seen from beneath.
The carriage stopped; General Hawke got out nimbly, and helped the ladies out, with a pressure of Mabel's hand and ‘Welcome to Pensand.’
There was a stiff old-fashioned dignity about the house and its furniture, which seemed to show that it was a long time since a lady had ruled there. Still, the drawing-room, into which they went through the hall and library, had an air of comfort, partly owing to the number of large armchairs with ancient chintz covers
‘Better not now, I think,’ said he. ‘You are tired. The housekeeper shall show you your rooms. Dinner will be ready in three-quarters of an hour. And please remember that I am a punctual man.’
‘Ah! don't forget that, my dear,’ said Miss Wrench, shaking her head at Mabel, who looked vexed, but made no answer. The General's smile reassured her again, and sent her up-stairs tolerably cheerful.
She did not like her room much; it looked out to the side, over the shrubberies, and towards the keep, which was itself hidden by trees. As soon as she was ready she made her way down-stairs again, not without a little difficulty among various narrow passages and small flights of steps.
A gray-haired butler looked out of the dining-room, and saw her coming down the slippery oak staircase slowly and unevenly. He came forward and opened the library door, with a bow to the little lady, and she passed on between the sober-looking bookcases into the drawing-room, and stood at the open window with her hands clasped, looking out across the lawn.
She was a very small girl, and in her long black evening dress she looked still smaller. As she stood still, it was a pretty graceful little figure, and there was a certain distinction about the small head, the large peculiar eyes, and the bright dark hair which seemed inclined to curl in tiny rings, and was brushed back and kept in order with difficulty. But no one could admire the pinched pained look in her face, and all the grace of her figure vanished when she moved. She herself seemed to suffer so acutely from the awkwardness of being lame, that those about her felt and noticed it all the more.
Presently, as nobody came, she turned away from the window, and made a slow pilgrimage round the room. The cabinets were full of handsome old china and Indian curiosities, at which she peeped in for a moment, but saw nothing that interested her much. At the further end a door was standing half open, and Mabel looked into a small room, with another door into the hall, which was shut. The evening sun made his way into this room round some corner, and it was full of low yellow light, making it all the brighter in contrast with the larger room beyond. This might have belonged to a lady; there were little tables and low chairs and looking-glasses, some pretty water-colours on the walls, modern china and books, flowers here and there.
Mabel advanced a step or two, and thought it the prettiest little room she had ever seen. She wondered if the General would let her spend her time here. There was a photograph book lying unclasped on a table near the door, and she opened it at the first page, on which there were two portraits. One was of a dark young-looking man, whose expression was anything but pleasant, though his features were handsome. Mabel turned her eyes away from him. But the other she thought charming. It was of a lady, very much dressed, with frills and necklaces and bracelets. She was leaning
‘You are quite right: this room is more cheerful than the other,’ he said. ‘And what have you got there?’
Mabel held up the book.
‘I don't know who they are,’ she said; ‘but how pretty she is!’
‘Ah!’ said the General, putting up his eyeglass. ‘That is my son, and a very funny fellow he is. Not by any means the kill-joy he looks there. As to the lady—I don't know what brings her into that prominent place. She lives at St. Denys. And that is not a faithful portrait of her either. I never saw her look so happy, or so well dressed—poor thing!’
‘Is she poor—really poor, I mean?’ asked Mabel, with eager sympathy.
‘No—her people ought to be pretty well off. But her life has not been altogether a lucky one. She is a widow, and her marriage was not happy. Dick Northcote—well, he ought to have come back and married her. She was half engaged to him before he went out. But perhaps she thought herself well rid of him, for I believe two or three other young ladies could have preferred the same claim.’
Mabel looked up horrified; she could hardly believe him.
‘The world is not so good as you think it, I am afraid,’ said the General, smiling. ‘If Mrs. Lancaster ever had your illusions, she has lost them long ago. I forget what your exact age is,’ he went on, after a moment's pause.
‘I am nearly nineteen.’
‘That is a charming age. Well, now, before your good governess comes down, I want to ask you one or two things. Do you think you will be able to make yourself happy here at Pensand, with me?’
The General was a handsome old man, and pleasant-looking too, when he chose; his eyes were still bright, and his manners left nothing to be desired. Certain frowning lines in his forehead might have warned a physiognomist to doubt his temper, but at present these were smoothed away. Mabel looked at him, withdrew the last remains of her prejudice, and answered, after a moment's hesitation:
‘Yes; if you really like to have me.’
‘That's right,’ said the General. ‘I am glad to hear you say so.’
He took a chair close to the table where Mabel was standing with the photograph-book, and held out his hand to her. She put hers into it; he held it, and looked at it curiously.
‘London air makes people thin,’ he said. ‘Now you must grow fat, and treat me as your grandfather; those are my two wishes. Another thing I had to suggest. Can we do without Miss Wrench, or a counterpart of her? You don't want to learn any lessons at nineteen. And however one may respect a person of that kind, she becomes a gêne—a bore, in fact. But you may be lonely?’
Mabel shook her head emphatically.
‘I have been at school so long,’ she said, ‘I shall be only too glad to be free.’
The General glanced at her rather oddly; he was wondering, perhaps, what this helpless creature meant by freedom, and what she would do with it if she had it.
‘Hush, there she is,’ he whispered, as Miss Wrench came with a stiff rustle into the other room.
When dinner was over, and the ladies had come back into the drawing-room, Mabel left her companion resting in an armchair, and walked off across the lawn to enjoy the view by herself.
High above the rocky banks and cliffs clothed with wood, she looked down on them over the tops of the Castle trees, which quite shut out the Combe at her feet. St. Denys was hidden by the high ground, but following the Penyr as it spread away to her left, she saw the meeting of the two great streams, and then their course together down to the sea. The water gleamed silver in the twilight, and the woods were dark and solemn; the distance was full of the flashing lights of the ships and of Morebay. Overhead the sky was blue and deep, with stars shining, and a faint yellow glow in the west. It would be no darker than this all night long.
Mabel stood quite still, a small black figure in the foreground of the view. She was listening, but there was nothing to be heard, except the bark of a dog now and then in the Combe, and the plashing of oars, as some late boatman rowed home down the Penyr. The flowers had it all their own way now, and the air was filled with the sweet scents that it pleased them to send out into the night. A magnolia, climbing up outside the wall, pushed its strong leaves and great white flowers within two yards of where the girl stood, and breathed its sweetness into her face. No doubt they all had a great deal to say to Mabel, if she had understood them, but at present she was hardly aware that she wanted any sympathy. It was nothing new to her to be alone.
Her shy odd nature, too proud to ask for affection, easily prejudiced, contemptuous of the small ways she saw about her in the London school where she had spent nearly all her life, yet only too sensitive and grateful for kindness, was not that of a very happy person. Her schoolfellows laughed at her; her mistresses were old-fashioned people, whose chief idea was discipline, which Mabel did not like. None of them ever encouraged her confidence, or tried to draw her out, so it happened that the years went on and she made no friends. Yet she never thought herself unhappy, and underneath her melancholy appearance there was a spring of enthusiasm, of girlish fun, even of adventurousness, which, till now, had hardly found its way out, except into dreams.
Dick Northcote in the railway carriage had soon discovered it. I believe, though it may seem almost incredible, he was the first young man Mabel had ever talked to. The variety was so great that it quite took her out of herself, the more that he was thoroughly good-natured and natural, and had a real feeling of kindness and pity for the forlorn schoolgirl. Mabel was sorry to find that she was not to like him or think about him, after all. She never thought for a moment of doubting what the General had said.
While she stood there on the lawn, her guardian came into the drawing-room, and finding Miss Wrench there alone, began to talk to her about her pupil, and to tell her his plans for the future. Miss Wrench was just, though severe. She admitted that Mabel had many good qualities, that she was truthful, honourable, and thoroughly ladylike in mind. But she thought her a troublesome girl, and said so. She was careless of rules, proud, obstinate, and at times passionate. She required
The General smiled quietly to himself.
‘There is one difference between your view of Mabel and mine,’ he said. ‘You look upon her as a child; I, as a woman. She is a woman—though I can't wonder at your forgetting it; nothing more natural. She is beyond being fastened down by rules; she is old enough to guide her life for herself. Or, if there is guidance, it must be invisible; she must be unconscious of it. My idea is, that she and I will do best alone together.’
Miss Wrench shook her head. ‘You may be right,’ she said. ‘I hope you are. But awkwardness will arise, I am very much afraid. Mabel ought to be grown up, of course, at nineteen. But she has the mind of a child.’
‘But she has been in your charge for some years,’ said the General very gently. ‘You have had the forming of her mind. You did not imagine that she was to stay at school till five-and-twenty?’
‘No,’ said Miss Wrench, colouring slightly. ‘But with our establishment of young people—I really do not know what more we could have done. It is impossible to devote ourselves entirely to one; it would be unjust to the others. Girls must do a good deal for themselves. Under the present circumstances, I daresay Mabel may develop more quickly.’
‘Just now she is running a great risk of rheumatism,’ said the General, and Mabel's twilight dream was broken in upon by her guardian's voice, calling across the lawn.
General Hawke's breakfast-time was ten. But Mabel passed a restless night and woke early, with the strangest new feeling of being able to do as she liked. The first thing she did, therefore, was to get up, and made her way down-stairs before eight, to the surprise and terror of a housemaid who was dusting the drawing-room. Mabel had no feeling of responsibility to Miss Wrench, or any one, except the General, who had told her last night that she was to be mistress of the house, and to pour out his coffee. She saw no reason why she should not explore the place before breakfast, and set forth at once from the drawing-room window.
If Pensand Castle was lovely in the evening it was still more so in the morning, with the sun shining brilliantly over all that landscape of waving wood and dancing water. A breeze had sprung up in the night, and was driving a few white clouds across the sky; they threw soft shadows on the rivers as they floated along. The water seemed to be alive with movement; another ship had come up and anchored at the mouth of the Penyr; far away, beyond wooded points and ships and buildings, there was the deep-blue dazzling line of the sea.
As Mabel walked through the garden, the roses shook their petals at her feet; the birds sang and hopped across her path. It was not long before she got out of sight of the house, and then she soon lost her way, down among little grassy glens full of roses, with small paths leading in all directions. She gathered one or two rosebuds, and carrying them in her hand went on, not much caring
Mabel had not gone very far along the field—for her progress was always slow—when a large black dog came rushing up, and sprang upon her so roughly as almost to knock her down. She gave a little scream, and a tall man instantly appeared, striding up the hill with long quick steps. He was an odd-looking smooth-faced person in spectacles, perhaps about forty. As he came up, looking flushed and excited, Mabel forgot her fright, and felt inclined to laugh.
‘Down, Prince!’ cried the stranger. ‘I hope my dog has not hurt you.’
He took off his hat and stood still, with an air of the deepest anxiety, looking hard at Mabel through his spectacles.
‘Not at all, thank you; he only frightened me. I was silly,’ said she; and then she thought she had better turn back to the garden, for the earnest gaze of her new acquaintance was almost embarrassing.
Now don't let me and my dog spoil your walk!’ he
Mabel regarded him with grave astonishment.
‘Thank you; I think I must go back now,’ she said, and with a slight bow she was turning away.
But the stranger was not so easily got rid of, and began to walk on by her side.
Mabel did not know what to do. He had the voice and appearance of a gentleman; but who could he be, and what could his behaviour mean? He, meanwhile, seeing her limp, suddenly offered her his arm, saying that the field was too rough for her. This was enough; Mabel stopped, and once more looked him gravely in the face.
‘I don't know who you are,’ she said, ‘and I cannot think how you know me. I wish I had never come out of the garden. I would much rather go back by myself, please.’
Her new acquaintance smiled very amiably.
‘Go back by yourself! Why? Because we have not been introduced to each other! I thought of asking the General to let me breakfast with him, as he is so lazy; but if you don't like me I will go home.’
‘O, I beg your pardon! I did not know you were a friend of the General's,’ said Mabel, much confused. ‘He will be very glad to see you, I daresay.’
‘About that I have no doubt. I believe I have the honour of speaking to Miss Ashley,’ taking off his hat again. ‘I, your unfortunate servant, am Anthony Strange, of Carweston. Now this is dreadful; you never heard of me before?’
Mabel shook her head. ‘But how did you know it was me?’ she said.
‘Because I have been expecting you to dawn upon us; and there is no other young lady nearer than St. Denys; and none of them would be walking in Pensand Combe at this hour. Have I satisfied you, and will you forgive me?’
‘Yes,’ said Mabel, beginning to smile.
‘Are you tired?’
‘No, I am lame, but I can walk very well,’ said Mabel, in a low voice, with the strangest feeling that she had known this man all her life, and was quite sure from experience what he would say next.
‘Do, then, trust yourself to me and Prince along this field and into the lane at the other end. There are such roses in the hedge—red, red—” newly sprung in June.” I am not talking nonsense. They are red.’
‘Yes, I believe it,’ said Mabel. ‘I saw them yesterday as we came from the station.’
‘Not these. These are the reddest in the country. And there is an old mill, a much older and prettier one than you have seen. We won't go as far as that now, though; for it is low tide, as you see, and the dear old wheels will be resting themselves. Now you know who I am you really must take my arm. There is no harm in me; I am a clergyman.’
Mabel laughed and took his arm, though unwillingly; but she found it a very firm and pleasant support to her weak little steps. Anthony was silent for a minute or two, and an idea flashed into her mind.
‘Is it you who are so fond of Pensand Castle, and of antiquities?’
‘I spend my whole life in the past. When did my fame reach you? I am a real antiquary—not one of your archæological fellows, who write papers for societies that never read them. I never wrote a line in my life. How did you hear of me?’
‘General Hawke mentioned you last night. He said
‘He gave me credit for a good deal,’ said Mr. Strange thoughtfully. ‘I have my theories, certainly. I'll explain them to you after breakfast. We must visit the keep together.’
‘Was it the ancient Britons?’
‘Who put that into your head? Nobody believes it but me. I say that Pensand was one of King Arthur's strongholds.’
‘But was King Arthur a real person?’ said Mabel doubtfully, remembering her lessons in English history.
‘My dear young friend! Was Queen Elizabeth a real person? But how did you happen to hit on Celtic builders of the Castle?’
‘That is a long story,’ said Mabel.
‘Then it will just last till we reach the roses.’
‘Well, I travelled down yesterday with Mr. Northcote, whose aunt lives at St. Denys. We talked about the Castle, and he told me that,’ said Mabel, her long story melting into air.
‘Good boy, to remember my early lessons. Well, what has New Zealand done for him?’
‘I don't know,’ said Mabel.
‘Of course you don't. I forgot he was a stranger to you. Poor Dick! if good influences will do anything, he ought to be a fine fellow. A sweeter woman than Kate Northcote never breathed Cornish air.’
‘Do you mean his aunt? He told me she was an angel.’
‘So she is—and something better than an angel.’
Mabel wondered what that might be, but did not ask. Mr. Strange's kind regretful manner in speaking of Dick seemed to her a confirmation of what the General had said. It was sad that any one who was good-natured should be so very odious.
By the time that, after long round about wanderings, they got back to the Castle, Mabel and Anthony were great friends. After the first, he was like other people in treating her rather as a child, though certainly in nothing else. His kind odd face beamed down upon her, his hand was always ready to help her over any uneven ground. He told her several stories about the Castle and its neighbourhood, and encouraged her questions, and talked away so agreeably that she was quite sorry to find herself at the door. The General and Miss Wrench were waiting, both with grave faces, for it was past ten. Anthony, however, was a welcome guest, and his excuses mollified the General at once. He was pleased, too, to see Mabel's eyes so bright, and a fresh colour in her cheeks.
‘If she would walk over every morning to Carweston, to see me,’ said Anthony, ‘she would be a giantess in six months. As to strength, I mean. Miss Ashley, you would be able to pitch a fellow from the top of the keep, as Lady Janet did to the Puritan, when he told her that the prospect before them was better worth studying than her mirror.’
‘The Puritan was right, for once,’ said Miss Wrench. ‘Was he killed, poor man? I hope she was punished.’
‘I sincerely hope not, but history does not say,’ answered Mr. Strange. ‘Ladies in those days knew how to keep up their dignity. I wish we had some Lady Janets now. Do make her your model,’ smiling at Mabel. ‘I can tell you a great many more things about her.’
‘Just now, Anthony, be good enough to read prayers,’ said the General.
The long line of servants came in, and Mabel remembered, with a sort of shock, that her odd friend was a clergyman. She was aware the next minute that his voice in reading was singularly beautiful; low, musical,
It was a fact, however, that all stiffness, all uneasiness, vanished from Pensand Castle when Anthony was there. Even Miss Wrench laughed and enjoyed herself. Mabel entered into all his jokes, and talked almost as fast as he did. The General watched her with a good deal of amusement; there was a shade of contempt in his liking for Anthony, but he quite understood that women might think him clever and original.
After breakfast they all walked up together to the keep, where Mabel had a lecture on Roman and British building. Anthony poked among the stones, and showed her what rough uneven blocks they were, put together without any sign of mortar or cement. The tower was hollow inside, and they climbed up by a flight of wooden steps to the battlements. Miss Wrench said something about ‘that poor Puritan,’ and shuddered as she looked down the wall and the steep descent below.
‘Yes,’ said Anthony; ‘he must have rolled and rolled and rolled, smashing the trees on his way, till he tumbled into the water down there, and was fished out by the miller. What a fate! And Lady Janet nearly shared it, she flew down so fast after him—for she had a soft heart of her own, bless her! But the genius of her house caught her in his open arms, and lodged her in an oak. There she sat and wept, till her tears bubbled up in a little spring at the foot of a tree, and flowed down, down, past the mill, in the channel the poor man had
‘Suppose you look at the view, Mabel, that caused all this commotion,’ said General Hawke, almost impatient at the way in which she hung on Anthony's words.
It was glorious indeed, that meeting of the waters, dancing and glittering under the midday sun. All the clouds were gone, and the heavy green of the woods, the reddened gold of the grass fields deep in sorrel and buttercups, only made more intense the blue of water and sky, and the glow of sapphire sea that trembled against the horizon.
‘He deserved it,’ said Anthony, ‘if it were only for speaking in face of such a sight as this; certainly for judging a neighbour so much fairer and better than himself.’
Kate Northcote was a woman of a very hopeful nature, and when she walked down that afternoon with her nephew to the quay, she had dismissed all troublesome fears, and thought of nothing but the pleasure of having him with her again.
All was quiet in the hot afternoon: the fishwomen were sitting in the shadow of their houses: the tide, nearly full, was plashing gently against the great stones and the rusty chains. A blue hot stillness lay on the scarcely-moving water; the air was very clear, and every touch of colour shone out brilliantly. The boatmen had not forgotten Dick; they came down one by one to speak to him. They all knew his aunt, too, and had a rough sort of bow and a smile for her. The waterside people counted Miss Northcote among their few friends. She was not afraid of speaking to them, and they knew that what she said was always true. Several boats were at Dick's service, and he chose one belonging to Matthew Fenner, a son of the old man in the lane, a fine quiet-looking young fellow, who had married the wrong woman, and thus had made life a harder struggle than it need have been. Sometimes his wife was too much for Matthew, and drove him to spend a day or two in the public-house; after these experiences he would sneak down any back alley to avoid meeting Miss Northcote, and hearing what she thought of him. To-day he came forward frankly enough, smiling quietly when he met her eyes, and carefully arranged a cushion for her in the stern of his boat. Dick took his place there too,
Then the boat passed along the shore, under the cliff, till it swung round to the right, into the Penyr, a stiff bit of rowing, as Dick remembered very well. Pulling up the stream of the Penyr, with its strong current, was also hard work. They advanced slowly, even with Matthew's strength of arm, but Miss Northcote was quite satisfied. She had not rowed up here for years, and the beauty of the banks was a delight to her. On the left bank were wild steep cliffs, sometimes thickly clustered over with trees, sometimes shelving down with stony faces to the water. Over the wildest of them ivy hung and trailed gracefully, and here and there they were broken into small red fields, or a cottage with its bright garden was couched among the ledges. On the right bank, thick shady woods crept down to the beach, with sunny breaks which gave a glimpse of green park sward. Kate loved the left bank best, her St. Denys side, the purple rocks with their embroidery of springing wild flowers.
Some way up the river they came to the mouth of
Then the combe grew narrower, and the trees came down and hung over it, while the Castle above seemed quite close; then the boat had glided on, right up into Pensand, where the fishing-boats were pulled up on the beach, and the children were playing in and out of them, and another rushing mass of water came pouring out of the low arch under the second mill. Matthew Fenner ran the boat ashore a little below this; his passengers got out, and set off to walk up to the Castle. When they reached it, Miss Northcote rather tired with toiling up the hill, they found the drawing-room empty. But Dick, looking out of the window, was aware of somebody in a low chair not far off, in a shady corner of the lawn. The butler, apparently, did not know she was there, and was gone away in some other direction to look for her. Dick pointed her out to his aunt.
‘Rest yourself,’ he said. ‘These chairs look promising. I'll go out and fetch her.’
Mabel was sitting turned away from them, with her face to the view, and a book in her hand, which she had taken out of the small drawing-room. She was a little tired, after the morning's walking and clambering, and was inclined to be quite happy. It seemed as if life in such a beautiful place could never be wearisome. It seemed too as if from morning till night she would have nothing to do but to please herself. Dick's step on the grass, a very different one from the General's, disturbed
Dick, not the most penetrating of mortals, was only aware that she started up, dropped her book, picked it up again before he had time to interfere, lifted her eyelids slowly, and looked at him with nothing but surprise.
‘I did not know any one was there,’ she said. ‘How do you do?’ and she put out a stiff passive little hand.
Dick wondered how he could have mistaken her for a schoolgirl of fifteen or sixteen. Miss Ashley, small and helpless as she looked, was certainly grown up. He was piqued by her manner, and wondered what it meant.
‘I was so anxious to know how you were after the journey,’ he said, ‘that I brought my aunt up at once to see you. She is in the drawing-room. You are enjoying Pensand?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ said Mabel. ‘It is very good of Miss Northcote. General Hawke said she would come and see me.’
She went at once towards the window, a little in advance of Dick, who followed her in anything but a pleasant state of mind. He was not a person to be looked down upon, and treated as nobody. What did she mean by it, and where was all the friendliness of yesterday flown to? She certainly could not know what she was doing—making herself quite at home with a man one day, and treating him the next as if she had never seen him before. Or rather, as if she had some reason for being angry with him, and keeping him at a distance.
‘Well, she need not be afraid,’ said Dick to himself. ‘I shall not persecute her.’
Miss Northcote saw at once that something was wrong, but could not make out what it was. She was amused, however, at the pity Dick had expressed for this girl, who seemed to her quite contented, quite self-contained, and capable of fighting her own battles. If there was a shade of restless unhappiness, now and then, in Mabel's look, it vanished, to Miss Northcote's further amusement, when General Hawke came into the room, and began to talk to Dick. He and his ward were evidently on the best of terms.
Miss Northcote and Dick were equal to the occasion, which was that of finding themselves not quite so welcome as they expected. She felt a little angry with the General, and he with Mabel; but in her, good temper and good manners alike kept any sign of this from being shown, and as to Dick, he was only a little more talkative than usual. General Hawke, remembering him a rather dreamy boy, was surprised at the liveliness with which he described his station life, and laughed heartily at some of his anecdotes. Kate exerted herself at intervals to talk to Mabel, who had not very much to say in return. Her visitor did not take any fancy to her, and thought her an odd-mannered little thing. Once or twice she caught her eyes fixed upon her rather curiously. Kate's beauty was not of a kind to strike a girl who could be much impressed by Mrs. Lancaster's: it perhaps needed an educated mind to understand her air, her unconscious grace, the perfection of all the lines about her. Kate was the modern expression of an old race, which had been distinguished in courts and wars for many hundred years. Flora Lancaster was a lovely animal. I speak of their looks, not of their minds, for I do not wish to be hard on Flora without good cause.
General Hawke, as I said before, had a very strong admiration for Miss Northcote. His eyes wandered towards her many times as he listened to Dick, and
Dick got up too, and came forward to make himself useful at the tea-table. His wish to have it out with Mabel had been growing all this time, till it was stronger than his discretion. The General was a little deaf, and he and Miss Northcote seemed quite occupied with each other. Dick, as he stooped to take his aunt's cup from Mabel, gave her a look that the stupidest girl could not have misunderstood, but the like of which she certainly had never received before. Dick had very good expressive eyes; they were the best feature in his face. They asked Mabel very plainly what he had done to offend her; what was the change from yesterday; and a good deal of reproach and sadness, more, perhaps, than he quite meant, added to the effect of the question. Mabel only answered it by blushing crimson, drooping her eyelids very low, and putting a lump of sugar into the cream-jug instead of the General's cup. This was not unsatisfactory to Dick, and confirmed him in his resolution to know all about it. At any rate it was not mere indifference. Having handed the cups, he came back and sat down near Mabel, and said something about their journey the day before.
‘What has become of your chaperon?’
‘O, I don't know; she is somewhere,’ said Mabel. ‘She is going back to-morrow morning.’
‘Then you will be left alone?’
‘I shall be with the General,’ said Mabel.
‘To be sure.’ Dick was silent for a moment or two; then he went on: ‘You must get the General to take you down the river in his boat. You have no idea how jolly it is. Make him land under those woods I was telling you about yesterday.’
‘Has he a boat?’
‘Of course he has. It is kept down in the combe.
These summer evenings, after dinner, the best thing he could do.’
‘I don't know whether he would like it.’
‘Certain to like it, isn't he, if you ask him?’
Mabel shook her head and smiled. Dick was pleased at having softened the grave little face at last.
‘This is a charming old place, isn't it?’ he said.
‘Yes; and I believe it really was built by the Britons; for Mr. Strange was here this morning, and said so.’
‘Of course. He told me all I know about it. So you have made acquaintance with Anthony! Isn't he an odd fellow?’
‘I don't know. I think he is wonderfully nice.’
‘So he is. There is not a better fellow on this side of the world. I am very glad you like him. You will like Mrs. Strange too, and Carweston perhaps better than either of them, if you like places better than people.’
‘But I don't.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘I don't know what you mean,’ said Mabel rather coldly.
She was determined not to enter into any jokes with Dick, or to let him be in any way intimate. He had no business to trouble himself about what she liked or did not like. She meant him to see, at any rate, that she disapproved of him. It was rather hard, with his easy manners, and those laughing dark blue eyes watching her all the time. It seemed to become harder every minute, for General Hawke was inconsiderate enough to take Miss Northcote out on the lawn to show her a rose, before Dick and Mabel had finished their tea. It would perhaps have been unreasonable to expect a New Zealander not to seize this opportunity.
‘May I hope that you have forgiven me?’ he said, as soon as the others had stepped out of the window.
‘I have nothing to forgive you,’ said poor Mabel, in a low voice. She tried to be cold and stiff, but her distress was very evident.
‘O, I thought you seemed vexed when I appeared, and unwilling to talk to me. I thought I must have offended you, though I could not imagine how. But I suppose I was dreaming,’ said Dick.
‘Yes, you must have been,’ said Mabel, looking away towards the window.
‘There is something, though,’ said Dick, half to himself. ‘Miss Ashley, when we parted at the station yesterday we were very good friends. Have I done anything since?’
‘Nothing—of course not. Don't say any more about it, please.’
Mabel felt as if she could bear this no longer. She would not look at him. She got up suddenly and followed the others out on the lawn. Dick waited a moment, and then walked after her. He did not address her again; and when, a little later, his aunt said it was time to go, he wished her good-bye in a manner as grave and restrained as her own.
‘Your little fellow-traveller seems quite at home, Dick,’ said Miss Northcote, as they walked down the shady avenue.
‘I can't make her out at all,’ said Dick hopelessly. ‘Is it affectation, do you think? She is not the same girl who was in the train yesterday, telling me all her troubles. She has dressed herself in buckram. There is something in it that don't satisfy me at all.’
‘I daresay the General has something to do with it,’ said Kate. ‘He has been telling her that a girl in her position must not make friends with stray young men.’
‘What position, pray?’
‘The position of seventy thousand pounds.’
‘You don't say so! It never occurred to me till this
‘Excuse me, Dick,’ said Miss Northcote, beginning to laugh; ‘but I had no idea it was so serious. I thought it was all pity for an unhappy child of about fifteen.’
‘She is quite grown up; you were right there,’ said Dick rather bitterly. ‘Well, she doesn't want us, and we won't think about her. If the General is good to her it is all right.’
‘Very well. So much for Miss Ashley. I only envy her one thing—living at Pensand. What glorious ferns!’
‘You should see them in New Zealand,’ said Dick.
‘Come, I won't have the old country cried down. I never saw anything much lovelier than St. Denys. I won't have my illusions destroyed by you.’
‘It was only size I meant.’
Dick was hardly in his usual good spirits. His aunt was rather glad when they reached the boat to see him pull off his coat and take up Fenner's extra pair of sculls. He rowed with great energy, and the boat flew through the water. They were not long in pulling round to St. Denys.
None of them spoke much. Miss Northcote, as she sat in the stern, would have enjoyed a much longer row. It was very pleasant to hear the water splashing gently, to see the birds dipping into it, and the colours deepening and brightening as evening came on. Dick, too, as his strong frame bent to the oar, as he tossed back the hair that fell over his brown forehead, was not—cross as he might be—a bad object for the eyes to rest upon.
Dick went to church with his aunt on Sunday morning. There he saw Mrs. Lancaster again, sitting in the front row of the choir, and was obliged to confess that she had gone off very little in those ten years. Her complexion was not quite so blooming, but Dick thought the extra refinement made up for that, and she certainly dressed much better. In fact, she looked very pretty and elegant, and no one would have imagined that she belonged to her rough old sailor father, who sat half-way down the church, bristling with red and gray whiskers, and growling the responses, quite out of time and tune with everybody else.
Miss Northcote and Dick were overtaken by these two, as they climbed the hill on their way home from church. Flora was passing on with a bow, and a smile for Dick at the end of it, but old Cardew stopped to shake hands with him.
‘Well, Mr. Northcote! You've come back more of a man than you went, if one may judge by appearances.’
‘I hope so,’ said Dick.
‘Yes, he does credit to New Zealand, Captain Cardew, does he not?’ said Miss Northcote.
‘Good-morning, ma'am,’ said the Captain. ‘I hope you're well. The best thing you can do for a young fellow is to send him to the other side of the world. Nothing like it for breaking off old ties.’
‘If that's the only use of it—’ began Dick, but the Captain did not stay to listen to him.
Mrs. Lancaster, who had not stopped with her father,
‘Good-day to you,’ he said, flourishing his stick, and he hurried on after his daughter.
‘I don't dislike that old fellow,’ said Dick to his aunt.
‘He used to be very good to me. What a thorough old salt he is! He must find it hard to understand that he is Mrs. Lancaster's father.’
‘He admires her very much, I think,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘I am glad they are so fond of each other—she and her parents. If she did not take care of them, they would be very lonely.’
‘Aunt Kate, that is the first good word I ever heard you say for her.’
‘Is it, Dick? Well, I may have reasons for not liking her, but I never said or thought that she was without natural affection.’
‘No; that would have been rather too hard on her. She will marry again some day; don't you suppose so?’
‘Very likely she may.’
‘I still think there are two remarkable things about her,’ Dick went on, as they walked up the lane. ‘She is so ladylike, considering what her parents are—and she never seems the least ashamed of them.’
‘Ladylike; yes,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘Taking the word with the meaning that your grandmother used to give it. Not a lady, but a fair imitation of one.’
‘Well, of course,’ said Dick rather impatiently. ‘Not an aristocrat, like you. We don't think so much of those things in the colonies.’
‘Ah, I forgot that! Who was your friend Mrs. Herbert?’
‘O, she!—an old Norfolk family. No doubt about her. But there's a man on the next station—nobody knows who his wife was, yet we are all very friendly together.’
‘And is there no difference between her and Mrs. Herbert?’
‘Of course, a thousand differences.’
‘And I must venture to think, that if you were to renew your acquaintance with Mrs. Lancaster now—see much of her, I mean—you would soon find out a thousand differences between her and any lady you know.’
‘At any rate she is prettier than most of them.’
‘Very pretty indeed; there I quite agree with you. She has that immense advantage. And as you say, she is not ashamed of her parents—which one likes, of course.’
Dick had not much more to say in favour of his old friend; it was, indeed, a subject on which neither of them could talk very openly, and they were both willing to drop it.
Kate Northcote was vexed with herself, and yet could not help feeling anxious and unhappy. She would have given worlds to turn Dick's thoughts away from this woman, who might have her good points, but was, she felt sure, ambitious, designing, and unscrupulous. What could be more natural than that she should try to renew the old flirtation? And Kate could not feel sure about Dick. As a lad he had been sensitive to any flattery and attention, and she could not think that his character was entirely changed, strengthened as it might be. In fact, she thought him very much the same; his old acquaintances, his old amusements, all had their charm and interest for him still.
That afternoon Mrs. Lancaster was sitting alone in the drawing-room at Rose Cottage. The little room was quite in shade, for the sun-blinds were down, and there was an almost overpowering scent of roses. The stillness and sleepiness that belong to some Sunday afternoons were there in full strength.
Flora made no pretence to read, or do anything but doze, as she leaned back in the coolest and shadiest corner. She liked to sit in this room, which was quite of her own creating. To her father and mother it was a sort of china-shop, in which they could never be comfortable, though all the screens and trays and ivory ornaments had been brought home by Captain Cardew in his sea-going days. They were very willing, however, that Flora should be a lady, and have this room to herself; they very much preferred staying in the dark parlour on the other side of the passage, where they sat opposite each other in shabby old leather armchairs, and where Captain Cardew was allowed to smoke. Mrs. Cardew, who was weak, was sometimes torn between her admiration for her daughter and her love for her husband, and would take her work and chat with Flora in the drawing-room. But Flora would presently begin to write a letter, or go off into one of her dreaming fits, and then Mrs. Cardew got fidgety; and then her husband called her, and she jumped up and hurried away quite readily.
The parlour had one decided advantage over the drawing-room: it commanded the garden-gate and the bit of stony lane beyond it. And that afternoon Mrs. Cardew, who was looking out as usual, was startled by the sudden appearance of a gentleman at the gate. She stared a moment, to be sure that he was coming in, and then hurried out to warn her daughter. It would never do for Flora to be caught in a sound nap, such as the Captain was enjoying at this moment.
But something had already roused Flora, and she was sitting awake with her hands before her, ready to receive any number of visitors.
‘Dick Northcote, I suppose,’ said she.
‘Well, I don't know,’ said Mrs. Cardew. ‘He has grown a beard, and that does change people so—’
‘I told you he had. Where are you going, mother?
‘Why, dear, I'm not fit to be seen. I took off my best cap.’
‘Never mind. He won't know anything about that. Stay and see him.’
‘But, dear—’
‘Yes, you must. You look charming.’
Mrs. Cardew, of course, obeyed, but she had some vanity of her own, and was truly sorry to be caught in her old cap. She had been very pretty once—prettier than Flora, the Captain said—and even now, though she had grown stout, and her fair skin had reddened, no one could deny that she was a good-looking woman. A compliment from Flora always made her happy, and she believed she might be looking worse, but still the cap was a trial.
Dick's entrance and his friendly greeting soon made her forget it. She had always been fond of him, when he was a good-for-nothing boy, and had wondered how his relations could be so cruel as to send him away from them. Whenever the home atmosphere had been gloomy, Dick had known himself sure of a welcome at Rose Cottage, and of all the petting that Mrs. Cardew could add to her daughter's smiles. In those days the Captain still went to sea, and the women had it all their own way. Dick would have been rather ungrateful, perhaps, if he had forgotten those pleasant stolen hours, when he had never troubled himself to think of Flora's motives, and had really believed, sometimes, that she liked him better than anybody else.
Mrs. Cardew hardly realised that this was the same Dick, this broad-shouldered person who sat and talked to her so agreeably about St. Denys and Morebay, and everybody in them, while Flora looked on, and only put a word in now and then. In old times, when Flora was in the room, her mother had been quite accustomed to being nobody, but Dick seemed to have brought better
Mrs. Cardew liked him so much, however, that she ventured on an allusion to those old times. She wondered, now, if Mr. Northcote had forgotten the rose-tree he planted under this window. And she had been thinking to herself how fond he used to be of cocoanut biscuits: did he like them still? Flora frowned, and Dick laughed, colouring slightly.
‘I am afraid that is one of the innocent tastes that disappear as one grows older. I wish I was a schoolboy again, if it was only for the sake of your biscuits. I believe one really loses, in life, more than one gains—don't you think so?’ turning suddenly to Flora.
‘I'm not sure that I do,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘No—one learns to understand things—to value them rightly. I don't know why I should answer your question so seriously, though. You were talking about biscuits.’
‘So we were,’ said Dick. ‘They are not so good as they used to be, Mrs. Cardew, are they?’
Mrs. Cardew's opinion was that you might say that of most things. They got dearer and worse, and very soon even St. Denys would not be a cheap place to live in.
‘If it wasn't for Captain Cardew's being connected with the dockyard, I can't be sure that we should stay here,’ said she. ‘Only my daughter likes it, and, of course, we consider her.’
‘Now, mother, you know it would break your heart to leave it,’ said Mrs. Lancaster. ‘Dear old St. Denys! There is no place like it, I think.’
‘Well, I suppose we shall end our days here,’ said Mrs. Cardew. ‘I'll go and see if the Captain is awake. The best of us are sleepy on Sunday afternoons, Mr. Northcote.’
‘Then of course the Captain is,’ said Dick, getting up to open the door. ‘Don't disturb him for me.’
‘Ah, that was just like your old nonsense,’ said Mrs. Cardew, with an affectionate sort of laugh.
Dick shut the door after her, came back to the window, and sat down rather nearer Mrs. Lancaster than before. She looked at him, and smiled. There was always a sort of understanding about Flora, a native genius which told her other people's thoughts. It gave her a curious power of attraction. Dick was not at all in love with her now, and was criticising her all the time; but yet, now and then, an unreasonable feeling came over him of being on the edge of a precipice, and obliged to jump down. It was an absurd feeling; he was quite aware of it, and supposed it was a relic of his old Flora-worship.
‘It was very kind of you to call so soon,’ she said, after a moment's pause.
‘Not at all,’ said Dick; ‘I have been wishing to come: but I was obliged to go to Pensand and other places.’
‘Pensand!’ said Flora, seeming interested. ‘Have you seen General Hawke's ward—this pretty Miss Ashley?’
‘Yes. We travelled down from town together, as it happened.
‘And is she so pretty?’
Dick hesitated. ‘Well—you would not say so—and I don't think I should. She has very fine eyes.’
‘They are everything to some people.’
‘Did the General tell you about her? He seems very fond of her.’
‘Dear me, no! The General—how should he? I never see him.’
‘Ah?—I didn't know,’ said Dick, rather surprised at the sudden sharpness of her manner.
For a minute or two the conversation was checked; then Dick, finding it dull, moved to the window and looked out under the sun-blind into the garden.
‘It's a shame to shut out your view,’ he said. ‘Ah, here is my rose! What glorious flowers! May I have one?’
‘This is your size, I think,’ said Mrs. Lancaster, cutting off a red bud.
‘Thank you; exactly,’ said Dick, arranging it in his button-hole.
She looked hard at him for a moment. What a change from ten years ago! Then their eyes met, and she knew that he was thinking of the same thing.
She bent forward to look into the garden, but almost immediately turned back into the room, and sat down in her old place.
Dick stood leaning against the window, with a slight feeling of discomfort; for a moment the silence was awkward.
‘Well, do you find St. Denys bearable, now you are come back to it?’ she said, in her usual voice, which was quiet and sweet—for there was nothing strong-minded about Flora.
‘Bearable! I think as you do—there is no place like it.’
‘Indeed! you are very constant. You don't wish yourself anywhere else?’
‘Never. It is home to me.’
‘That is odd,’ said Flora; ‘but I must confess that I have the same feeling; when I was away I was not happy. All the sunshine seemed to have stayed here. What fun we used to have when we were young!’
Dick felt sorry for Lancaster, who had taken his bride away into the north of England. But he was rather glad that those old times were to be turned into a joke. She was right, of course; it was fun, though
‘Fun to you and death to me,’ he said solemnly. ‘How can you laugh? What a life you used to lead me! I have often wondered since how you could be so cruel.’
‘Perhaps we had better not talk about it, as your memory is so good,’ said Mrs. Lancaster. ‘But I don't think we need owe each other a grudge on the subject.’
‘On the contrary—’ said Dick. He pulled himself up short, being determined not to say anything foolish. It would not do at all to get into another scrape with Flora, pretty as she was; he could not inflict the Cardew connection on his aunt, or on himself either, were she ten times prettier. Still, a little gentle flirtation was amusing, and could do no harm; he was quite determined to be drawn no further than he chose to go. So he asked Mrs. Lancaster if she still spent her evenings in the combe. The question had a strange effect upon her; she changed colour suddenly, gave him an odd quick glance, and looked away, nervously playing with her watch-chain.
‘The combe? O, yes, I go there sometimes. But I don't much care for it. It gets damp in the evening, and as one grows older one thinks about that, Mr. Northcote.’
‘Perhaps one does, if one is very wise,’ said Dick. He was looking at her in some wonder; her discomposure was so evident, and she did not seem to be able to recover herself at once.
‘I'm sorry you have given it up,’ he said, after a pause. ‘To me the combe is one of the charms of St. Denys. And the lane going down to it—I wonder how many people have talked nonsense in that lane.’
‘Hundreds, no doubt,’ said Flora quietly. But there
Their talk flagged. Flora's spirits and smiles had deserted her, and her visitor began to feel that he had better go.
Mrs. Cardew had not reappeared. She and the Captain had probably wit enough to know that they were not wanted.
Dick wished his old friend good-bye, and left her, without any hint of meeting again; but his thoughts about her were certainly not quite indifferent. His aunt, though she knew very well where he had been, heard no particulars of the visit.
Miss Wrench was gone, and Mabel was left alone with her guardian. For the first few days she was happy enough rambling about the garden, or finding her own occupations in the house. These were not many, and soon resolved themselves into reading the few novels she could find, strumming her school-pieces, not too correctly, on the old piano, and ‘grounding’ some wool-work that she had begun in London. In the evening the General taught her to play cards; through the day she did not see much of him. He had a small study, away from the other rooms, where he spent most of his time, and where Mabel understood that he did not want her company. He did not take her out in the carriage or in the boat, and he told her rather gravely that she must not go outside the gates without her maid. Mabel did not much like her maid, and under these conditions preferred staying inside the gates. But she liked the General; his manner to her was perfectly kind, and he and all the servants treated her with much respect and consideration. Mabel was amused sometimes by his little formalities, and the compliments he paid her.
But after the first week Pensand Castle began to seem rather a lonely place. No visitors appeared, except Anthony Strange. He, to be sure, was a host in himself, and the long pleasant talks with him were something to look forward to. In the second week he was at Pensand three times, and looked rather oddly at Mabel when she told him she had been nowhere, and that she could not help wishing to wander about the country.
That very day, before he saw her, he had been asking the General to bring her to Carweston to see his mother. Her guardian answered that some day he hoped to do so, but that at present the poor child was so shy and nervous, even with himself, that he could not put her through the ordeal of making acquaintance with any more strangers.
‘A little later, Anthony, when she really feels herself at home among us,’ said General Hawke. ‘Your mother will understand, I'm sure.’
‘You don't think it is the want of society at all?’ hinted Anthony, screwing up his face, as he did when anything displeased him.
‘No, no. Trust me, my dear fellow,’ said the General.
So Anthony gave it up for the time, and made no mischief between the guardian and his ward when she told him a different story. Mabel had now been at Pensand for a fortnight of glorious summer weather. At last, one afternoon, she was driven in from the garden by a shower. She came in at the window of the large drawing-room, laid down her hat there, and went through to the little room to fetch the book she was reading. The door stood half open; she pushed it gently; and passed in without any noise. Then she started and stood still.
In a very soft and comfortable armchair opposite, where she had enjoyed many an idle hour's reading, a young man was sitting with his head thrown back, fast asleep. It was a dark handsome face, pale and colourless, with a long black moustache. His arms were folded loosely, and Mabel noticed his hands; they were small and delicate, with taper fingers like a woman's. Mabel remembered the photograph in the book on the table, and knew him at once. It was Randal Hawke, the General's only son.
The next moment he opened his eyes, stared at her for a moment, then got up and bowed to her.
‘Pray forgive me,’ he said. ‘I did not expect a lady visitor in my den.’
‘Is this your den?’ said Mabel, making a step backwards.
‘Yes. Don't go, please. So my father took the credit of it to himself, did he? No, I couldn't stand the mustiness of the rest of the house, so I tried to civilise this one room. I see I did right, by your coming in so naturally.’
‘I had no idea you were here,’ said Mabel. ‘I only came for a book.’
‘Yes. Here you find the books that please you best. We may as well know each other. Let me introduce Randal Hawke to—Miss Ashley.’
Mabel smiled, but rather gravely; she did not quite like or understand his manner. It was as odd an introduction as that to Anthony in the field, but it did not seem likely to be the beginning of a friendship. Randal only looked at her curiously: there was no kindly interest about him. In fact, she did not like him, and was sorry he had come; a strange conclusion for a girl, especially in her circumstances. The handsome son of the house would not have expected to find himself unwelcome.
Mabel took up her book and retreated into the drawing-room, where Randal followed her immediately.
‘Do you know, Miss Ashley, you quite took me by surprise,’ he said. ‘I heard you were out, and I told them to let me know when you came in, that I might present myself in proper form. I did not mean you to find me snoring in your precincts. My only excuse is, that I was travelling all night.’
‘I am very sorry I disturbed you,’ said Mabel quietly.
‘Not at all. I am delighted. We shall make acquaintance all the sooner.’
Mabel had placed herself in one of the corners of a large old-fashioned sofa. He sat down at the other end, looking at her for a minute in silence. There was plenty to criticise, and not much to admire, in poor Mabel. Perhaps she felt this herself, for there was a bright flush of pain in her cheeks; it had been a trial to limp along the length of the drawing-room, he following her closely. Randal looked, and pulled his moustache, till she lifted up her head and met his eyes, steadily. Then he changed his position, lounged back into the corner, and began to talk.
‘How do you like this abode of rats and owls? Has my father done anything to amuse you?’
‘I am very happy. General Hawke is most kind. And I think it is a lovely old place,’ said Mabel.
‘I am sorry to hear all that, for I was going to offer you my sympathy. Seriously, though—you must be awfully dull.’
‘Why must I?’
‘Doesn't it stand to reason? With nobody to speak to but my father! I don't want to speak ill of him, but he is old, and that means a great deal. Candidly, do you know, I think Colonel Ashley made a great mistake when he chose my father to be your guardian. He is old. He doesn't understand that young people want to live and to see life. He saw plenty of it when he was young, but he forgets all that. It was very nice of Colonel Ashley, you know—showed great confidence—but it was a mistake.’
‘But I tell you,’ said Mabel earnestly, ‘I am very happy.’
‘You are very good, I think,’ said Randal, smiling.
‘O, no, I'm not! Did you know papa?’
The General had never mentioned her father's name.
Randal, by speaking of him so frankly, scored a point for himself at once. All the depth of Mabel's character, the grief, the objectless love, rose up at that name, and Randal Hawke was surprised, as far as anything could surprise a man of his experience, at the expression of the eyes that gazed at him.
‘Some years ago I went to India,’ he said, ‘and I saw him at Madras. I was only a lad, but old enough to admire him, and to know what a splendid soldier he was. Such a fine-looking fellow too. But I daresay you have a portrait of him.’
‘Yes, but— Tell me more about him.’
Randal brushed up his memory very successfully, and told the lonely girl a long history of her father's life at Madras, his friends, and his occupations. Mabel listened intently. At last she said,
‘I was to have gone out to him that very year.’
‘Ah, you must have been tired of school!’
‘I was,’ said Mabel, with a long sigh.
‘Then I shall take a little credit to myself. I told my father that he had no business to leave you so long at school—that you were grown up, and it was time that sort of thing should end. Was I right?’
‘Yes, indeed. But how did you know? you never saw me.’
‘I had thought about you, though. And I understood a good deal better than my father what your feelings were likely to be. I am glad I was right. And I'm glad you like Pensand; but that won't last long. You think so, but you are mistaken. I suppose you like it because it is pretty.’
‘Because it is beautiful.’
‘When you get to my time of life, you will think nothing so boring as a pretty place. To stand and stare, and hear stupid people going into raptures. There are worse people, though, who take it all in with a rapt
‘Why?’ said Mabel.
‘Because they are all humbugs. They study the temper of the times, read reviews, and then write and paint whatever will make them fashionable and bring them money. I don't think you need look shocked. Everything in the world is carried on in the same way. There is no honour, no true genius. We must do without them.’
‘If I believed you, I should be very sorry,’ said Mabel.
‘Of course you don't believe me, living here in paradise. I spend most of my time in London, unfortunately,’ said Randal. ‘There every one does what is best for himself.’
‘Or worst,’ Mabel thought dimly to herself, but she did not feel able to argue with any one so wise.
The rain had cleared away, and the sun was shining again on the lawn. Then a tall figure crossed over from the shrubberies, and approached the window with long swift steps.
‘Hallo, Don Quixote!’ said Mr. Hawke. ‘He makes himself at home.’
Some further mutterings escaped Mabel's ears.
‘Mr. Strange! I am so glad,’ she said, getting up and moving forward to meet Anthony.
‘How are you to-day?’ said Anthony, seizing her hand in both his, and bending down towards her with evident delight. ‘I have been looking for you in the garden. Don't you want some roses? Come out and gather them; it is new life after the rain.’
‘Sorry to interrupt you; but are you the gardener?’ said Randal, raising himself slowly from the sofa.
‘Ah—Randal! what are you doing here?’ said Mr. Strange, holding out his hand.
‘I may put the same question—with a better right, don't you think?’ said Randal lazily.
They were an odd contrast. Anthony tall, plain, and awkward, with loose unclerical clothes which might have been made by the little tailor in St. Denys; Randal much shorter, but graceful and well-proportioned, with his handsome clear-cut face, perfect dress, and air of cool self-possession. Anthony looked from him to Mabel, and reddened slightly as he answered, ‘Well, you are not wrong there. Your father has given me leave, sir, to walk about Pensand as I please, and to make any number of short cuts. I don't show them to anybody else, except Miss Ashley. Do you disapprove?’
‘I do—of the exception, and the whole affair. But it is my father's business, not mine, so pray walk about the garden as you please. How are you, and how is Mrs. Strange?’
‘That is the sort of quarrel I like,’ said Anthony to Mabel. ‘First knock a man down, and then ask how he feels. My mother is not very well, thank you, Randal. And the General, how's he? Does he like your coming down to box our ears all round?’
‘Can't tell you, for I have not seen him yet. You know more about him than I do.’
‘You will find him in very good spirits,’ said Anthony quietly; then turning to Mabel, ‘Will you come into the garden? Everything is green and fresh, and the birds want to tell you how they are enjoying themselves.’
‘No, Miss Ashley, don't go into that damp garden,’ said Randal; ‘you will catch cold. Stay here and talk to me.’
Mabel glanced from one to the other; they both seemed waiting for her decision, and both looked as grave as if a good deal depended on it. She did not hesitate
‘I should like to go into the garden,’ she said; at which they both smiled, Anthony brightly, Randal disagreeably.
‘Well, you will forgive me for staying behind,’ he said. ‘You have a good escort; he knows the place better than I do, and I have to speak to my father.’
‘I think the General is in his study,’ said Mabel.
‘Thank you; I shall find him.’
He stood at the window as they walked across the lawn, looking after them with a doubtful unpleasant expression. He heard Mabel laughing, freely and happily, at some remark of Anthony's. He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
General Hawke was half asleep over a book in the dark little room he called his study. His son's entrance roused him effectually, and he seemed thoroughly glad to see him. But the motive of Randal's visit was a mystery.
‘A flying visit, eh? Why don't you stay a week?’ said the General. ‘What is the use of coming for a day?’
‘I may come for a week, or more, by and by,’ said Randal. ‘But down here you want looking up some-times, it strikes me. I find that other people take my place.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it is not quite nice to see that fellow Strange walking about the place as if it was his own, entertaining our guests—asking me what I'm doing here. If I had not been better-tempered than most people, I should have given him a cross answer.’
‘Poor Anthony!’ said the General, laughing.
‘He is an object of pity, no doubt. But I don't know whether you will feel quite so much compassion for him, when he walks off with Mabel Ashley.’
‘Nonsense! He is twice her age, to begin with. And she laughs at him, sees his absurdities keenly enough, I can tell you. Anthony amuses her beyond measure. Nobody but you would think of such a thing.’
‘Nobody but me! And why me? Because I have seen enough of the world to know that the people who seem most unlikely are just those who thwart your plans, and thrust themselves into all sorts of inconvenient places. Anthony does not think himself old, I can tell you. He thinks himself a good-looking young fellow, fit to enter the lists with anybody. It was plain enough just now.’
‘Is he here now?’
‘Of course. I suspect he is here every day. Walks in at the drawing-room window, and asks Miss Ashley to come into the garden. Off she goes, evidently liking his company better than mine.’
‘It would never have occurred to me to be jealous of old Anthony,’ said the General, with a shade of contempt. ‘Now, Dick Northcote—I thought there was—some danger there.’
‘Not a bit of it. You told me about the journey. Unless Dick is immensely altered, he is not the man to be attracted by that girl.’
‘Even if he was, she is prejudiced against him,’ said General Hawke. ‘I told her the Cardew story and so on. He has only been here once, with Miss Northcote, and then Mabel and he were as cool as possible. It is more likely perhaps that his old love will lay hold of him again. She keeps her looks wonderfully.’
‘Do you think so?’ said Randal carelessly. He was looking out of the window, and gnawing his moustache. There was a minute of silence.
‘By the bye, Randal,’ said his father, ‘how did her portrait get into such a very conspicuous place in your
‘By the portrait, or its position?’
‘The portrait,’ said General Hawke, raising his eyes with a shade of wonder.
‘Well, it is uncommonly pretty. I bought it at Morebay, and rather liked to look at it, when it was new. I suppose that was why I put it opposite my own. It need not stay there.’
‘Well, it does not really signify in the least. Perhaps it would be better not—a person in that position, so well known about here. The most innocent things give rise to remark—better avoided. Servants, for instance.’
‘The servants are not likely to make remarks on me or my affairs; they know me too well for that,’ said Randal, a faint shade of colour deepening his dark skin.
‘Well, no, they are not,’ assented the General. ‘What do you think of Mabel?’
‘Very plain. Quite odd-looking.’
‘Perhaps so. I should not speak so strongly, however. It is a face that lights up. I have seen her look quite handsome. To me the great drawback is the poor thing's lameness.’
‘Very awkward, and she feels it herself.’
‘You have not had time yet, I suppose,’ said the General, turning round in his chair, and fixing his eyes on his son, ‘to decide whether you can carry out that idea. I see no objection—I really like the girl, and I believe her looks improve on acquaintance.’
‘There is nothing commonplace about her, at any rate,’ said Randal. ‘And my mind was made up beforehand. I shall not alter it. Can't afford to have any fancies about the matter. I wish she was fair, and I wish she didn't limp. I wish she was more ornamental, but one can't have everything. I must live, and must keep Pensand, I suppose, if I can.’
‘Certainly,’ said the General. He sighed, and looked quite haggard with care and anxiety. ‘Ashley ought to think it a very good use for his money.’
‘He's dead, so it doesn't matter what he thinks,’ said Randal.
His father took no notice of this sentiment, but went on after a moment,
‘As to the ornamental part of the business, it is only necessary that one should do that. Most people think you good-looking enough, don't they?’
‘Yes, I quite agree with them, and I hope Miss Ashley will. Look here, father. You are managing her very well, except that you might be more careful about Strange. Keep on the same tack. Let her see that we are the only friends she has—make her look forward to my coming for amusement. Unless any other nonsense is put into her head, I shall be all right. What a stupid arrangement it is, that one can't have a woman's money without herself into the bargain.’
‘My dear fellow, you are rather too strong,’ said the General. ‘I tell you she is a very nice girl.’
‘There are a great many nice girls in the world that one doesn't want to marry. However, if Fate will have it so—’ said Randal, who was standing on the hearthrug, admiring himself in the looking-glass.
‘You mean to behave well to her, I hope,’ said his ather rather sharply.
‘Like an angel. I consider that there is nothing so vulgar as to behave ill to your wife.’
For a good many days after that Sunday, Dick saw hardly anything of Mrs. Lancaster. Once he stopped and talked to her at the gate, when she was gathering roses. Another day they walked down Fore-street together as far as the post-office, where she posted a very thick letter. Miss Northcote was surprised and thankful that there were no appointments for evening walks, or boating, or sitting in the combe, and began to think she had done Mrs. Lancaster injustice; she did not seem inclined to run after Dick at all. The old Captain met him in Morebay one day, and asked him to come in and see them that evening, but fortunately Dick had another engagement. He was everything to his aunt, and she was quite happy. All their old friends in the neighbourhood were anxious to see the returned wanderer. Dick was ready to go everywhere, liked it all the better if his aunt went with him, and delighted the old friends by his good-humour, pleasantness, and intelligence. They found it hard to believe that this was the unsatisfactory lad of ten years ago.
On the day of Randal Hawke's visit to Pensand, it happened that Dick had walked over in the morning to Carweston, and had lunched with Mrs. Strange and Anthony. Then he and Anthony had walked together a good part of the way back, parting at a corner in the road, where Anthony struck off across the fields towards Pensand. Soon afterwards the rain came down sharply, and Dick turned into a cottage by the roadside, where an old woman lived who had been his nurse. Her garden
Mrs. Penny's two little rooms were museums of old oak and old china; her late husband, as she told Dick, had been fond of ‘picking up they things.’
‘Bless you, he bought’ em all down to Morebay,’ said she. ‘A lot o' rubbish, Master Dick, but it pleased him, poor man.’
‘If you were to sell them to the right people,’ said Dick, ‘you would find them anything but rubbish. Mrs. Strange would buy them all in a minute.’
‘No,’ said she, ‘I won't sell ‘em. It pleased him, poor man. It'd vex him to know as I didn't care about ‘em, and he was always a kind soul.’
With these words Mrs. Penny went into a cupboard, from which she presently brought out her best tea-things. Dick found that he was expected to drink tea with her, and took it philosophically, though the rain had cleared off and the sky was blue again. There was something of the schoolboy left in him still; to this and his thorough good nature Mrs. Penny owed one of the pleasantest hours she had spent for many a year, hearing from Master Dick's own mouth a history of his life in New Zealand, with adventures which made her tremble. But he was none the worse for it all, that was a comfort.
‘Well,’ said she, as he was going away, ‘Mrs. Lancaster told me as you'd grown into ever such a handsome man. She's gone off a good bit, ain't she, Master Dick? What a pretty girl she was, to be sure! I often see her. She walks along this road pretty constant. She likes the view down below there, so she tells me. But I believe she's got a young man somewheres out this way.’
‘You shouldn't gossip, nurse,’ said Dick. The old
‘I saw her talking to somebody, though, one afternoon,’ Mrs. Penny persisted. ‘It was near a month ago. When they saw me turn the corner, he walked into one o' them fields, and she came on as if nothing was the matter. I couldn't see him well for the distance, and my sight not being what it was. But he weren't near such a man as you be, Master Dick.’
‘All right, nurse. Whoever he might be, it is no business of yours or mine.’
As Dick went off down the road, he was troubled with a feeling that something disagreeable had happened. He tried to reason himself out of it. Flora Lancaster was nothing to him. If she was entangled with somebody else, so much the better, perhaps. Aunt Kate, at least, would be glad.
By the time Dick had walked a quarter of a mile, he had convinced himself that Mrs. Penny's gossip was the best news he could have heard. Still, though he might whistle as he walked, and congratulate himself on the pleasantness of things in general, and the beauty of this view in particular, the fact remained that he was in a very bad temper, angry with himself, angry with Flora, angry with the old woman and her tea, and the nonsense she had poured out after it.
The road grew more beautiful, but he had scarcely eyes to see what lay before him. On the right there were high green banks sprinkled with heather; on the left a low stone wall running along the edge of the road, on which every shade of colour was to be found—ivy, fern, varied lichens, and in one place a blaze of brilliantly yellow stone-crop. Clouds were passing over the purple distance, but the sun just caught this, and deepened it into a wall of glowing gold. Beyond, the ground went
Dick stopped at the turn in the road which brought this view before his eyes, but not entirely for the sake of its beauty. In the full sunlight, close to the mass of yellow stone-crop, a woman was standing, looking over the wall. There was something about her familiar to Dick, and as he walked on and drew nearer he saw that his first impression was right: it was Flora Lancaster. She turned round and faced him. Her colour was unusually bright, and her eyes shone as they used to shine when she was a girl; but as Dick came up, he thought there was something odd and nervous in her manner.
‘Did you ever see anything more lovely than this view?’ she said, turning her face towards it again. ‘Those hills, and the shadows on the water. I can't tear myself away.’
‘Are you very fond of this road?’ said Dick, leaning on the wall, with his elbows planted in the stone-crop. ‘It is splendid, certainly, and you made half the view, standing here in the foreground. Do you often walk this way?’
‘Sometimes—but I don't walk much, you know.’
‘You prefer it to the Combe?’
‘Yes. One gets more fresh air here,’ said Flora, gazing up the road. Dick found her face more interesting than the hills and the Mora. He looked, and wondered what was the meaning of the strange excitement in it. After a minute, she looked at him, saw that he was interested, and smiled rather sadly.
‘My ways are a puzzle to you, Mr. Northcote, are they not? You wonder what brings me out for solitary walks. Don't you know the luxury of being alone?’
‘I can't say I do,’ said Dick. ‘I hate nothing so much as being alone.’
‘O, I love it. That shows how different your life and mine have been.’
Dick was forgetting his ill temper. It occurred to him that now was the time for finding out whether there was any truth in Mrs. Penny's gossip, and whether Flora was a humbug when she talked about solitary walks. A point-blank question would settle it, he thought.
‘I have seen nothing of you this last week,’ he said. ‘Are you waiting here for anybody, or may I walk back with you?’
She was gazing up the road again, but there was no change in her face as she answered, with a short sigh,
‘Who should I be waiting for? O, yes, I shall be very glad of your company.’
For a minute or two more they lingered by the wall. Then she seemed tired of standing there, and they strolled slowly down the road. She was rather silent till they came to a lonely cottage standing under the hill. She asked Dick to wait for her a moment, whilst she spoke to the woman there. She was in the cottage two or three minutes; and when she came out, and
‘Have you been to Pensand again?’ she asked Dick presently.
‘No. “Well, I never cared much for the General. He always was a martinet with everybody but his son, who would not stand it. I don't think it a pleasant house to go to. I like to be made welcome.’
‘Ah, you always did,’ said Flora, after a moment's pause.? How does Miss Ashley get on there, I wonder?’
‘Very well, I think. The General seems fond of her. Anthony Strange goes there a great deal, and admires her immensely. You know Anthony?’
‘By sight. He is very odd-looking; but I suppose he is good. Admires her! What do you mean by that?’
‘O, likes her—thinks her pretty and clever and a nice girl altogether.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘No. Why, he is old enough to be her father. He will never marry, if you mean that,’ said Dick, beginning to laugh. ‘The idea is ridiculous. Besides—’
‘What?’
‘I don't know. Nothing!’
‘I believe you are a little bit touched yourself with those splendid eyes!’
‘Not in the least. Who said they were splendid? Don't, please. I could not stand that—from you!’
‘O, nonsense !’ said Flora. ‘Don't be silly! Well, I do like my friends to marry happily, and to be happy—no matter how.’
‘Are you happy yourself?’ said Dick; and repented the next moment.
‘Don't you think that is rather an odd question?’ she said gently.
‘Yes. You must forgive me.’
‘We really are old friends,’ said Mrs. Lancaster; ‘and we can't talk like strangers, I see. I must let you say what you like. Yes; I forgive you. I am happy now and then, or think myself so. I try to be happy always, but I suppose no one succeeds in that. After my losses it would be strange if I was.’
There was something in this speech that silenced Dick effectually. After being told that he might say what he liked, it became impossible to say anything. He was very much touched by Flora's soft regretful tone and the confidence she seemed ready to give him, but he suddenly lost the power of expressing himself. She did not carry on the subject, and their talk became stupid and uninteresting to a degree. Dick did not feel inclined to meet the blue eyes that appealed to him so often; even his flirting powers seemed to have entirely deserted him, and he felt as foolish as if he was once more eighteen. But when they had reached St. Denys, and he had wished Mrs. Lancaster good-bye at her gate, he turned back, after going a few steps up the hill, and found himself at the gate again. She was not far off, for she had stopped to gather a spray of jessamine from the garden-wall.
‘Flora!’ said Dick, half under his breath. She started and looked round.
‘Mr. Northcote!’ with a slight laugh. ‘I did not tell you—’
‘Never mind,’ said Dick, as she came back to the gate. ‘There is something I want to read to you. Will you meet me to-morrow evening in the combe?’
Flora looked at him with grave surprise, and yet the faint shadow of a smile. She did not answer him instantly.
‘What have I said or done, I wonder, to make you ask me that? I don't see how I have deserved it. I should like to know.’
‘Is it such a very strange thing to ask an old friend?’ said Dick. ‘I did not mean to offend you.’
‘I am not offended. But you forget that we are both ten years older, and that what was very safe nonsense with a boy of eighteen—though I believe he did mean what he said, and was not simply amusing himself, as—Don't answer me, please. I am sorry to say this, but I think you are forgetting yourself a little.’
‘Then I can only beg your pardon, Mrs. Lancaster, most sincerely,’ said Dick, colouring crimson.
‘No, Dick. I tell you I am not angry. Only don't bother me. Why can't you be natural and friendly, without all this nonsense? Meet you in the combe, indeed! I am not quite young and foolish enough for that.’
Dick had wisdom enough left to let her laugh it off, and not to say the mad words that were in his mind. It was almost too much to be accused of amusing himself. Any truth that there might have been in the accusation was melting away before Flora's distracting prettiness.
‘You don't understand me,’ he said; ‘but; it is because you won't. Perhaps I have made fool enough of myself for one day. So good-bye. Do give me that.’
He held out his hand for the jessamine. She gave it to him at once.
‘Has Miss Northcote any in her garden?’ she said. ‘Shall I get you some more?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Dick; and this time he fairly did walk away up the hill.
That evening, for the first time, Dick behaved to his aunt with a want of consideration. He scarcely spoke at dinner, and afterwards lounged in the window, staring out with an intensity which made Miss Northcote ask whether he was watching for anything.
‘Ah, come here. You have first-rate eyes,’ said Dick.
‘Do you see those two figures going down into the combe? Who are they, I wonder?’
‘A man and a woman foolish things,’ said Miss Northcote, leaning over his shoulder. ‘Impossible to say, from this distance, whether they belong to our acquaintance. Most likely not.’
‘It might be Mrs. Lancaster, though.’
‘Why, Dick! Poor thing! Who could be with her?’
‘I don't know.’
‘Then it is scarcely friendly or manly of you to suggest it,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘Mrs. Lancaster would not be obliged to you.’
Dick made no answer.
‘They are sitting on the rocks,’ he said presently.
‘My dear Dick, I call this morbid curiosity. What are those people to yon? Come away from the window and talk to me.’
But Dick lingered there, till the gathering twilight made it impossible to see anything that moved in the depths of the combe. Then he turned away from the window and came to the table, winking his eyes in the light of his aunt's lamp.
‘I'm good for nothing to-night. I have a headache,’ he said. ‘Sorry to be so useless. I'm going out for a stroll, and shall come in better, perhaps.’
‘Don't rout out your friends in the combe: that would be too hard-hearted,’ said Miss Northcote.
‘I prefer the roads at this time of night,’ answered Dick.
He left his aunt a little anxious and uneasy: she could not help fancying that there was more in this than he chose her to understand. Perhaps she would have been sorry for Dick, if she had known what a horrible state of mind he was in. There was no peace for him in the golden and purple twilight that brooded over rock and river. He was obliged to confess to himself that
He strolled slowly down the hill, past Captain Car-dew's house, which was all silent, on over the railway. bridge, and down the shaded lane which led towards the combe. He met nobody. The distant sounds in the village and on the river only made the silence up here seem more deep. Now and then the softest little wind stirred in the fir-trees at the corner, and brought faint sweet scents from the hedges and the gardens below. Dick did not go far down the lane. After lingering a few minutes near the head of it, staring into its darker recesses, where low trees stretched their boughs across it, and honeysuckle twined itself from side to side, he turned and walked slowly back. Then he stopped again.
This time it was not all silence. Footsteps were coming up the lane, and with them a low murmur of
Dick saw two dark figures, standing very close together, but so much in the shadow that he could not distinguish them well.
One of them spoke in a whisper, and a man's voice answered, ‘No; I must see you home.’
Dick fancied that he knew the voice, but could not tell how, or to whom it belonged, and those two walked on immediately, over the bridge and up the hill. Dick did not feel inclined to follow them, though by doing so he might perhaps have resolved his doubts. He lingered on the bridge with his cigar for about ten minutes longer, then wondered what he was doing there, and advanced a few paces up the hill in a slow objectless way. He was scarcely off the bridge, however, when he met a man walking rather quickly down towards the station, which lay not much more than a hundred yards below. He too was smoking, carried a stick in his hand, and was in the fullest light of the stars and the summer evening—a young well-dressed man, pale, with a black moustache, and his hat pulled forward over his eyes. They met in the middle of the road, and Dick stared at him so hard as to attract his attention, half stopping and turning round, as if he could not believe his eyes.
‘Do you wish to speak to me?’ said the other man, staring at Dick in his turn.
‘I must be right, I think,’ said Dick. ‘You are Randal Hawke?’
‘You have the advantage of me.’
‘Don't you know me? I'm Northcote.”
‘What, Dick! How are you? Very glad to see you,’ said Randal, quite ready to shake hands. ‘Surprised, though, to find you loafing about the lanes at night. I heard you had left all your bad ways behind at the Antipodes.’
‘Who told you that?’ said Dick.
‘Different friends of yours. Did anybody know you when you came home? The climate out there must be favourable. How is Miss Northcote?’
‘Very well, thanks.’
‘Did you find that you had left all the pretty faces behind in the old country? Well, did Flora forgive you for deserting her, when you told her that? How do you find her? Still the belle of the West?’
‘What do you think about it?’ said Dick.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You are as good a judge as I am.’
‘You are come back in a very nice frame of mind, Dick. You always were an amiable fellow. Walk down with me to the station; my train will be here directly.’
‘Come, as to Mrs. Lancaster,’ said Dick, ‘you perhaps know as well as I do. I'm not mistaken, am I, in thinking that you walked up this hill with her, ten minutes ago?’
Randal looked at him for a moment curiously. There was an odd tone in Dick's voice. In size and strength he certainly had the advantage.
‘Are you mad? or what in the world are you talking about?’ said Randal, in his coolest tone. ‘Or do you want to quarrel with me?’
‘Not at all,’ said Dick; ‘but I should like that little piece of information.’
‘Then you can be easily satisfied. I have been spending a few hours at Pensand, and have just walked down to the train. The old man there doesn't like sending his horses out at night, and I always was a dutiful son. There! I would not have cleared myself of the frightful charge to everybody; but I can feel for a friend's anxieties.’
‘It was not you, then?’ said Dick thoughtfully.
‘Nor Mrs. Lancaster either, probably. She might be rather angry at the suspicion. More likely to have been a grocer's boy and a milliner's girl. Dick, take my advice, and don't let the green-eyed monster get hold of you. By Jove, I must laugh at you. What could have made you think it was me?’
‘I thought it was a voice that I knew.’
‘His, or hers?’
‘His. But it was not yours, of course. I don't know what can have made me think so. I must have been dreaming.’
‘The grocer must be a superior fellow. Really, though, I would stay indoors after dinner, if I was subject to seeing visions. You might get yourself into an awkward scrape.’
The absurdity of the whole thing struck Dick so forcibly, under the new light Randal had thrown upon it, that he burst into a roar of laughter, in which his companion made some show of joining.
‘Don't mention it to any one, for heaven's sake,’ said Dick, as soon as he had recovered. ‘How could I be such a fool?’
‘Fortunately you attacked the right person, or the consequences might have been serious,’ said Randal quietly. ‘What she would have said—but that's enough of it. Let us talk about something else.’
In hours of reflection afterwards, Dick was sorry that he had betrayed himself to Randal Hawke. But after all it did not seem to matter much. Randal was so seldom there, and had plenty to interest him without interfering in Dick's affairs. He had received his old acquaintance very kindly, considering the cool terms that they were on years ago. Altogether Dick felt justified in putting Randal out of his head.
For some days after this he haunted Flora with a persistency that sometimes seemed to worry her a little, though by degrees she resigned herself, and let him be as tame as he pleased. It was the old story over again. Dick following her about everywhere, in expeditions to Morebay, in country walks, meeting her in the streets, paying her constant visits at home. People talked, and their talk soon reached Miss Northcote. But her eyes and ears had been open enough all along, and she was not surprised, and only sorry that she had given Dick credit for better things. Her manner to him grew insensibly colder. Dick, like a sulky boy, said nothing, but walked off to Rose Cottage for consolation.
One morning Miss Northcote was going down a lane towards Fore-street, when she saw these two coming up together. They were talking rather earnestly, and did not see her till she was close upon them. Then she heard Flora say to Dick, in a quick undertone, ‘Here's your aunt. You must go with her.’
‘Not I,’ was Dick's answer.
Miss Northcote felt a great deal of disgust and anger.
‘Miss Northcote, I hope you don't think that I am taking your nephew away from you? He is very unmanageable. I can't make him see his duty.’
Dick was going to join in with some sort of joke against himself, but looked at his aunt and held his tongue. Nobody could speak good-humouredly in the presence of that look of scorn, which curled Miss North-cote's lip and slightly elevated her dark brows.
‘I can only wish my nephew to please himself, Mrs. Lancaster, thank you,’ she answered; and had passed on before Flora could reply.
‘You are very stupid,’ she said to Dick. ‘You are making your relations angry, and all for nothing.’
‘I will be sure that it is for nothing before I trouble myself about that,’ said Dick. ‘Thank goodness I am not responsible to any of them.’
‘I care about it, if you don't,’ said Flora rather sadly. ‘I should like to explain to Miss Northcote that all this is no doing of mine. She does not understand, and I can't wonder at her being vexed.’
‘O, she has a temper!’ said Dick; ‘but she is the best creature in the world, and will get over it all right, if you let her alone. I'll settle it with her one of these days.’
That afternoon Miss Northcote ordered her pony-carriage, and drove away through the lanes to Carweston. Long before she reached it they became very narrow, with high banks covered with fern and wild flowers; here and there a gate gave a view of lovely varied slopes, the Mora, and the hills beyond. It was almost an adventure to drive down the last lane, between high walls of rock covered all over with soft green lichen where the ferns did not grow; here every kind to be found in that
This romantic lane was not the only approach to Carweston; at the further end it opened on a wide road, leading straight into the village. But the short cut through the lanes was much more used by the St. Denys people, except by the more nervous of them, to whom the idea of meeting anything in these lanes was a terror.
The low gray church-tower and the few stone houses of Carweston stood at the head of a wide valley, down which a trout-stream ran to join the Mora. The broad slopes of the valley lay smiling in the sun; there were cornfields, and hayfields where they were carrying; orchards full of fruit, strawberry-gardens that scented the air. A steamer and two or three small boats were passing swiftly on the calm expanse of the river; beyond lay the moors and hills in a warm purple mist. It did Kate Northcote good, as she looked at it all, and even suggested this, quite without any concurrence of hers—if there was so much good in everything, might there not be a little in Mrs. Lancaster?
‘No,’ said Kate; ‘horrid scheming woman! She has been spinning her webs for Dick all this time, and has caught him, poor silly fellow. I can't bear to think of it.’
A little way beyond the church, a wall hung with masses of ivy skirted the garden of Carweston House. Then there were two square pillars, with a gate between them, and a solemn dragon sitting upright on each. One of them had lost his paws, and was a piteous sight; but
Miss Northcote crossed the large furnished hall, where all the brown old pictures hanging round looked down on her as a friend, and where she had often sat listening to Anthony, as he played on his organ at the further end. The drawing-room, into which she went, was one of those rooms that one loves at first sight, feeling that they could never be anything but homelike. It was low and large and almost square; the crimson carpet was a little worn, the furniture was old-fashioned, and the walls were covered with pictures. At one end there was a group of musical instruments—a piano, a harp, a violoncello in its case. It was not till one had been in the room some minutes that one realised how full it was of beautiful things; they did not obtrude themselves, but seemed to belong to the place. Every ornament was good and curious; the old gilded clock in the corner was a real Louis Quatorze; the pieces of Dresden and Chelsea china stood quietly here and there, as if they had no idea of their own value, no ambition of velvet mounts or glass cases, but were too happy to attend on Mrs. Strange, and to be broken in her service, if the Fates would have it so. But the jewels of the room were three old Italian devotional pictures, which hung together near the piano at the end. One of them, an Annunciation, Anthony always declared to be a Fra Angelico, though he had no satisfactory proof of it. He said that no other mortal man could have painted the face of that angel; it must have been given in answer to the prayers of a saint.
Mrs. Strange was generally to be found in her drawing-room. She was there when Kate came in, and met her with eager welcoming hands. Kate kissed her old friend, and sat down by her on a large soft sofa near the fireplace.
Mrs. Strange was a small slender old woman, with delicate features, and bright eyes full of expression. She had known Kate Northcote all her life, and was very fond of her. After they had been talking for a few minutes she laid her hand on hers, and said,
‘What is it, Kate? You are in some trouble, I can see. I hope you came to tell me all about it.’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Kate, the tears rushing into her eyes. ‘Not that any one can help me, dear Mrs. Strange—not even you. It is about Dick.’
‘I like Dick,’ said Mrs. Strange. ‘He is one of my boys. I won't hear that he has done anything wrong. But I love you better still; so tell me.’
‘Well—it is that Mrs. Lancaster,’ said Kate. At the obnoxious name the colour rose in her cheeks, and all the anger that had half faded away came back again. ‘He is flirting with her again, just as he did before; but it is much worse now. I don't know how to save him now.’
‘O Dick, for shame!’ said Mrs. Strange. ‘Is it want of amusement? I was a flirt myself, you know, once, and I quite remember the feeling. Send him to me to be scolded. It is a cruel thing. I thought he had too much heart for it. When he was a boy, of course, he fancied himself in love; but it can't be that now.’
‘But I am afraid it is.’
‘No, my dear, I don't think so,’ said Mrs. Strange decidedly. ‘Dick has too much sense to fall really in love out of his own station. No; he is behaving very badly. The poor thing is a widow, which makes it worse. It is simply for amusement.’
Kate shook her head.
‘I don't think you need pity her: she is quite able to take care of herself. No, it is not mere flirting on Dick's part. He is unhappy and disturbed in mind. He either is, or thinks himself, in love. Of course if she can marry him, she will.’
‘And if Dick has led her to expect it, he can't draw back without dishonour,’ said Mrs. Strange, half to herself.
‘O, you don't know what you are saying!’ cried Kate, in great distress.
‘Kate, I know that if all men and women were bound by one high sense of honour, there would be no foolish flirtations, no disappointments, no broken hearts, none of the sad stories that one hears every day. Very few people think of it nowadays, but I used to be taught that a lady or a gentleman never raised false hopes—if they did, they held themselves bound to fulfil them. I was a flirt once—for of course I thought these notions exaggerated—and I had very good reason to repent.’
‘But, dear Mrs. Strange, Dick may have done wrong, but I can't give him up to that. If he marries this woman, it must be against my will,’ exclaimed Kate. ‘It would be a terrible thing for us all; and what would it be for him, poor boy, when he woke from his dream? No! I must break through it if I can.’
‘Lecture Dick as much as you please,’ said Mrs. Strange. ‘If he still has room to draw back, by all means let him do it. But if his honour is engaged in the affair, he had better carry it through than give that up. If it was my own son I should say the same. I am very sorry for you, Kate.’
So they went on talking; Kate Northcote trying to persuade herself that Mrs. Strange's ideas were far too exalted for this world, and yet knowing all the time, in the nobleness of her own nature, that her old friend was right.
‘Here is Anthony coming through the garden,’ said Mrs. Strange, after a time. ‘We have talked about this enough for the present. You must not let it weigh on your mind too much. Only have it out with Dick as pleasantly as you can.’
‘It was a pity that he ever came home,’ said Kate despondingly.
‘Not at all. He might have got into scrapes out there. Don't be anxious. He won't be far wrong in the end, if he only keeps on the straight road and in the daylight.’
Anthony came in hot and tired from walking; but his first anxiety was to show Miss. Northcote some stone knives that had been found in a quarry near Carweston.
‘How are they at Pensand?’ said his mother, after he had talked about these for some minutes. ‘At least, how is the poor little prisoner, for I care about nobody else?’
‘Miss Ashley!’ said Kate, rather surprised, and looking from Mrs. Strange to Anthony.
He had just dropped into an armchair, with his long legs stretched out and his arms folded. He made an odd face and shook his head.
‘I shall have to run away with her. I must carry her off one of these days. It is unbearable. She talks to me; she tells me that she is moped to death. “My blessed child,” said I to her, “had I but wings, I'd take you for a long flight where no guardian could dream of overtaking us. We would hover over Pensand a few minutes, for the sake of the bird's-eye view, and then away to the West.” “That would be too delightful,” said she, and there was a tear under the smile.’
‘But that was naughty of you,’ said Mrs. Strange. ‘You only make her more restless and discontented.’
‘Perhaps so. But I never will acquiesce in tyranny.
‘Does he startle you, Kate?’ said Mrs. Strange.
‘Not by saying that. I quite feel the same. But when I was at Pensand, Miss Ashley seemed so very happy, on such good terms with the General. I have not seen her since. I'm afraid I have not thought about her much. She interests you, then, Anthony?’
‘A butterfly struggling from the chrysalis,’ said Anthony, in a low voice. ‘A child still, that would be happy and adventurous like other children, if it could. A mind clear from suspicion, a heart full of faith in its fellow-creatures, and love for them, who have never fed it on anything but husks. Has that an uninteresting sound?’
‘No, indeed. Is she all that, poor girl? And is she so very dull at Pensand?’
‘She is alone. She knows every yard inside the gates, and the General forbids her to go outside them. He tells me she is shy, and does not wish to make acquaintance. Poor Queen Mab!’
‘What can be the General's reason, I wonder?’ said Miss Northcote. ‘Has Randal been there much? Dick met him in the village not long ago.’
‘Randal!’ said Anthony, suddenly springing out of his chair. As he stood before Kate, drawing himself up to his full height, she could not help looking at him with something like admiration. His face, his whole bearing, seemed on fire with enthusiastic indignation. ‘Do you mean it, Kate? Do you think the old General could be such a scoundrel? Randal! She has only seen him once; but she dislikes him, she shrinks from him; and no wonder. It I thought that any such diabolical plot existed—’
‘Patience, my dear Anthony,’ said Mrs. Strange.
‘No more patience for me, mother, in such a case as that.’
‘What makes you dislike Randal so much?’ said Kate. She was afraid she thought it only too likely that General Hawke meant the heiress for his son. ‘Is there any harm in him?’
‘Harm! I hate him,’ said Anthony.
‘Rector, it is a good thing that your people can't hear you,’ said Mrs. Strange.
‘Mother, the whole parish knows, I hope, that I hate rascality. Harm in Randal, Kate? There is nothing that I could lay to his charge in so many words, except being an insolent snob. But don't men's faces tell you their characters? Did you ever like Randal?’
‘Never very much, though I must confess that I always thought him good-looking. But I have not seen him for some time.’
‘You never liked him; that is enough,’ said Anthony, who was gradually coming down into his natural manner. ‘My mother never liked him. What is to be said for a man, when two good women and a young girl are taught by their own heaven-born instincts to dislike him?’
He threw himself back in his chair again, leaned his head on his hand, and seemed deep in thought, from which he was roused a few minutes later by his mother's voice.
‘Anthony, give Kate her tea. And go and get some flowers for her.’
Mrs. Strange always ruled the talk in her own house, and never allowed a disagreeable subject to go on long. She made both Kate and Anthony understand that she would have no more at present of their respective grievances. They must make themselves agreeable; and so they did, both loving her dearly, and thinking her the wisest and best woman in the world.
Miss Northcote was not able that day to have it out with Dick, for she hardly saw him after she got home. He went to dine with some people at Morebay, and was to stay all night, and go with them the next day to a cricket-match. Thus his aunt had plenty of time for making up her mind what she would say to him.
That next day was Saturday. Captain Cardew came home early from the dockyard, and, having enjoyed his after-dinner nap in the parlour, joined his wife and daughter in the drawing-room. Something had been brewing in the Captain's head for several days, and he thought it would be as well to clear the air before Sunday. Thinking Flora quite old enough to manage her own affairs, he had said nothing to his wife in private, and Mrs. Cardew, though she had seen for several days that he was put out, had not asked him why. The Captain generally smoked away his whims in time.
He came into the room, and found his wife working in the window, and Flora reading a letter, which she folded up and put into her pocket as he entered.
‘Is that from Dick Northcote? Can't he go away for a day without writing to you? said Captain Cardew.
‘No. From one of my friends,’ answered Flora, a shade of annoyance crossing her fair face.
She had always been independent at home, but since she came back a widow her parents had been made to understand that all her affairs, her friendships, her correspondence, were completely her own. They thought
‘I'm glad to hear it,’ said the Captain. ‘Stay where you are, Flora,’ as she was slowly rising from her chair. ‘I want to speak to you.’
‘Well?’ said Flora, sitting down again.
Captain Cardew began walking up and down the room. Flora glanced at her mother with elevated eyebrows. Mrs. Cardew shook her head violently, to show her perfect ignorance of what might be the matter.
‘Did you say you wished to speak to me?’ said Flora, after waiting a few moments.
‘Yes,’ said the Captain. ‘I have a question to ask. What is to be the end of all this nonsense between you and young Northcote?’
‘What an odd question, father! I hardly know how to answer it. But I suppose all nonsense comes to the same end,’ said Flora, smiling a little.
‘You think, then, that he is only playing with you. And do you suppose that I am going to put up with that?’
‘I don't exactly mean that. You had better not distress yourself, I can settle it.’
‘No. That is just the sort of thing I don't mean to stand. Though you are Mrs. Lancaster you are under your father's roof, and I tell you I will not have these doings, unless there is some good reason for them. I shall speak to the fellow myself, and find out what his intentions really are.’
‘For goodness’ sake, don't do that!’ said Flora.
‘I shall, though. I suppose you think your chance won't be improved by being taken up by your old father. I shall speak in a louder voice than—than General Hawke would, I daresay, and maybe use some rough words.’
‘O Captain, do hold your tongue! You're making
Flora had flushed crimson, and made a little start, as if she meant to run out of the room. But then she paused and lay back, closing her eyes, as if there was nothing for it but to hear her father to the end.
‘A couple of geese!’ said the Captain angrily to himself. ‘Sit down,’ to his wife; ‘there is nothing the matter with her, and I have not done yet. Listen to a few words of sense, Flora, if you can.’
Flora opened her eyes, and bent her head.
‘You don't seem to take it in,’ said the Captain, ‘but it is a very awkward thing for you to be run after by a fellow like that. It was a different thing when he was a schoolboy. I tell you, unless I am convinced that something is to come of it, I won't have it at all. I'll let him know that he must behave to you as he would to a lady of his own rank.’
‘Dear me! So he does. I am quite able to take care of myself, I assure you,’ said Flora. ‘Pray leave me to settle it.’
‘Then you are quite sure that he means to marry. you?’ said the Captain fiercely.
‘If he has the chance, I suppose he does. I don't know, really, father. I wish you would not make such a fuss about nothing.’
‘Nothing!’ repeated the Captain. ‘I don't consider it nothing. It is not nothing, and so Mr. Dick North-cote shall find. You are a great fool for having encouraged him at all, but you must have somebody dangling after you. I thought you had had enough of these gentlemen. You would not get on with his relations any more than with poor Lancaster's. Worse, for people down here are three times as proud. I don't believe they would acknowledge you at all. Miss Northcote bowed to me the other day, but as coldly as if she
‘Well,’ said Flora, with a sigh, ‘what do you want me to do?’
Before the Captain had answered this question, which seemed to puzzle him a little, there was a ring, Dick's ring, as Flora knew very well. She smiled rather oddly, and glanced at her mother. Would her father attack him on the spot? She hardly thought so, in spite of all his talk. But after a minute's delay the maid came in and brought her a small parcel.
‘Mr. Northcote left it for you, ma'am,’ she said.
Flora held it in her hand for a minute and looked at it. It was smartly done up in white paper, with her name on it in Dick's untidy straggling hand, and his initials, ‘R. N.,’ in the corner.
‘Goodness!’ said Mrs. Cardew, under her breath, ‘it looks like wedding-cake.’
‘Well, are you going to open it?’ said the Captain.
Flora opened it, and there appeared a dark red leather case, which in its turn revealed a very pretty gold bracelet set with turquoises. In Flora's face, as she looked, were both dismay and amusement.
‘How could he be so silly!’ she said, half to herself.
But the amusement fled when she looked at her father. He walked up to her, took the case out of her hand, and shut it with a sounding snap, just as Mrs. Cardew was bursting into admiration.
‘Answer me two questions, Flora,’ he said. ‘Are you engaged to young Northcote?’
‘No, father, of course not.’
‘Are you sure that you ever will be?’
‘No.’
‘You accept no presents from him till you are. Is this the first?’
‘Yes. What are you going to do with it?’
‘I am going after him with it—this moment. I mean him to know what I think. So you may say good-bye to your bracelet. Leave it there. I am going to put my other coat on.’
Mrs. Cardew listened with horrified eyes, Flora without remark or remonstrance.
‘My darling child,’ said the mother, when Captain Cardew had left the room, ‘I can't think what makes your father so violent. Are you very much vexed, dear? Will poor Dick be angry?’
‘I daresay he will,’ said Flora. ‘Yes, I'm vexed, too; I detest explosions. I could have managed it all so quietly myself.’
‘Of course there can't be a doubt about him,’ said Mrs. Cardew. ‘I do call it nonsense. Why, he worships the very ground you walk on.’
‘If he does, it is all the more unpleasant that he should be bullied into saying so,’ said Flora.
‘To be sure, dear. But it's no use talking to your father. Men are so stupid, when once they take a thing into their heads. Dear me, how I should have liked to see you in that bracelet! Just try it on. What good taste he has!’
‘No, mother, let it alone,’ said Flora.
Dick, meanwhile, after leaving his precious parcel, had not gone home, but away for a walk into the country. He was inclined to put off facing his aunt as long as possible. So it happened that Captain Cardew, arriving very red and bristling at Miss Northcote's house, was shown into the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. She was very much surprised to see her visitor, and perhaps looked so. The Captain made her a low bow.
‘I beg your pardon, ma'am,’ he said. ‘There is some mistake. I called to see your nephew.’
‘He is not come in yet, but I expect him soon,’ said Kate. ‘Will you sit down and wait for him, Captain Cardew? or can I give him any message?’
Upon this, Captain Cardew dived into his pocket for poor Dick's parcel, roughly folded up again, and presented it to her with another bow.
‘What is it?’ said Kate, holding it and looking at it doubtfully.
‘It is a bracelet,’ said the Captain rather hoarsely.
‘A bracelet!’ she said, with a strong inclination to smile. ‘Am I to give it to my nephew?’
‘If you will take the trouble to read what is written on that paper, you will see that it is addressed by Mr. Northcote to my daughter,’ answered the Captain, with extreme politeness.
‘O!’ said Kate. She began to see how things were tending. Laying the parcel on the table, she looked Captain Cardew straight in the face. When one pair of honest eyes meets another, there need not be many roundabout ways between them. ‘Pray sit down, and make me understand all about this,’ she said frankly.
‘I have nothing to say that will please you, Miss Northcote,’ said the old sailor, but he obeyed her and sat down.
The presence of a lady was curiously taming; his wife and daughter would hardly have known him again. But he was not awkward, for the good breeding that the sea gives her sons never deserted him. Kate, not knowing what was before her, was the more uneasy of the two. There was a flush of excitement in her cheeks, and her heart was beating very fast; what had Dick been doing?
‘Mr. Northcote left that parcel at my door twenty minutes ago,’ said Captain Cardew. ‘But I have to say to him that as long as he is not openly engaged to my daughter, she will accept no presents from him. I'm
‘You think so?’ said Kate, and she sighed.
‘I like the young fellow,’ the Captain went on, warming to his subject. ‘I think it is a pity that he should be so soft. People ought to marry in their own rank of life. My daughter has married out of hers once, and I suppose she may be inclined to do so again, though the first was none too pleasant. I tell her she will repent; but young people are wilful. You knew all about this, ma'am?’
‘Of course, I could not help knowing something of it,’ said Kate. ‘But Dick has said nothing to me, and I did not know it had gone so far.’
‘It's a great annoyance to you, of course,’ said the Captain.
‘I can't pretend to be pleased,’ she answered quietly.
‘Well, I came here to tell young Mr. Northcote that I would have no more shilly-shallying. Either he engages himself to my daughter, or he gives her up at once, and we see the last of this dawdling about together. It is not respectable, I say, and though she is a widow, I suppose she is still my child. Now will you let an old fellow give you a word of advice?’
‘Go on, please, Captain Cardew,’ said Kate, bowing her head.
‘You don't want this affair to go any further. Neither do I. There is no good in it for either of them. When you speak to your nephew about it, tell him that his wisest course will be to sheer off altogether. Then he'll please Flora's relations and his own.’
Kate sat silent for a minute or two, considering.
‘Thank you,’ she said at last. ‘It is very good of you to say that. But I don't know that a thing like this can be settled so easily. What would Mrs. Lancaster
She smiled a little, and looked at the Captain.
‘Disagreeable for both sides, of course,’ said he. ‘But people who flirt must take the consequences. Better for Flora to be disappointed now than afterwards. She has a spirit of her own, and it would hurt her, Miss Northcote, if you were to take no notice of her. I told her that was what she would have to expect. Ladies like you are proud, you see.’
‘Proud! Well, perhaps I am,’ said Kate, ‘but in a different sense from yours. Much too proud, Captain Cardew, to wish my nephew to behave dishonourably to your daughter, if he has led her to think that he is really attached to her.’
The Captain stared, and made no answer. After a moment's pause Kate went on, speaking with an effort, but very earnestly.
‘And too proud to insult Dick by refusing to acknowledge his wife. That would be a great cruelty, a great wrong, both to him and her and myself. You may be quite easy about that.’
‘I beg your pardon, ma'am, for expecting anything else,’ said the Captain, getting up and bowing. ‘You have shown me what a true lady is. Good-evening to you.’
‘I will talk to Dick when he comes in,’ said Miss Northcote, ‘and he shall do what he wishes and thinks right. In the mean while, won't you take the bracelet back? It will vex him to see it here.’
‘Thank you, I won't,’ said the Captain. ‘I don't care if he is vexed. People have to be brought to their senses.’
‘Very well, as you please,’ said Kate.
As he turned to leave the room she held out her hand to him with a smile. He took the tips of her fingers held them for an instant, and dropped them with
Dick came in presently, and sat down in his favourite place by the window. His aunt went up to him, and laid her hand on his shoulder.
‘My Dick, I want you to behave like a man.’
‘Who says I don't?’ asked Dick, in a rather antagonistic way. ‘Now I'm going to catch it,’ he thought; yet his aunt's face and manner were so reassuringly gentle as to puzzle him.
‘Like a gentleman, perhaps, I ought to say,’ said Kate. ‘I want you to be open with me, and to tell me all about—Mrs. Lancaster. How long is it since you found you couldn't trust me?’
A minute or two of dead silence. Dick sat staring out of the window.
‘Hang it!’ he said. ‘I'm in such an awful fix. I thought you would never bear to hear of it. You would laugh; no, you'd be desperately cross, for it is no laughing matter.’
‘I shall neither laugh nor be cross. Perhaps I know as much as you can tell me—except what the fix is—for it all seems to me plain sailing enough.’
‘I'm a fool, you know,’ said Dick.
‘Suppose we grant that. I don't want to hear about foolishness. What is it that you seriously mean to do?’
‘Aunt Kate, you are too hard on a fellow.’
‘Don't be weak. I am prepared to hear that you are engaged to Flora Lancaster. Am I right?’
‘Not quite that.’
‘Ought you to be?’
‘What on earth do you mean? You don't think I ought.’
‘I have something to tell you,’ said Kate; and standing there she told him of Captain Cardew's visit, of
Kate emphasised her speech now and then by a little pressure of Dick's shoulder. There was some uncertainty in her voice, and she found it difficult to remember that she was not talking to a schoolboy.
‘Well, now,’ said Dick suddenly, ‘you understand the awful fix I'm in—or was in till you said all that. I thought you hated the very idea so thoroughly, that I didn't like to breathe it to you; and all the while I kept on getting deeper and deeper in. I hate rows, and I thought there would be such a row if I asked her. I thought you would shut your doors on me, perhaps cut me off with a shilling. And you don't mind it after all? You are a brick!’
‘Then what did you mean to do? How did you expect it to end?’
‘I don't know,’ said Dick. ‘I enjoyed to-day, and didn't think about to-morrow. Fancy the old Captain turing crusty like that!’
‘He was quite right. Does Mrs. Lancaster share your happy indifference to to-morrow?’
‘Pretty well, I think. Generally,’ said Dick, becoming a little doubtful, as he remembered some irritable moments of Flora's, some clouds athwart the smiles.
‘I hardly believe that,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘Now tell me—if any friend of yours was in the same case, had paid Mrs. Lancaster all the attention you have paid her, had said the same things to her, would you think him justified in drawing back now and going no further?’
‘As you ask me, I can't say that I should.’
‘Then take the same rule for yourself,’ said Miss Northcote sadly. ‘I don't know whether you really care
‘I don't know,’ said Dick. ‘I'm not sure. I hope she does, for the more I'm with her the more charming I think her. She was my fate, you see, But you—won't you hate it horribly?
‘We won't enter into that. I'll behave as well as I can.’
‘O, bother! If it makes you miserable—’ said Dick penitently.
‘My dear old fellow, I can't be miserable as long as I feel that you are doing right,’ said Kate, with a great deal of feeling in her voice. She bent over Dick and kissed him on the forehead. Then she went away to her own room, and what she did there can be best imagined by a mother whose son has disappointed her
Dick went about whistling the next day as if a load had been taken off his shoulders. He did not try his aunt's generosity by talking of Flora, but was at his very best and pleasantest all the morning. Though she could not be sorry for the change, it made her a little sadder; that her dear boy should be so thrown away was indeed a trial hard to bear.
It was Sunday, and the whole Cardew party were at church in the morning. Dick made no attempt to join them in walking up the hill. Miss Northcote could not help noticing that Mrs. Lancaster looked pale and depressed, and wondered what the reason of this might be, but did not say anything to Dick about it. She guessed that he would go to Rose Cottage in the afternoon, and that his fate would be settled before night.
About four o'clock Dick came into the drawing-room, where his aunt was reading, and, after fidgeting about for a few minutes, suddenly spoke.
‘Look here, aunt Kate, I want to thank you. You're behaving nobly.’
He paused, with a nervous laugh.
‘Never mind; don't talk about it,’ said Kate, as cheerfully as she could.
‘I know you think it a fearful sacrifice,’ Dick went on. ‘But you'll change your mind before long. You'll find that Flora is as good as—’
‘As she is lovely. Very well. I hope so. And I hope, dear Dick, that she won't find she has made an equally fearful sacrifice. Everybody might not enjoy
‘O, it's no use talking to you,’ said Dick, half inclined to be angry at being laughed at.
It certainly was hard to have the expression of his finest feelings nipped in the bud. He really was grateful to his aunt, and wanted to tell her so. But Kate was only human after all, and could not yet bear to enter into Flora's praises. The idea of Dick's sacrifice, too, coming from himself, was almost too funny. Martyrs of that kind did not generally go smiling and whistling to the stake, Kate thought.
Dick walked away to Rose Cottage, at first not quite so cheerful. But he had recovered his spirits by the time he got there. The maid dashed cold water upon him by answering ‘No’ to his inquiry whether Mrs. Lancaster was at home.
‘Not at home! Are you sure?’ said Dick incredulously.
Mrs. Cardew just then looked out of the parlour, and, seeing him, came forward to the door. She was blushing and smiling, and very nervous. Her agitation had the contrary effect on Dick, fortunately, and he shook hands with her in quite a cool every-day fashion.
‘Mrs. Lancaster is out?’ he said, in a louder voice than usual, the idea having just dawned on him that Captain Cardew meant to forbid him the house, and that Flora might be locked up somewhere.
‘The old donkey! Does he think I shall stand that?’ thought Dick, and he looked rather fiercely at poor unoffending Mrs. Cardew.
‘Well, yes, she is out,’ said she anxiously. ‘But won't you come in, Mr. Northcote?’
‘No, I won't, thank you,’ said Dick. ‘Perhaps she is gone to church somewhere!’
‘No. We have no afternoon service, you see.’
Dick's brow had clouded over a good deal; he hated small obstacles and contradictions. Flora's mother grew rather frightened as she looked at him.
‘I don't suppose, Mr. Northcote,’ she began timidly, ‘that Flora would mind my telling you where she is. She took a book—she was restless in the house, poor dear—and I believe she went down to the combe. She might not like to be interrupted by everybody, but surely she couldn't mind you.’
‘I hope not. Thank you, Mrs. Cardew,’ said Dick. His face cleared up at once, and he was turning away, when she stepped out into the garden after him.
‘You must excuse my mentioning it,’ she said, ‘and Flora would be angry; but I have known you so long, Mr. Dick, haven't I? Now I do hope you're not vexed at what the Captain-did yesterday; he is so headstrong, you know, and he meant it for the best. We have had so many anxieties about Flora, and when it is one's only child, one can't help fretting.’
‘The Captain was quite right,’ said Dick. He coloured scarlet, but smiled very pleasantly at Mrs. Cardew. ‘I hope he will have no more cause to complain of me. Good-bye.’
One would think it was always summer at St. Denys. It has its full share of rough weather, though, and I have heard people say that it rains there more than in most places. But that summer, when Dick Northcote was amusing himself at home, and Mabel Ashley was shut up within Pensand gates, was singularly brilliant and lovely.
This Sunday afternoon was hot and sleepy and still; the air was heavy, the sun shone through a faint yellow mist, under which the trees seemed to take strange colours, and sounds from a distance fell deadened on one's ear.
Dick hurried down the lane to the combe. It was a hollow path like a tube, perhaps four feet wide, completely arched over with ivy-bound boughs of low gray old trees, and here and there a bush of honeysuckle hanging so low that his head brushed it as he walked. Half-way down the hill the hedges disappeared, and the path branched out into a steep, slippery, rugged descent of bare granite rock. Below this was some more lane with a low stone wall, bounding a small green field on the left, with a donkey grazing in it, which sloped down to the water. Dick passed this and walked on round the head of the creek, past the foot of another lane, almost as narrow and rough, which was supposed to be a cart-road, the only approach to a little untidy white-washed farm that nestled among trees half-way up the head of the combe. A little further on he got down upon the rocks. The tide was full, and the water was lazily gliding in and lapping against the stones. It was the only thing that moved or spoke in the combe; the trees and long grass and flowering bushes on its steep sides hung motionless; the long dark ridges of rock showed their teeth in silence.
The stillness was so intense in the yellow misty glow that Dick stood still, doubting if Flora was there; he could almost have heard her breathe. As he stood hesitating, she suddenly rose up from behind a rock not three yards away. With her green and white summer dress, her golden hair, her fair transparent skin, she might have been the nymph of the rivers, disturbed by a rash mortal from her peaceful dreaming on the shore.
‘I heard you coming down,’ she said, without any particular pleasure in look or tone. ‘Who told you I was here?’
‘Your mother. Don't be angry with her,’ said Dick.
‘She little knew what she was doing,’ said Flora, half to herself.
‘Didn't she, do you think?’ said Dick, as he made his way round over the rock ledges to the place where she was standing.
She had risen from one of these steps or ledges, just above high-water mark, in a corner sheltered from sight by a projection of the rocky bank. She now sat down again, and Dick, as he took his place beside her, noticed a packet of letters tied up with ribbon in a little cleft close by. She was watching him, saw his eyes light on them, and smiled slightly and rather sadly.
‘All letters from one friend,’ she said. ‘Do you possess such a good correspondent?’
‘I don't, indeed,’ said Dick. ‘One leaves that sort of thing to ladies nowadays. And they don't write to me.’
‘Ah!’ said Flora.
Dick began to feel quite uncanny: her manner was so odd; absent and dreamy, yet present and awake. United to the heavy stillness and oppression of the day, it seemed to draw away from him all his good spirits, his courage even. She might have been a sea enchantress, who had wiled him to this lonely shore, and perhaps would presently glide gently down into the soft oily water that came lapping to her feet. And her mortal lover could not stay behind, but must follow wherever she chose to lead the way. Some wild old legend of the kind began to hover in Dick's brain as Flora sat and gazed at the water. But presently she turned her blue eyes on him, and he felt happier. Feeling as if only by a strong effort he could break the charm that seemed to be binding him, he suddenly laid his hand on hers and clasped it tight.
‘Flora,’ he said, ‘I have something to say to you, and I want to say it at once.’
‘Don't, Dick, please,’ said Mrs. Lancaster, shaking off his hand.
‘Listen to me,’ said Dick imploringly. ‘I want to tell you—’
‘Let me speak first,’ said Flora. ‘There is something I want to tell you too, and you shall listen to me. After that you may hold your tongue, if you please, for I don't think you will have anything to say.’
‘You have no idea, then, what it is. Nothing could change—’ began Dick eagerly.
‘Patience. I am not blind or stupid, or very young. I wish you were not so silly. As you are, you have brought something on yourself. I am going to tell you a story.’
‘As long as I may stay here,’ said Dick, ‘I don't care what you tell me.’
‘Do you remember asking me one day if I was happy?’
‘Ah, that day!’
‘I have good cause to remember it too,’ said Flora. ‘I might have guessed; but I never thought it would come to this. Do you remember me when I was a girl, Dick?’
‘What a question! You are just the same now, only far more charming.’
‘I believe I am rather nicer than I was then,’ said Flora thoughtfully. ‘Yes, certainly I was horrid then. You had a happy escape in those days, but I thought it unkind of you to go away without wishing me good-bye.’
‘I was desperately sorry,’ said Dick; ‘but they bullied me so at home. You liked me a little then, Flora? It was not all my fancy?’
‘Liked you? yes, after a fashion. But I did not really care a bit. I wanted to get away from home. I had been reading a lot of novels, and had a notion of grand names and pedigrees. You were the nearest thing to all that.’
Dick laughed, which did him good.
‘You might have found somebody more distinguished than me,’ he said.
‘Nobody that came in my way. O dear, what an idiot I was! Well, after you were gone and that chance was lost, I grew more and more discontented at home. They did not spoil me then, I think, quite as much as they do now; still, they were the kindest parents. But, you know, I had picked up all these ideas; and things were always grating on me that a more obtuse girl would not have noticed—little vulgarities and provincialisms. Then, to crown all, I had an offer from a merchant's clerk at Morebay, a good man, and very well off. But I could not endure the thought of him. Perhaps I was foolish to be so fanciful.’
‘That I am sure you were not,’ said Dick. He was half lying on the rocks, leaning his head on his hand, and looking up into her face, which softened and became prettier than ever as she talked of her young days.
‘You may say so when you have heard all,’ said Flora, sighing. ‘I could not bear this man, as I tell you. And then there was poor George Lancaster: he was very much in love with me, and quite a gentleman; and I married him, as you know. Ah, dear me! I told you one day that I left all the sunshine behind at St. Denys. I won't go back to those years. Ill-health for him and unhappiness for me. Poor fellow! We were not suited to each other, and his relations did all they could to make me more miserable than I was O, it was hard! A lonely girl, and so far away from home.’
She paused a minute. Dick held his peace, for he had nothing to say, and only wished that Flora would let her poor dead husband alone.
‘Well, that was over,’ she went on, in a tone of relief. ‘I came back home, and here I have been ever since, as you know; but not without adventures.’
‘You were not likely to be without them,’ said Dick;
‘I was ill and dismal enough at first,’ she said. ‘It is only two years, in fact, since I quite recovered. Now, Dick'—her face had become very grave as she turned to him—‘I am going to allude to yesterday. It was very, very kind of you to bring me that bracelet. I was sorry for what my father did at the time, though, after all, I believe it was the best thing. It makes it necessary for me to tell you the truth; and your behaviour and Miss Northcote's, which I feel intensely, makes me owe it to you all the more.’
‘The truth? What do you mean?’ said Dick vaguely.
‘Dick, I am going to trust something to your honour—a secret which nobody knows, except the two people it concerns. You will understand why I tell you; it is the only thing that will really satisfy you. I am very grateful; I look upon you as my best friend, and I am sure you won't betray me. Am I right?’
‘Of course,’ said Dick hoarsely.
‘Between two and three years ago I began to see a good deal more of a person I had always known slightly, and we found out that we had always had a fancy for each other. I certainly never met any one else that—Well, I must only tell you the facts,’ she said, leaning forward, and shading her face with her hand. ‘We were engaged: there were reasons for keeping it secret; but I hope they won't last much longer, for of course I find myself in a painful position sometimes—now, for instance.’
‘Do you mean that you are engaged now?’ said Dick slowly, frowning and staring, as if he could not trust his senses.
‘Yes.’
There was a long pause. Dick stared vacantly at the rocks, dimly remembering Mrs. Penny's gossip and other things which had frightened him. Flora had lifted her head, and gazed out across the water, her face full of past and present happiness. Presently, however, compassion for Dick found its way in; she turned towards him, and saw something so stony, so like despair, that she was startled out of her calmness.
‘O Dick, don't look like that!’ she said. ‘I am very sorry; I shall always like you so much.’
The voice of the siren had a strange effect on Dick. He sprang upright, shook himself, stood looking at her for a moment, and then sat down again beside her on the rocks.
‘I was only thinking,’ he said. ‘Will you tell me why this should be such a secret?’
‘It is his wish,’ answered Flora, in a low voice. ‘His father is a man of good position, and he is not independent of him. He probably would be very angry; he hopes to see his way more clearly soon. Everybody's relations are not so generous as yours.’
‘And this has gone on for two or three years,’ said Dick. ‘Do you think you are properly treated?’
‘I am quite satisfied. All I ask you is to keep the secret.’
‘That I have promised,’ said Dick. ‘I want to ask you one question. Answer it or not, as you choose. Is it Randal Hawke?’
‘What can have put him into your head?’ said Flora, blushing crimson. ‘Well, I suppose I must trust you altogether. You are a gentleman, thank goodness! Yes, it is Randal Hawke. I must know what made you think so.’
‘I knew he admired you,’ said Dick quietly.
Certainly, with all his weaknesses, he was at heart a
‘Heaven grant she may find out her mistake before it is too late!’ thought Dick.
In the mean while Flora had taken a letter from the packet beside her, and unfolded it.
‘You may look at this signature if you like,’ said she. ‘You seem a little doubtful. This will show you that I have spoken the truth.’
‘No, thank you,’ said Dick. ‘I don't doubt you in the least; why should I? The mist seems to be changing into fog. Don't you think we had better get out of this?’
Flora was quite ready, and they walked up almost in silence. She was conscious of a respect for Dick such as she had never felt before, combined with a little irritation; he seemed to have taken the downfall of his hopes so very calmly.
Captain and Mrs. Cardew were obliged to keep their surprise and disappointment to themselves. Flora simply told them that she had refused Dick Northcote, and did not know why they should have expected anything else; he was not at all the sort of person for her.
Miss Northcote wondered what could have happened; her nephew was so grave and silent all the evening. It was not till very late that he said to her, ‘She won't have me, aunt Kate.’
‘Indeed!’ said Miss Northcote, trying not to show her intense joy.
‘I have been thinking,’ said Dick, ‘that I should like to get away from here for a few weeks. Didn't you tell
‘Yes. He will be delighted. You could not do better.’
‘I shall write to him to-morrow,’ said Dick, and relapsed into silence.
After Dick was gone, a week of rainy weather came to St. Denys. The roses were dashed, and the lovely views were shrouded in mist. No one felt the change more than Mabel Ashley, in her prison at Pensand. While those broad sheets of rain were driving up from the sea, while the wind was howling round the old towers, the trees bowing their heads before it, and the flowers crouching and shivering, she had nothing to do but to sit and look out, and feel that as long as she had the garden there had been nothing really to complain of.
There she sat in the drawing-room window, with her hands before her, the saddest object in that sad anomaly, a wintry day in summer. It was really cold, but General Hawke had not suggested a fire, and those stern bright steel grates looked as if they did not know the meaning of the word. Mabel had soon perceived that, though he called her the mistress of his house, she must not presume to give any orders. Probably the General, who had a good blaze in his own study on every day but the hottest, never thought that any one so young could feel cold and damp in that handsome comfortable drawing-room.
As Mabel sat there she was busy thinking. She wondered whether this kind of thing was to go on for ever; did the General expect her to spend her life with him at Pensand? And why was she so disappointed, so unhappy? Well, he had been very kind to her when she first came, and he was very kind to her still, but
Anthony Strange had been trying to teach her about flowers, to interest her in botany, but she had no turn for it. She liked the flowers themselves, but could not care about their structure; and when she confessed that, Anthony threw his book aside, and said that after all he was glad to hear it: a thing had not been made such a perfect and beautiful whole that we mortals might pull it to pieces for our instruction.
‘What becomes of science with such a notion as that?’ said the General rather contemptuously; he had lately taken to appearing whenever Anthony paid his visits.
‘I have nothing to do with science,’ said Anthony. ‘It is the enemy of true civilisation.’
This had happened just before the rainy weather had set in, and since then Mr. Strange had not been at the Castle. Mabel wondered why, and thought it rather unkind of him; he might know how lonely she was, and he was rather fond of being out on a stormy day.
‘Nobody cares for me, and I am left quite alone,’ thought Mabel to herself, as she sat there. ‘I can't even write a letter to any one. O dear, how unhappy I am! I wish his aunt would come and see me again. I do believe she is kind, though she didn't seem to like me much that day. Or if I might go to Carweston to stay with Mrs. Strange!’
With so few happy things to think about, perhaps it would have been unnatural if Dick's sins had not been
After watching her for a minute, the man with the umbrella turned quietly away, and walked off round the house. A few minutes later, a step in the library made Mabel start up and hastily dry her eyes. Then Randal Hawke opened the door and came in. He was looking singularly well and handsome; his eyes were bright, and he came forward and shook hands with Mabel in a very pleasant and cordial way.
‘I bring rain, don't I?’ he said, ‘but this is more serious than the last. How frightfully wintry it is on the top of your mountain! and no fire! No wonder your hand is like an icicle.’
Randal rang the bell vigorously, and the butler appeared in astonishment.
‘This fire must be lighted at once, Stevens—When I come home they find that there is a master in the house,’ he said, laughing, to Mabel. ‘I make a point of being exigeant; it is good for them. Have you had this sort of thing for a week? How moped you must be!’
‘I think it began last Tuesday,’ said Mabel.
She had not yet made up her mind whether Randal's society was better than none. Ten minutes later she
‘Shall I tell the General you are here, sir?’ said Stevens.
‘No.’
Randal was much pleasanter than he had been on that former occasion. The bad weather seemed to have no depressing effect on him, and Mabel could not help being pleased at the attentive kindness with which he treated her. Her spirits rose as the fire blazed up. After gazing at it contentedly for a minute or two, she looked at him and smiled, and Randal saw that the odd little face could light up very brightly and sweetly.
‘It really was cold,’ she said.
‘Of course it was. One might as well be in the Arctic regions. No, don't disturb yourself. I'll give you your tea.’
Mabel watched him at the tea-tray, and thought with some amusement that those small hands of his were just fitted for their work.
‘Are you getting warmer? Or shall I fetch a railway rug and wrap you in it?’ asked Randal presently.
Mabel laughed quite merrily.
‘O no, thank you. I am quite warm already.’
‘To tell you the truth,’ said Randal, arranging himself comfortably in his armchair, ‘I came down to see how you were getting on. Do you ever have presentiments?’
‘No,’ said Mabel.
‘They are useful things sometimes. I had one two days ago. It said that Pensand was very dismal, especially in wet weather, and that its inmates were
‘I—did not know that I might,’ said Mabel.
‘Please to understand that while you are in this house the servants obey you. You must forgive my father. Old people are thoughtless and selfish; they can't help it.’
‘If the General had thought of my being cold, I am sure he would—’ began Mabel rather indignantly.
‘Just as I said. He did not think. Neither does he think of your not being cheerful. Now, Miss Ashley, tell me—do you still think Pensand such a charming place; find yourself quite happy; want nothing beyond it?’
Mabel was silent.
‘Do you never find yourself bored, especially in wet weather? Now you are truthful, I'm sure, and you really can't deny it,’ said Randal, bending forward and smiling.
‘It is my own fault,’ said Mabel. ‘I am not clever, and I have so few occupations.’
‘Poverina!’ said Randal under his breath. ‘Well, I can't stand that, you know. I feel responsible for my father's doings, and I can't let him bore you to death. I hope you won't be angry with me, but I brought you down a few books; novels, and so on. You must have read everything in the house by this time.’
‘Thank you. It is very kind indeed of you to think of it,’ said Mabel, flushing with pleasure.
After a minute Randal began again.
‘You must not think that my father means to neglect you. He is immensely fond of you. It would vex him beyond everything if he thought you were unhappy. And if I ask you to bear with him a little,
‘I never quite realised that before,’ said Mabel, opening her eyes very wide.
‘They certainly are remarkable. Only almost too big,’ thought her companion.
‘Yes, of course you can,’ he said. ‘The whole world will be before you.’
‘But I have nobody to live with, nowhere to go,’ sighed Mabel to herself. ‘O, don't think I am unhappy here. The General is always kind. Only it is a little lonely sometimes, and I am very silly.’
‘I could tell you something, but you would never forgive me,’ said Randal.
‘What is it?’
‘You will promise not to like me any less? No, don't say that would be impossible.’
‘I was not going to say anything of the kind,’ said Mabel, brightening up and laughing.
‘Thank you. Then let me confess. I came up to the window just now, when you were sitting there. To say that I was shocked, Miss Ashley, is a very mild word. I very nearly went straight to my father and collared him. But I thought I would try first what I could do to mend matters. I think I shall tell him as a warning—’
‘O, please, pray don't!’ exclaimed Mabel, full of shame and distress. ‘I am so sorry. It was very naughty and silly of me, just like a child. Please, you must not tell him.’
‘I would not do anything to vex you,’ said Randal gravely. ‘Only don't let it happen again. I know what it must be for you without any companion. I was afraid of it. My father, you see, will make a hermit of himself. I wonder, is there any one you would like
Mabel thought over her only acquaintance, her schoolfellows.
One by one she fancied them laughing at her, quarrelling with her, gushing, talking nonsense, mimicking Miss Wrench behind her back. No; solitude was better than such society as theirs. She looked up at Randal and shook her head.
‘No,’ she said, ‘thank you. I have no friends. I would rather be alone.’
Randal stared, and stroked his moustache.
‘Then I don't know what we can do,’ he said. ‘You can suggest nothing?’
‘O, not in this weather, of course; but if I might ever go out a little, I should like to see St. Denys and Carweston and the country.’
‘And Morebay and the sea,’ said Randal. ‘Yes, we must try what we can do. This time I can only spare one clear day; but in a week or two I shall be down again, and we will have some drives. I shall be too happy to show you the country.’
Mabel found that evening very pleasant. The General was delighted to have his son at home; he was very proud of him, Mabel thought. Everything in the house seemed to brighten up; the servants did their work more briskly, the General told his most amusing stories, and Randal's comments were more amusing still. He was very quiet, though so full of life. He scarcely ever laughed, and all his movements were deliberate and graceful; he spoke slowly, moved his eyes slowly, but said everything he meant to say, and saw all that there was to be seen. He was very agreeable, and showed none of the cynicism that had shocked Mabel on her first acquaintance with him. A much more worldly woman might have been flattered by his marked
The next day the sun shone over Pensand. It was an uncertain day; the air was much warmer, every distant point stood out clearly; and as the morning wore on great masses of white clouds rose in the south and southwest, and began to climb slowly up the sky. But these threatenings did not trouble Mabel. She was quite ready to enjoy the present; it was delightful to walk in the garden again without an umbrella; to be in an atmosphere of blue and gold instead of misty gray; to gather rosebuds, even to mourn over the beauties fallen, and lying in soft curling pink or creamy heaps upon the damp grass. The books Randal had brought for her were unpacked, and their bright bindings gave quite a modern and cheerful air to the drawing-room. They looked interesting, but Randal would not let her sit down to read.
‘Keep them for wet days, when I am not here,’ he said; ‘I did not bring them to entertain you when you ought to be entertaining me. I am not so unselfish.’
‘It is very nice to be unselfish,’ said Mabel.
‘No! You don't really think so, do you? Why, unselfish people are the greatest bores to themselves and everybody else.’
‘I don't know what you mean.’
‘Well, if you come into a room where an unselfish man is sitting in front of the fire, up he jumps to make way for you. He only makes you feel uncomfortable. You don't want his place. You would much rather that he stayed where he was. I'm not speaking of a lady, of
‘Is that what you do?’ said Mabel.
‘Well, to confess the truth, I generally take his place, simply to punish him, in the hope that he may know better next time, and keep what he has got.’
‘You ought to take care what you say to me,’ said Mabel gravely, after a pause.
‘Why?’
‘Because I believe every word of it.’
Randal looked at her, suddenly interested.
‘Do you? I can't wish for anything better. Always believe what I say to you, and I shall be satisfied.’
But that quiet remark of hers had an effect upon him that would have surprised her if she could have understood it. This girl was not quite blind, not quite a poor fool, who would do nothing but admire him, and be honoured by any preference that he might choose to show her. Well, he was glad of it. It made the game a little more interesting, and he could hardly fail to win it in the end.
After luncheon, the day being still fine, he and she and his father strolled round to the stables. Randal had his own horse brought out for her to see, a beautiful silky-coated black. He was getting old, he said, so he did no London work, but lived in comfort down here, and never had anything behind him but a light dog-cart. Then Randal walked out into the middle of the yard and looked up at the sky.
‘Is it going to be fine, Jenkins?’
‘There may be a storm, sir, but not before evening, I expect,’ said the groom.
‘Miss Ashley, we might make a little round this afternoon if you are inclined. I'll have the Turk put in at once.’
Mabel's eyes brightened, but she turned towards the General.
‘Unless you are afraid to trust yourself to Randal's driving?’ said he.
‘I am not the least afraid,’ said Mabel. ‘I should like it very much.’
So away she drove with Eandal in the dog-cart, Jenkins sitting behind. The wild stormy clouds, the strange gleams of colour in the sky, only made the country more beautiful. Dark shadows fell across the distant purple moors; then the sun broke out over them in a long trail of yellow light. There was a moaning wind, and the air was heavy and sultry. The Turk pricked his ears nervously as he trotted along. It was past the middle of July, and the wild roses and honeysuckle were gone; but there were plenty of flowers in the hedges still, foxgloves and great moon daisies, and scarlet poppies looking out of the cornfields. They drove round under hills crested with fir-trees, where heather and gorse were in bloom, and ferns clothed all the lower ground; then through romantic lanes that kept Mabel exclaiming with admiration. At last they came down into a village at the head of a valley, with a gray square-towered church and a large old house within walls close by.
‘This is Carweston,’ said Randal.
‘O, please drive slowly, and let me look at it,’ said Mabel.
He obeyed, with a slight lazy smile, and Mabel turned her head in all directions, thinking she might catch sight of her friend Anthony; but he was not to be seen.
‘What a pretty old house!’
‘The rooms are very low, and stuffed with rubbish,’ said Randal. ‘Anthony Strange is squire and parson, you
‘O, but it is a charming place,’ said Mabel.
‘So you thought Pensand, the first time I saw you there.’
‘And so I think it still. I am not so changeable.’
‘No. But Nature is not enough for you. You must have human beings. You would really be happiest in London.’
‘I can't bear London. I was wretched there.’
‘At school, of course. But in a house of your own. Well, do you wish to stop and speak to that old lady, or shall we pass her like a shot?’
‘Is it Mrs. Strange? Stop, please,’ said Mabel decidedly.
Mrs. Strange was just coming out of a cottage garden, and looked in some surprise when they pulled up close to her. Jenkins went to the horse's head, and Randal jumped down and spoke to her very politely. Her manner to him was rather cold, but she glanced up and met Mabel's earnest wistful eyes, as she leaned forward, forgetting that she was a stranger, to claim a greeting from Anthony's mother.
Perhaps at first sight there was not so much ready sympathy in Mrs. Strange as in Anthony; she had lived in the world, and knew its ways, and generally made sure that her friendship was deserved before she gave it. Mabel Ashley driving alone with Randal Hawke was a disagreeable sight, and would have made Anthony very angry. If the girl could amuse herself in this way, be happy thus, there was no need to pity her any more. But meeting Mabel's eyes full and straight, before she spoke, Mrs. Strange was softened in spite of herself. Randal introduced them, and she kindly pressed the small hand that was stretched out to her.
‘Where are you and Miss Ashley going?’ she said to Randal. ‘Won't you come in?’
‘You are very kind,’ Eandal answered. ‘But we are going back by St. Denys, and I am afraid of the weather. We must not stay to-day, I think.’
He knew that Mabel was disappointed, but would not look at her.
‘Remember, I expect you to come and see me some day,’ said Mrs. Strange to her. ‘My son has told you so, I think.’
‘O yes, I wish I could,’ said Mabel. ‘Is Mr. Strange quite well? He has not been at Pensand for so long.’
‘He is away,’ said Mrs. Strange. ‘I expect him back to-night.’
Randal did not seem inclined to stay any longer. He answered Mrs. Strange's inquiry for the General, and then they drove on, Mabel turning her head to look back at Carweston and the little lady in the road.
‘How long is it since Anthony Strange paid you a visit, Miss Ashley?’ said Randal.
‘About a week;’
‘He will be flattered. I should like to be so much missed. But I suppose he amuses you with his odd absurd ways.’
‘I don't know whether he amuses me. I like him very much,’ said Mabel quietly.
‘Well, there often is a good deal to be liked about those enthusiastic sort of fellows,’ said Randal. ‘Only they are disappointing, you see. One can't depend on them for more than two days together. They don't know what steadiness means.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Why, Anthony would tell you that you must not expect too much from genius. You must be thankful if it admires and sympathises with you for a month. Then you must be prepared to make way for somebody else,
‘But I can't believe all that of Mr. Strange. He has been so kind to me,’ said Mabel.
‘I know he has. And of course he quite meant it all at the time. Now don't be angry with me. Don't think me a cold-blooded wretch for telling you this.’
‘But you never liked him, did you?’ suggested Mabel.
‘O dear, yes; and long after I understood him. But one does lose patience with that sort of thing at last,’ said Randal.
Different turnings had brought them to that same road where Dick had found Flora one afternoon, standing by the wall.
To-day all the distant hills were shrouded in dark heavy thunder-clouds, the high ground on the opposite river-bank stood out purple and sharp and very near, the water lay gleaming with a red lurid light from the sky. Then a vivid flash divided the clouds, and for an instant all the river and its banks were in a blaze. The roll of thunder followed almost immediately, rattling among the hills. Then a flood of heavy rain rushed down, suddenly veiling river and hills and everything in the lower ground. On the road they only felt a few drops of it, but the storm was passing up the valley, and in another minute would be upon them. Randal touched his horse with the whip, and they flew along down the road.
‘I am not hurrying into the storm,’ he explained to Mabel; ‘but there is a place just below here where we can take shelter. That rain would wet you through in no time.’
He pulled up at a cottage on the right-hand side of the road, jumped down, helped Mabel down, and told Jenkins to put the dog-cart into a shed close by.
‘We want shelter from the storm, Mrs. Sale,’ he said to a woman, who came forward to the door.
‘You're welcome, sir, and you're only just in time,’ said the woman, bringing forward a chair for Mabel.
Mabel thought she had seldom seen a more painful face, gray and stony and expressionless, with cold eyes that looked as if there was nothing worth living for. But she was half frightened by the dazzle of lightning that just then filled the room. And then the noise of thunder, and the pelting rain, which now began dancing on the doorstep and pouring in a stream down the road, took her thoughts quite away from Mrs. Sale's face. She was sitting in an old-fashioned wooden armchair. She leaned forward, and shaded her eyes with her hand.
‘Can't we go into the parlour?’ she heard Randal's voice saying through the din.
‘As you please, sir; but there's some one there already,’ answered Mrs. Sale, with a peculiar tone in her voice.
Randal paused a moment. Then he walked across the room and pushed open a door. A few words were exchanged with the person inside, so low that Mabel could not hear them. At last Randal said, ‘Come and talk to her;’ and then she felt that somebody came and stood by her chair, and heard a low sweet voice, with a great deal of feeling in it, saying gently, ‘Does the storm frighten you?’
Mabel raised her eyes, and saw the original of that photograph in Randal's book standing fair and smiling by her side—the woman whom Dick Northcote ought to have married, who had had so many troubles, and looked all the sweeter for them.
Flora Lancaster was not a woman who generally took to girls, or inspired them with confidence in her, but for some reason her manner to Mabel that day was curiously soft and charming, Mabel thought her new acquaintance
‘Do come into the parlour,’ Flora said. ‘There are comfortable chairs in it, and you look so tired. Have you been for a very long drive?’
‘O no,’ said Mabel, smiling. ‘I am not tired at all; only I don't like this weather.’
‘Rain always depresses you, doesn't it?’ said Randal, meeting her eyes with a smile which brought colour into her pale cheeks.
Flora took her hand, and they went together into the inner room, a little snuggery which did Mrs. Sale credit. As to that worthy woman, she did not concern herself about them, but went back to her work in the kitchen.
Mabel enjoyed the next half hour much more than people of good taste and breeding, such as Mrs. Strange and Miss Northcote, would have thought allowable or possible. But there were a great many excuses for her. Anthony, perhaps, with a man's larger view, would have confessed that. Her companions had plenty of cleverness, as well as good looks, and seemed bent on amusing her, and making the time pass quickly. They were on very intimate terms with each other; but as they avoided Christian names, it did not occur to Mabel to wonder at that
Once, when Randal was gone out to look at the weather, Flora said to her, ‘I have not been introduced to you, Miss Ashley. May I ask if you know who I am?’
‘O yes,’ said Mabel; ‘you are Mrs. Lancaster. They have your photograph at the Castle. I knew you directly.’
‘Really! Is it in a book?’
‘Yes; in Mr. Hawke's book.’
‘Pensand is a beautiful old place, isn't it?’ said Flora.
‘O, lovely, especially in fine weather. One is rather dull sometimes when it rains. Nobody ever comes there
As Mabel mentioned Anthony's name, she remembered with a little pain what Randal had said about him; she could not think it was true. But it was no use tormenting herself about that now.
‘I don't know whether I may ask you,’ said Mabel, with her dark wistful eyes fixed on Flora; ‘but if you would come and see me sometimes, I should be so very glad.’
‘Thank you,’ said Flora, rather gravely. Then, as Randal came in, she turned to him, and spoke with a shade of abruptness that Mabel did not understand. ‘Miss Ashley says she would like me to come and see her. What do you think?’
Randal for once in his life looked a little confused.
‘I think that I should like it just as much as Miss Ashley would,’ he said. ‘But we are not the only people to be consulted. My father, you know, has the oddest fancies about visitors.’
But Mabel had her fancies too, and this was a new and strong one. Her lonely little soul, disappointed several times of expected sympathy, seemed to find it at last in Flora Lancaster's soft manners and blue eyes.
‘O, but if you ask the General he won't refuse you,’ she said eagerly. ‘And you said?’—’
‘What did I say?’ said Randal, as she stopped.
‘You said you wanted me to be happy,’ said Mabel, colouring a little.
Flora looked from one to the other and smiled.
‘So I do,’ said Randal. ‘And from my long acquaintance with Mrs. Lancaster, I can tell you that you are quite right. We will see what we can do with the General. Now, I'm very sorry; but do you know that the sun is coming out?’
Randal Hawke was certainly a clever man. When he chose to be liked he generally was liked, in spite of any former prejudice that people might have had against him. They generally began with a prejudice, for the first impression of him was nearly always unpleasant. It depended on himself whether he chose to take the trouble of doing away with that impression. With Mabel Ashley, having once determined to make himself agreeable to her, he was perfect. Long afterwards she remembered that drive, and wondered what made her enjoy it so much, especially the latter part of it, after she had made friends with Mrs. Lancaster, and had smiled farewell to her as she stood at the cottage-door.
Perhaps the wonderful beauty of that afternoon had something to do with it; the brilliancy of that stormy sunshine; the wild heaps of clouds, with their marvellous colours, that lay crowded on the horizon; the flashing water; the scarlet glow of flowers in the St. Denys gardens; the blue sky and the sharp dark shadows. As they turned up the steep street of St. Denys, Mabel looked down over the broad blue harbour with its many ships, and steamers with their trails of smoke passing swiftly by. A gun boomed out from a distant fort; a long line of Morebay buildings, shadowed the moment before by a cloud, came suddenly out into sunshine; there was a distant noise of shipbuilding; shouts far off on the water; the whistle of a train as it approached the long curved bridge. All was life and work and beauty, and a wonderful feeling of hapness
‘Yes, she is very pretty,’ said Randal, ‘and very well preserved, considering all she has gone through. But we may hope that none of it cut very deep.’
‘Her husband's death, do you mean?’ said Mabel, rather startled.
‘I don't mean that she has no heart. Rather too much for her own peace, on the contrary. But she shows good taste, don't you see, not to be inconsolable for the loss of a fellow like Lancaster. She ought never to have married him. A fellow in a long coat and a choker, without two ideas in his head.’
‘Was he like that? What a pity! Why did she marry him?’ said Mabel.
‘Partly from spite. She meant to marry Dick Northcote, but he took himself off to New Zealand.’
‘Marry for spite! What a reason! said Mabel. ‘General Hawke told me something about that. It was sad for her, poor thing.’
‘It may come right after all,’ said Randal. ‘Dick still admires her; he let that out to me the other day. So she may end by marrying for the same reason that you would.’
Mabel looked up rather wonderingly; she was a little absent, and did not quite understand him.
‘For love, I hope,’ he said, in a very low voice, looking at her.
Something at that moment, she did not know why, reminded Mabel of Dick Northcote's eyes one day at the Castle, when he had tried to make peace with her across the tea-table. Little Mabel was growing up, and her experiences were multiplying. She thought, however, that
As they drove through St. Denys Randal showed her Captain Cardew's house, with its garden full of roses and jasmine, and presently Miss Northcote's, standing high up in the sunshine, with that wonderful view spread out before it.
Kate Northcote herself was just going in at her door She bowed rather distantly, and looked after them as they passed on up the lane, thinking of Anthony and his opinion of Randal. Mabel Ashley looked quite happy beside him, she thought.
‘I don't really think,’ was Kate's conclusion,’ that we need concern ourselves about that girl. She belongs to those people, and is evidently contented with them. Anthony's prejudices are so very strong.’
‘Miss Northcote came to see me once, but she has never been again,’ said Mabel to her companion. ‘I suppose I ought to call on her if I could.’
‘I'm glad you are so sociably inclined,’ said Randal. ‘It is a thousand pities my father does not agree with you. But when I come down again we will see what we can do. Did you take any fancy to Miss Northcote?’
‘I am not sure that I did,’ said Mabel. ‘O, I ought not to say that, for I really don't know her at all. I daresay she is very nice indeed.’
‘She is nice in her way—according to her lights,’ said Randal, smiling. ‘But she has fearful disadvantages. She belongs to one of the oldest families in this part of England, she has lived all her life in that house at St. Denys, and though she has a long-standing flirtation with Anthony Strange, she has not, you see, succeeded in marrying him. So don't be shocked if I describe her as a
‘O, but I am shocked,’ said Mabel. ‘I thought her so very handsome and ladylike.’
‘So she is; you are quite right. She was a beauty in her day, and I don't know a more distinguished-looking woman. But I never allow myself to be prejudiced, and I have come to those other conclusions after long acquaintance,’ said Randal.
‘You really don't seem to admire anybody,’ said Mabel.
‘I prefer the charming unconsciousness which does not realise its right to be admired,’ said Randal.
There was something in this speech that silenced Mabel, though it did not make her enjoy her drive any the less, or feel anything but sorry when it was over, and she was helped down from her high seat and taken into the house with a care which was almost tenderness.
Randal soon followed Mabel into the drawing-room after dinner that night. He found her a little disconsolate, shut out from the summer evening by shutters and curtains; so he opened one of the windows, and they stood there in the shadow on the threshold, looking out into a fairy scene, a flood of soft still moonlight. It was one of those times in which one feels one ought to be very happy, and longs instinctively for some dear friend far away to stand there and enjoy it too; a time when the happiest people feel that little restless discontent which comes in the face of Nature's greatest beauty.
Mabel was not one of the happiest of people, and just then she felt very lonely, very sad, as if she wanted something so much, and did, not know what it was. There were tears, though Randal could not see them, in the eyes which were gazing into that dream-distance. He knew, however, what women and sentimental people generally
‘Don't come out,’ he said, ‘the ground is damp. I'm so sorry, but I have something disagreeable to tell you. Do try not to be much disappointed.’
He came back and stood by Mabel's side, looking at her anxiously. Mabel thought nobody could be kinder; there was so much real regret in his voice. All the sharpness which she had disliked at first seemed to have disappeared for ever.
‘Old people are so peculiar,’ he went on. ‘I don't believe, do you know, that it is only old men. Old ladies are just the same. Shall we pray never to grow old, you and I?’
‘I would rather not die just yet, though,’ said Mabel, ‘if you don't mind.’
‘I should think not. There is plenty to live for, just at present. Only don't let us live to be a torment to other people.’
‘But why?’ said Mabel. ‘What is it? Tell me, and I'll try not to be disappointed.’
‘I have been asking my father about Mrs. Lancaster coming here,’ said Randal. ‘He won't have it at all. He says that she never has been received into society here, and he does not wish to set the example. I represented to him what nonsense all that was, but in vain.’
‘O dear! but I am not society,’ said Mabel. She was disappointed, and she sighed rather drearily. ‘The days are so long,’ she said, ‘when you are not here.’
‘Poor dear Mabel!’ said Randal softly, as if he was thinking aloud. ‘No, I don't see that you need be described as “society.” But you are, you know, and Mrs. Lancaster isn't. Undefinable, but true. Tell me
His manner was so perfectly quiet and unexcited that the words hardly struck Mabel as anything remarkable.
‘They are, of course,’ she said, ‘because I am alone, and have not much to do.’
‘Don't spoil the compliment. Did you hear me call you Mabel just now? Were you angry?’
‘No.’
‘Don't you think, considering everything, we know each other well enough to dispense with Miss Ashley and Mr. Hawke? Your father and mine were like brothers, and I think you and I might at least be intimate friends. Don't you?’
The allusion to her father would have touched Mabel's heart, even if she had not liked Randal himself so much. But he was fast winning his way, this young man, who seemed to care for her and think of her happiness so much more than anybody else did. She smiled, and said, ‘O yes!’ without any hesitation.
‘Then just say a few words to close our bargain. Say “I am sorry you are going away to-morrow, Randal.”’
She repeated the words at once, simply and like a child.
‘Thank you, Mabel. So am I; but I hope to be here very soon again.’
It was such an odd little scene, ended the next minute by the appearance of General Hawke, rather cross and sleepy.
When Mabel woke in the morning, her first idea was that she had dreamt it all. But the maid was standing by her bedside, holding in her arms the prettiest white Persian kitten, with long downy hair and plaintive hazel eyes. Round its neck was a blue ribbon, with a note tied to it.
‘Mr. Randal was obliged to leave early, miss,’ said the maid, ‘but he told me to give you this kitten.’
Mabel took the creature into her arms at once, untied the note, read it, and knew that yesterday evening was a reality. There were only these three words: ‘With Randal's love.’
It certainly did seem ill-natured of General Hawke to have refused to let Mrs. Lancaster pay Mabel a visit. Perhaps he felt this himself, for that day, after Randal was gone, his manner to her was kinder than ever.
‘Let me look at you, my dear,’ he said after breakfast, taking Mabel's hand with a pleasant smile. ‘You certainly are fatter than when you first came. I believe Pensand agrees with you, after all. How do you feel?’
Mabel, with her new pet purring on her shoulder, was quite ready to answer cheerfully that she felt very well.
‘That's right,’ said the General. ‘We should do very well here if we always had Randal. He has no notion of being dull. We miss him, don't we?’
‘Yes, very much,’ said Mabel truthfully.
Randal was a person whose absence would always be felt, either as a blank or a relief. To Mabel, in her new-made friendship, it was quite a loss to co about the house without meeting him, to take up the books he had left behind him, and feel he was not there. Perhaps he did not always talk nicely about other people; but he really seemed to care for her. Poor lonely Mabel! Randal, in his position, had a great advantage there.
The white fluffy kitten, and those books in their bright new bindings, occupied that day pleasantly enough. Mabel took them out into the garden, and sat in the loveliest corner of the lawn, that same corner where Dick had found her one afternoon, and had been so much enraged by her reception of him. He was a
Here she found herself in a strange world. In some country far away, a calm blue sea rippled up in little curling waves, silver foam on golden sand. Beautiful creatures, like Greek statues come to life, wandered about or lay dreaming in the sunshine. It appeared to be the present time, and yet, according to this writer's fancy, no shadow of Christianity, or even morality, had come to trouble this gentle pagan world. These people had no laws, no duties, no objects, except to preserve their beautiful selves, and to enjoy the world they were in. One supposes that they did not believe in immortality; certainly they did not deserve it. But they were represented as so happy, so humanly perfect in their selfish existence, that it was impossible to be angry with them. The lives of these lovely Communists were made strangely real by their modern names and the way they talked. It seemed at first possible that human beings might live such a life, and even a wise man might read on smiling through volumes of this poetical stuff, so charmingly told were the stories, so satisfying to one
that these creatures, who boasted of being so natural, were fearful in their unnaturalness, risen up as they were, clothed in light, from the black depths of the old pagan world. But as a wise man might have taken a little time to come to this conclusion, it is not surprising that for two days Mabel read on with a sort of delighted wonder, fascinated by the strange beauty of these books.
Her enjoyment of them came to rather a sudden end. Towards the evening of the second day, she had been called in to tea, and had left her chair and a pile of books in her favourite nook of the lawn, just out of sight from the windows. Anthony Strange, making his usual short cut through the garden, came on these traces of his young friend.
‘She will be back directly,’ he said to himself. ‘What has the child got to amuse her?’
He took up one of the volumes, turned over a few pages; then sat down in Mabel's chair, and was absorbed for about ten minutes. At the end of this time he was frowning terribly.
‘Who can have given her such books as these?’ he said.
He held the book very tight for a moment, and looked round at the waving trees, the roses, all the beautiful distant tints of river and wood and sea. They gave him no answer, but a sweet fresh breeze came blowing up, and tried to ruffle the offending leaves which he was holding down so sternly.
‘Talk of poison!” said Anthony. ‘Paper and printer's ink make the surest kind! Which is worse, to kill the body or the soul? What should I do if I found
Poor, peaceful, selfish pagans! This angry Christian began at once tearing out the pages of the volume in his hand, crumpling them up, and throwing them aside in a dishonoured heap. From one volume he went to another. Three or four had been destroyed in this way, when footsteps and a voice came towards him across the lawn.
‘Come along, Fluffy dear,’ said Mabel. ‘Haven't you had cream enough? I'm sure you ought to be just as happy as those people in the books, who went on eating grapes as long as they liked, and slept among the flowers. Don't you wish we were there too, Fluffy? What a world it was!’
She came round a blooming rosebush, her kitten dancing after her, with a smile and a little colour in her face. Then she stood still and stared in amazement. There was Anthony in her chair, his plain face made quite ugly by indignation, his lank awkward figure a contrast indeed to the proportions of those heroes whose history he had been so jealously tearing up. There he sat, in the midst of the tattered volumes, and as Mabel looked at him he actually stripped the back off another victim.
‘O Mr. Strange!’ cried Mabel, her voice shrill with fright and anger. ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’
Anthony got up, threw the book on the grass, and came forward to meet her with both hands outstretched.
‘My dear child, I am only breaking poison-bottles,’ he said.
But Mabel was not ready to give him her hands. She joined them together, and quite wrung them in her distress. Her eyes filled with tears of anger and vexation.
‘I don't know what you mean,’ she said, ‘O, how could you!’
‘A cat, too!’ cried Anthony, as Fluffy came forward and stared at him curiously. ‘Who has been doing all this frightful mischief? What has happened to you? Why do I find everything changed?’
‘Nothing is changed. This is my kitten,’ said Mabel, catching Fluffy up into her arms for comfort. ‘O dear, why are you tearing up my books? They are so beautiful, and I shall have nothing to read, nothing to do, nothing!’
Mabel's voice broke into a sob. But she remembered that she was grown up, and that it was very childish to cry. So she swallowed her tears resolutely, and looked at Anthony with reproachful eyes, waiting for some explanation. He was not at all ready to be ashamed of himself, though he could have cried too to see her in such distress.
‘Don't let me hear you call those books beautiful,’ he said. ‘They are horrible heathen nonsense, which nobody ought to read, least of all a girl like you. Good heavens! After a course of those, your moral sense would be completely destroyed. Beautiful! No one who cared for true beauty could help doing as I have done—destroying the evil stuff on the spot.’
‘O, but they were not yours.’
‘Nor yours, I trust,’ said Anthony. ‘But I don't care whose they are. If they belonged to the Queen, I should do just the same.’
‘You couldn't,’ said Mabel. ‘And they are mine; they were given to me. It was very kind. I did want something to amuse me.’
‘What an awful state of things this is!’ said Anthony. ‘Who gave them to you?’
‘Randal,’ answered Mabel, after a moment's hesitation.
Then she sat down, buried her face in Fluffy's white fur, and cried a little; she really could not help it.
‘Randal! We have come to this already,’ said Anthony aloud, but he was not speaking to her.
For several minutes he stood motionless, with his arms folded, gazing at her. The wind caught a few of the scattered leaves and danced them off across the lawn, but neither he nor Mabel looked after them. He had forgotten all about them, for his mind was quite full of one person—Randal—whom he hated with most unclerical thoroughness.
Anthony was not in the least conscious of his own odd looks, and this fact generally made other people forget them too. Mabel had never thought of them when he and she were friends. Now that she was angry with him, she began to compare him in her mind with everybody else—with Dick, with Randal, with those perfect creatures in her lost books. And yet there was a little self-reproach running through it all.
‘Mabel,’ said Anthony at last, with a pathetic tone in his voice that would have touched any one who really knew him, ‘can't you do me justice? Can't you see why I destroyed those books of yours? There are thousands more of them in the world. I don't buy them all and tear them up—though that would be as grand a mission in life as a man could have. But don't you know why I tore up these?’
‘No,’ said Mabel obstinately. ‘They were only amusing. They did not do me any harm.’
‘You could not read them without harm,—but that is not exactly the question,’ said Anthony. ‘Why should I interfere with you? Why should I tear up your books, and not other people's?’
‘I don't know,’ said Mabel dismally.
Anthony saw that his offence was almost unpardonable.
‘There is only one way,’ thought Anthony. ‘I am sure of it now. I must be very careful and quiet and reasonable.’
‘Mabel,’ he said, ‘you are very angry with me. I made you so; it is my own fault. But think a moment, and then perhaps you will be able to forgive me. Why should I care whether you read such books as those or not?’
There was the same strange beauty in Anthony's voice as he spoke that Mabel had noticed when he read prayers, on the morning of their first acquaintance. It came when he spoke, as he seldom did out of church, from the very depths of his heart, from a quiet region
‘O, I'm sure you had some good reason,’ she said, in a depressed voice. ‘It is wrong of me to care about the books, I daresay. Please forgive me for being so silly.’
Anthony caught the little hand and held it fast.
‘O Mabel, my child, little you know about it!’ he said. ‘Some good reason! The same reason that has haunted me ever since I met you in the field that morning—strong when I am with you; stronger still when I am away from you, and know the bad influences that I leave you among. Because I must take care of you; you are not safe away from me. Mabel, do you feel that too?’
‘I don't quite understand,’ said Mabel softly. ‘Every one is good to me, though perhaps no one is quite so good as you? But you think I am unhappy, and I really am not. The General is very kind indeed, and so is Ran—’
‘Don't say it!’ cried Anthony impatiently. ‘When did you begin to call him that?’
‘Only the day before yesterday,’ said Mabel, in some astonishment.
‘You did not like that man at first. Why do you like him now?’
‘Because he has been so nice to me. I couldn't dislike him if I wished,’ said Mabel decidedly.
Anthony hardly knew what to say. His hating Randal was perhaps hardly a sufficient reason for Mabel's hating him too. After all, it would not so much matter if this dawning preference could be checked in time.
‘Mabel, you don't understand,’ he said. ‘Let me
Mabel did not at first know what he meant. If she had ever dreamt of a lover, he certainly was not the least like Anthony Strange, so much older than herself, and wearing spectacles. The idea was almost too astonishing. She stared at him gravely without speaking and thought he must be offering her a home with mother out of the kindness of his heart, and because he could not feel happy about her where she was. This idea seemed reasonable; the other was absurd.
‘But Mrs. Strange would not like it, perhaps,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘And I don't think the General would let me go. O no, thank you; it is no use thinking about it.’
‘I would manage the General,’ said Anthony eagerly. ‘Yes, no doubt he would object; but he has no real over you. As to my mother, I believe she only wants you to make her the very happiest woman in the world. She likes you already; if you were her daughter, she would love you dearly. Say yes, then, Mabel. You are my first love, dear, and certainly my last.’
He did mean it, then. Was ever any thing so extraordinary? He must be fifty, at least, thought Mabel in her consternation. Poor dear Mr. Strange, he had been so charming till to-day! Why must he spoil all by saying this? She turned her head away, and gazed at the blue line of sea so far off. ‘O, if I was in a ship hundreds of miles away!’ thought Mabel. The kitten in her lap was playing with one of her hands; she became painfully conscious that Anthony was still holding the other. What was she to say?
Something must be said; she could not sit there for ever, and let him hold her hand. She put down the kitten on the grass and got up, freeing herself by the sudden movement. Then she looked at Anthony, bravely meeting the earnest expression of his eyes. His face changed a little; for of course it was easy to see that there was no hope for him. Anthony, with his power of sympathy, was not likely to fail in understanding the one girl he cared for, and there was no selfishness in his love.
‘You’ don't like me enough then, Mabel?’ he said gently.
‘It is not that,’ said Mabel. ‘I like you very much. But I never thought—and I can't—’
‘Does that make it impossible that you ever should?’
‘Yes. O, don't you see,’ said Mabel, with a sudden appeal to the friendliness that had never failed her yet, ‘if I did, it would be just for home, and to be taken care of, and all that? It could not be anything but that—’
She stopped short, blushing scarlet. Anthony did not speak for a moment, and a look of pain passed over his face; but then he smiled at her as kindly as ever.
‘Yes, my child; I see—I understand. That would not be enough, as you say. Very well, I won't speak of myself or my wishes any more. Only this, Mabel: if you ever do want a home, Carweston is your home. The tenderest friendship is not such a bad foundation, and something else would grow up afterwards; so if you ever change your mind about what I have asked
This was a curious commentary on Randal's character of Anthony Strange.
‘We will keep it all to ourselves, if you don't mind,’ he said. ‘You have nobody that you will care to tell, and no one shall hear of it from me. I shall come here just as usual. You will let me do that, Mabel?’
‘O, I hope you will,’ said Mabel, thinking at the same time that his coming did not depend much on her.
All the excitement was gone from his manner; he turned aside, and began picking up the scattered remains of gay bindings, large print, and broad margins with which the grass was strewn. Mabel watched him with a dismal countenance. When he looked at her, the words suddenly came out, ‘What will Randal say?’
‘Tell him it was me, and then let him come to me and say what he pleases,’ answered Anthony. ‘I am a clergyman, you know. I can bear anything.’
Then with rather a sad smile he shook hands with her, said good-bye, and walked away down the grassy slope among the roses, leaving Mabel alone to meditate on her first offer.
Marry old Anthony Strange! live at Carweston! Life had much brighter possibilities than that; so Mabel very naturally thought at nineteen. And Randal was of course quite right when he said one should marry for love.
Flora Lancaster would have been angry, perhaps, if any one had told her that a little uneasiness was mixed with the curiosity that went on growing in her mind, through the days after her meeting with Randal Hawke and Mabel Ashley. She heard nothing from Randal about her going to Pensand or staying away. He probably thought that she would not dream of going without leave from him; but here he reckoned a little too much on her submissiveness. Of course there had been till now no question of her going to the Castle: she could not keep too far away; but now that this splendid excuse presented itself in the shape of a girl staying there, who was anxious to make her acquaintance, it was very hard for Flora to resist the temptation.
She had never seen the Castle, some day to be her home, except, from the river or the other side of the combe, a few gray walls and battlements rising above the trees. She longed to go through the rooms once, to see what it was all like, so as to gain a little reality for her dreams of the future. Her patience and prudence, which had been so wonderful, were inclined to give way when this opportunity offered itself.
There could be no great harm in it. General Hawke, though he might dislike visitors, would hardly be rude to her in his own house; Randal, even if he did not approve, could not be very angry; Miss Ashley would be really pleased. Flora saw very well that Mabel had taken a fancy to her.
So one lovely afternoon she walked across by the
Flora had hardly boldness enough for the part in life that she was now called upon to play. She could be cool and composed enough in what concerned Dick North-cote, or any other acquaintance or admirer she might have; but Randal was a different thing, and to walk in his grounds, to run the risk of meeting his father, was what agitated Flora to the very depths of her nature. More than once she was on the point of turning back, but then curiosity spoke and said: ‘You have so long wished to see the Castle, and there cannot be a better opportunity. Don't be absurd; nobody will hurt you. If he is vexed you can soon pacify him.’ And that faint shadow of uneasiness, without putting itself into any words or conscious thoughts, had its effect too. Flora walked on rather more quickly than before.
It was like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty, she began to think, as she passed under the gate-tower, and through the wild rose-garden beyond, without seeing any living creature. But then she suddenly found herself at the house-door. She looked at the long silent building with the strangest feeling of familiarity, hesitating a moment before she rang the bell. When she did ring it the dreadful clanging noise seemed as if it would never stop. It brought a deepened colour into Flora's checks, even with her age and experience. Perhaps the astonished face of the old butler, who came to the door at once, may have had something to do with this. He knew Mrs. Lancaster very well by sight, but in his
However, he did not deny that Miss Ashley was at home, though there was a protest in his manner, a ‘What will the world come to next!’ as he led the way through the hall and library to the drawing-room. There was also disapproval in his voice as he announced Mrs. Lancaster.
Mabel got up quickly from a great chair near the open window, where she was sitting in lonely state, with the kitten in her lap, and welcomed Flora with a frank pleasure that set the visitor quite at her ease.
Mabel herself felt rather alarmed, though she did not show it—remembering the General's orders, and what Randal had said—but of course poor Mrs. Lancaster knew nothing about that, and her kindness in coming was quite delightful. They sat down at each end of that large sofa which was Randal's favourite, and talked a little about the walk from St. Denys, and the beauty of Pensand.
‘I must show you the garden presently, when you are rested,’ said Mabel. ‘Yes, I think it is the most lovely place I ever saw. I thought it very dull at one time; but now it is better, and I have my kitten. Isn't she pretty?’
Flora was quite ready to admire the kitten. She could not help glancing round the room, too, which she thought quite alarmingly handsome and stately. She felt like an intruder among all those dark old portraits, though it was with a certain pride and satisfaction that she looked at them. Yet she had enough sense of the fitness of things to feel, with a little keen pain, that this small lame girl beside her was more fitted than she was to live in such rooms as these. She tried to put these disagreeable things out of her head, however, and began alking to Mabel in a personal sort of way about herself
Flora's gentle manner seemed to invite confidence. Mabel felt that, as she had done the other day. Having lived all this time without a woman to speak to, it was surprisingly easy to make friends with Mrs. Lancaster, and Mabel was quite ready to do it. The General's prejudices, and Randal's remarks on ‘society,’ were not worth thinking of. Mrs. Lancaster was a very pretty sweet-mannered woman, who had walked all the way from St. Denys to see her, when other people did not trouble themselves to remember her existence. Mabel in her loneliness was quite determined not to lose this chance of making a friend. Randal liked Mrs. Lancaster; he could not really mind; and so she chattered away.
One or two questions from Flora brought out the whole story of her young friend's life, up to the time of her coming to Pensand. After that there was not much to tell. To Mabel herself it seemed rather dreamy and strange, that long string of summer days spent in solitude, with now and then a bright exception. Flora seemed to understand it all.
‘What a difference it must make to you when Mr. Hawke is here!’ she said. ‘Had you a very pleasant drive the other day, after we parted?’
‘O yes, charming,’ said Mabel. ‘And we are to have still nicer drives when he comes back. You know him very well, don't you? Do tell me what you think of him.’
Flora looked at her with a curious intensity, and smiled.
‘Of course, I have known him ever since we were children. He and I and Mr. Northcote, whom I think you also know, we were all young together, and very naughty children too.’
‘Mr. Northcote! yes; but Randal is much nicer,’ began Mabel, and then paused in some confusion. What was she saying? Had not Randal told her that Dick Northcote might very likely marry Mrs. Lancaster after all? ‘I don't mean that, exactly,’ she said. ‘What I mean is, I know Mr. Northcote so very slightly, and Randal so well. No doubt Mr. Northcote might be just as nice, if one knew him. But I think one might so very easily be mistaken about Randal. Don't you think so too?’
Mabel looked anxiously at her companion, to see if she minded that unfortunate remark about Dick. But Flora was smiling, and though there was something slightly peculiar in her smile, the gentleness of her manner was unchanged.
‘I think I know what you mean, quite well,’ she said, to Mabel's relief ignoring Dick altogether. ‘His satirical way of talking about things.’
‘Yes. Do you know, when he first came I did not like him at all. I thought he was so sharp and ill-natured. But now I have quite changed my mind, and I should be a very ungrateful girl if I had not. I can't tell you how kind he is. He thinks of everything to give one pleasure. He brought me a number of books from London'—here Mabel could not refrain from a small sigh—‘and he gave me this dear kitten; and now the pleasantest thing I have to think of is his coming back again.’
‘He is like a kind brother to you, in fact,’ said Flora.
‘I don't believe brothers ever are so kind,’ said Mabel impulsively.
Then she thought there was something a little strange in the fixed intense manner in which Flora was gazing at her. It struck her that perhaps she ought not to talk of Randal in this way to a mere acquaintance, and the thought brought the colour into her face suddenly.
‘Perhaps he would not like me to talk like this,’ she said.
‘I value your confidence, Miss Ashley,’ said Flora, in her low even voice. ‘Don't mind speaking to me. I know very well how you must enjoy it. And in all you tell me there is nothing that is not natural.’
‘It all seemed to come as a matter of course,’ said Mabel. ‘His father and mine were like brothers, you see. So it was quite natural, as soon as we really understood each other, that we should call each other by our Christian names.’
‘Of course. Perfectly natural,’ said Flora.
Then, a little to Mabel's surprise, she stood up and drew an odd quick breath, as if something was stiling her.
‘Do excuse me,’ she said; ‘but isn't this room very hot? You said you would show me the garden. I should be so thankful for a little fresh air.’
‘O yes, we will go out at once,’ said Mabel.
They wandered about among the roses, but Flora did not seem to care about them much. Mabel thought she could not be well, and wondered what she could do for her. Flora, however, declared that she was perfectly well, and should enjoy her walk home.
‘You must take some roses,’ said Mabel, cutting a lovely red one.
‘No, indeed, thank you. The garden at home is quite full of roses,’ said Flora. ‘Please leave these beauties where they are. I may not go straight home, and they would fade before I got there. I really mean it. I would rather not have them, thank you.’
As they drew near the house again, Mabel's ear distinguished the well-known sound of Stevens setting down the tea-tray in the drawing-room. At the same instant Flora paused; perhaps she heard it too.
‘If I go down this path, it will bring me out into the
Mabel was beginning to remonstrate, when General Hawke suddenly stepped out of the drawing-room window. Mabel felt rather terrified, and Flora coloured deeply; her young companion wondered why. But the General was equal to the occasion. Mabel almost felt as if she loved him the next moment, when he came forward in the pleasantest, politest manner, claimed acquaintance with Mrs. Lancaster, and shook hands with her quite kindly.
‘Your tea is ready, Mabel,’ he said. ‘Mrs. Lancaster will be glad of it after her long walk.’
But Flora would not be persuaded to go into the house again.
‘Thank you, General Hawke,’ she said. ‘You are very kind; but I promised to be home in time for my father and mother's tea. I can't disappoint them.’
‘Then you are a very good daughter,’ said the General kindly; ‘and I suppose we must not say any more. How does Captain Cardew like this hot weather? He is a wonderful man, is he not? Just as strong and hearty as ever?’
‘He is very well, thank you,’ said Flora. ‘Good-bye, Miss Ashley.’
General Hawke stood there on the gravel, and watched the two young women as they wished each other good-bye. Mabel was a little disturbed and vexed at her friend's sudden departure; he could see that; there was a sad puzzled look in her eyes. Mrs. Lancaster, too, looked grave. But he could not be aware of the change in her as Mabel was—of the unaccountable cloud that had come over her gentle serenity. Mabel walked with her as far as the drive; and as they stood there for a moment, out of the General's hearing, Flora had the greatest difficulty in not giving some quick passionate
‘What brought that good woman here?’ said he, without any particular sign of indignation.
‘She came to see me,’ said Mabel. ‘I hope you won't be angry with her. She did not know, you see, that you objected to strangers.’
‘She ran away rather fast when I appeared,’ said the General. ‘We are not often troubled with visitors from St. Denys, fortunately. It is a very good thing, do you know, to have the character of being ferocious; it saves you from a great many bores. How do you like that lady?’
‘She is very pretty, I think, and very nice,’ said Mabel.
‘Yes; a good-looking woman still, though nothing to what she was ten years ago, when all the boys were wild about her.’
‘Was Randal wild about her too?’ said Mabel, she did not know why.
‘Randal!’ said the General, looking at her rather sharply. ‘What can have put that into your head?’
‘Nothing at all. I don't know. I only wondered.’
‘No, my dear. Randal may not be perfect—no young man is. But he is a sensible fellow, with very good taste; and he was always sure to leave that sort of nonsense to rattlepates like Dick Northcote.’
It was a great relief to Mabel that Mrs. Lancaster's visit had not enraged the General. She thought perhaps, in spite of what he had said to Randal, he would not very much object to her coming again.
And Flora! Several times in her long walk home all her strength seemed suddenly to desert her, and she was obliged to sit down on the bank by the roadside, till she had scolded herself back into some sort of life.
This was what she had gained by her journey to Pensand. What had before been nothing but a faint possibility had become an awful suspicion, deepening sometimes into almost certainty. And yet she told herself it could not be; she could not believe it. Other people might be false, but this one person must be true, or what was to become of her? Then she hated herself for suspecting him. Then she remembered Mabel's blush, and the happy tone in which she talked of ‘Randal,’ the one brightness in her dull life. Then again—But it was no use arguing with oneself about it. Time would show.
And so at last Flora reached home, pale and exhausted. She lay on the sofa all the evening, submitting to be caressed and petted by her mother, who begged her never to think of taking such a long walk again.
Mabel had not the vexation of hearing General Hawke say that same evening to the butler, ‘If Mrs. Lancaster calls again, Stevens, Miss Ashley is not at home.’
This unkind precaution was not needed, for Flora did not dream of going to Pensand again.
Anthony Strange appeared several times in the next two or three weeks, and, with the good manners which came naturally from his good heart, made himself so pleasant that Mabel was able to forget that unfortunate afternoon, and to talk to him as she did at first, openly and happily. The one drawback to his visits was his dislike to Fluffy. Anthony had a constitutional hatred of cats, and it was a very strong mark of his affection for Mabel that he could bear to sit quietly and talk to her, while the kitten was lying in her lap or playing about at their feet.
One beautiful evening Anthony had stayed rather later than usual. There was a sort of golden solemnity brooding over the world, floating down from under great purple clouds, which gathered as the afternoon waned. For a long time Pensand itself was in the shadow of these clouds, and the landscape it overlooked, the masses of distant wood, the meeting of the waters,—all glowed in that golden light, with beautiful deep burnished colours, like a glorious picture of some other world. Anthony had been talking about Paradise, as it was imagined by different poets and painters in the varying spirit of their age; and suddenly discovering how late it was, he left Mabel with solemnised thoughts, to go on
Presently the little dark figure in the shady hat was spied by somebody else from the windows, and he came across the lawn, walking lightly, so that she did not hear him till he was close to her. Then she looked round suddenly, and saw Randal standing behind her.
‘O Randal!’ she said.
He found it very pleasant to be welcomed back by such a bright smile, and had the satisfaction of feeling sure that Mabel was anything but a plain girl. Her eyes were quite beautiful, he decided; her features were not at all bad, and her expression, especially when she looked at him, was wonderfully pretty. Somehow she had lost the pinched distressed look which she had brought from the uncongenial atmosphere of school.
Randal lay down on the grass with a contented air, played with Fluffy, and looked up smiling at Mabel.
‘Here I am at last,’ he said. ‘If you only knew how the thought of this pulled me through those hot tiring days!’
‘Yes; this is a contrast to London,’ said Mabel, her eyes wandering away again to the golden distance. ‘How can anybody wish to live in London, when there is this to look at always!’
‘That's all very well, Mabel, but it rains sometimes. And in London rain makes no difference.’
‘We shall never agree about that.’
‘Well, at any rate, there will always be Pensand,’ said Randal. He saw she did not follow his thoughts at all, and went on after a moment: ‘What have you been doing all this time? Have you finished the books?’
Mabel blushed violently. ‘No,’ she said, under her breath. Then venturing a glance at Randal, she saw such a curious smile on his face that she could not help
‘You met Mr. Strange just now,’ she said, ‘and he told you.’
‘Mabel, you are a witch. How do you know that?
‘Something in your face told me.’
I must keep better guard over my face,’ said Randal. ‘I cannot have my thoughts read in spite of me. But you are right, you know. Let me observe that Anthony Strange is a most extraordinary fellow.’
‘I hope you are not very angry with him,’ said Mabel.
‘We parted in peace. Do you know the origin of the word “silly”? It was not always opprobrious. Seely, selig, which means blessed. People born without their full share of wits were supposed in old times to have something heavenly about them—why, I don't know, as they are generally mischievous—to be under special protection. The idea lingers in the term “innocent.” “A poor innocent,” the country people say, when they wish to describe an idiot.’
‘That is very funny,’ said Mabel quietly, and colouring a little. ‘But what has it to do with your meeting Mr. Strange?’
‘Nothing, unless you like. But you asked me if I was angry with him, and those remarks occurred to me at the moment. We won't go further into that just now.’
‘But you said the other day he was a genius,’ said Mabel, rather inclined to be angry for Anthony.
‘An extraordinary genius; a remarkable fellow altogether. But I was telling you about our meeting; it was on the hill there, not many minutes ago. He began by looking rather stiff, and I thought he was not going to speak to me. But he changed his mind, and without
‘Yes, it did,’ Mabel confessed.
‘A childish proceeding altogether,’ said Randal. ‘If he had said to you in his patriarchal way, “My dear young friend, these books are not fit for you to read,” your dutiful nature would have led you to put them away on a shelf. But this tearing-up business was foolish, unworthy of Anthony, one would say, if one did not know him pretty well. I owe you an apology, however, for bringing you into anything so disagreeable. That is all I care about. Will you forgive me, and believe in my good intentions?’
‘Yes, indeed I will,’ said Mabel earnestly.
‘Thank you. Then we are forgiven all round—Anthony, the books, and me. Now let us talk about something pleasanter.’
Mabel wondered a little whether Randal would have dismissed the subject from his mind so easily, if he had known all that followed on that tearing-up scene. But it was altogether a sad and uncomfortable recollection, and she had no wish to keep it uppermost in her thoughts. And Randal began talking of such delightful things that she soon forgot all about it.
‘It is a shame,’ he said, ‘that you have never been on the water down there. One of these days we will have the boat out, and row up the river a little way. Would you like that?’
‘More than anything I can imagine at this moment,’ said Mabel. ‘I wish we were there now, down in that golden glow where that little boat is sailing. How lovely it would be!’
‘I am far too contented here to wish myself anywhere else,’ said Randal.
‘O Randal,’ exclaimed Mabel, ‘I have something to tell you! Mrs. Lancaster came one day.’
‘Did she?’ said Randal.
His face was bent down and he was studying some little flower in the grass.
‘I suppose,’ said Mabel, ‘as she heard nothing from us, she thought the General would not object. And he really did not seem to mind much. He saw her, and was quite polite and kind.’
‘Let me observe,’ said Randal, in his sleepiest voice, ‘that my father has his faults, like other old men; but is not absolutely an ogre or a Giant Despair. Did you expect him to treat Mrs. Lancaster with any personal rudeness?’
‘O no, of course not,’ said Mabel rather hastily. ‘Did you think she would come, Randal?’
‘No, not much. And yet I ought to have considered that you were the attraction.’
‘I am not much of an attraction,’ said Mabel. ‘She is very sweet and charming; but I don't think she can be very happy, poor thing. There is something uneasy about her.’
‘Yes; I know what you mean,’ said Randal. ‘She is not quite sure of her position—nor of Dick. I don't wonder, for he is about as slippery a fish as swims in the Mora.’
‘I hate to hear of those things,’ said Mabel, getting up. ‘Do you know that it is nearly dinner-time?’
‘Pray don't hate; it is spasmodic, and like Anthony Strange,’ said Randal.
Mabel gave him a rather impatient glance; she did not like that indifferent cynical manner of his. But he answered her with a smile that made her little anger seem ridiculous, and they two and Fluffy walked very happily together across the lawn.
Mabel thought that perhaps Randal would take her out in the boat the next day. But he did not; he went to Morebay by train in the morning, and was out again by himself all the afternoon, so that she scarcely saw him except in the evening. Then he was rather abstracted, and not by any means at his pleasantest. Mabel made every excuse for him, however; she thought he was tired, and that she must not expect too much, and she tried to spare him the trouble of entertaining them by talking with all her might to the General, who had never seen her so lively. Randal lay back in his chair and looked on, a smile presently driving away the cross lines from his mouth. When Mabel wished him good-night he squeezed her hand very tight, and whispered, ‘Good little woman! Where did you get your understanding?’ so that she went to bed quite happy in her mind.
The next day all was sunshine. Early in the afternoon they went down together into the combe, where a smartly-painted boat was already rocking on the green water. Mabel was settled comfortably on her cushions in the stern; Randal, looking wonderfully well in his flannel suit, took the sculls, and they glided away of down the creek to the broad dancing river. Under the overhanging trees, past the rough old mill with its black wheel working, out past the sandbanks into the strong fast current of the Penyr. It was anything but a still and peaceful river; there was rocking of waves in the sunlight, the water flashing with rainbow colours as the light boat danced along.
Randal watched his companion's face with pleased interest. Mabel was almost too happy to talk; the freedom and the glory, the fresh salt air, the white sea-birds skimming over the water, the delightful easy motion, the fact of being at last on that river that she had watched for so many days from the Castle lawn,—it seemed impossible to take it all in thoroughly. She remembered how weeks ago Dick Northcote had told her—that tiresome Dick; recollections of him would always thrust themselves in at the wrong time—about the General's boat in the combe, and how she ought to ask him to take her out in it. Certainly he was right; nothing could be more enjoyable. Randal, understanding her, did not try to talk, but only said a word now and then about the rudder-strings, which Mabel pulled according to his orders in an absent sort of way.
He rowed down towards St. Denys and the Mora, past the red powder-boat anchored all alone in the middle of the river. It seemed like rowing into the world, as they came in sight of passing boats and steamers, of old blackened hulls resting there after a long stormy life in foreign waters. Mabel would have liked to go much farther among them all, down into the great harbour where the ironclads lay, among all the noise and life and business of sea-going Morebay; but Randal did not mean to do that. After giving her a glimpse of the Mora, he rowed back up the Penyr, and in a wonderfully short time, as it seemed to Mabel, who could not be satisfied with gazing at all the beauty around her, afloat and on shore, they were again opposite the mouth of Pensand Combe.
‘Are you tired of it?’ said Randal.
‘O no! Must we go back already?’
‘Certainly not. We will row a little farther up, and land under the rocks. There are nice places up there for sitting down.’
Just above the combe there was a little cluster of low stone houses by the river, where the rocks were worn away at the creek's mouth. From these a ferry-boat, rowed by one of those amphibious boys who pass their life on the water, crossed to the opposite shore and back again, about once in every hour. The passage took six minutes, but longer if the weather was rough. Mabel and Randal crossed the bows of the shabby old boat in mid-stream; there was only one passenger, a poor woman.
‘What is there on the other side?’ asked Mabel.
‘The village of Sadleigh, behind the hill, and several pretty houses, besides Lord Western's place, which is now let to a Morebay merchant,’ said Randal. ‘Mrs. Lancaster told me one day that she has some friends living over there, and that there is quite a rivalry between the two sides of the water. She and I agree in preferring St. Denys.’
‘So should I,’ said Mabel. ‘Randal, did you notice how that boy in the ferry-boat stared and smiled at you?’
‘No. He was envying me, perhaps, and contrasting his boat and his passenger with mine.’
‘He looked more friendly than envious.’
‘Nice boy! Perhaps he was counting how many times he would have to make that trajet before he could paint his boat like mine, and wear flannels to match. I don't object to that; I always encourage ambition.’
They were well past the houses now. Behind some projecting rocks, on a beach of small pebbles, with low dry platforms of rock here and there, Randal ran his boat in, and Mabel found herself in a lovely lonely place, quite different from anything she had ever seen before. The wall of dark red rocks was pierced by caves, and over their dark mouths hung festoons of ivy and green creepers, with ferns and lichen and wild rock-flowers for
Mabel wandered up and down for a few minutes, delighted with all this, and then came and sat down by Randal on one of those green cushions spread on purpose for them on a low flat rock. He looked rather grave and rather thoughtful she fancied. Certainly, the thought came next, there was something about his face neither strong nor happy; so pale, even on this hot day, and so self-contained, too, as if he could never give any one his perfect confidence. Perhaps it is not quite prudent for a girl to let herself moralise too much on the expression of a young man's face. Such studies are apt to end in a little confusion, as Mabel's did, when she suddenly became aware that Randal was looking at her.
‘What are you thinking of, Mabel?’ he said.
‘I was wondering if you were tired,’ said Mabel. ‘Rowing must be very hard work.’
‘Thank you. No, I am not tired. It all depends on knowing how to reserve one's strength. If you know how much will be wanted, and for how long, you can always make it enough. Supposing that you have a fair allowance, of course. But did all the thought in your face mean nothing but that?’
‘O, I don't know,’ said Mabel, colouring a little. ‘I think such silly things sometimes. It was not exactly
‘Not exactly altogether about me, perhaps? Partly about me, then, so I may answer it. Did it ever strike you what a good thing that is?’
The words sounded rather unkind and mocking, but they were not either of these, as Randal said them in his gentle indifferent voice.
‘No,’ said Mabel. ‘I don't think it is a good thing. I should like to know all about my friends, all their thoughts.’
‘Would you like to know all my thoughts?’
‘Yes,’ said Mabel, smiling, though she thought it a little tiresome of him to insist on giving their talk this personal turn.
‘Does it make you angry to be told you are a child?’ Mabel shook her head, smiling still. ‘Because words fail to tell you the childishness of such a wish as that. Wise people say that if we knew the thoughts of our dearest friend, we should hate and despise him. Under those circumstances no friendship would be possible, and the world would be a howling wilderness.’
‘But I don't believe it,’ said Mabel. ‘At any rate, we should be as bad ourselves.’
Randal laughed, the thing he did most seldom.
‘Horrid wicked people of course have thoughts that would make us hate them,’ Mabel went on, in a decided manner. ‘But not our friends, not the people we care about. I am sure you might know all mine—at least—’
‘I am sure I might, too, though there seems to be an “at least” even there,’ said Randal. ‘Not that I have any right to expect such confidence from you. But now tell me, Mabel. If you liked any one, supposing him to be a good sort of fellow, would you withdraw your liking if he turned out to be not so good—to have his full share or more of human failings?’
‘I am not sure,’ said Mabel thoughtfully. ‘It would depend on what sort of failings they were.’
‘Ah, yes; no doubt,’ said Randal.
He was going to say a good deal more; but checked himself suddenly, being aware that they were no longer alone. A woman was standing at the corner of their rocky screen, looking at them. Mabel saw her first, and the look of startled pleasure in her face made Randal turn his eyes that way. He frowned and bit his lips; but these angry signs were not noticed apparently, either by Mabel or the intruder, who came forward smiling, with a bright colour in her face. It was Mrs. Lancaster.
‘I am so glad! Did you know we were here, or have you found us quite by accident?’ said Mabel, as she went forward to meet her friend, sliding among the pebbles.
‘Who would have dreamed of seeing you so far from St. Denys!’ said Randal, in his usual manner. ‘Have you dropped from the sky, or do you generally haunt this beach? Can you answer all our questions at once?’
Flora gave him a curious quick look, and answered Mabel.
‘You are surprised, I daresay. The fact is, that I went to-day to see some friends of mine at Sadleigh, and came back just now by the ferry. The boy told me that he had just seen you rowing up here, and thought you must have landed in this cove.’
‘Then the boy did know you, Randal, and that was why he stared so,’ said Mabel.
‘Yes, the boy knows Mr. Hawke by sight very well. He is one of Mrs. Sale's sons. He lives at that cottage on the road where you took shelter from the thunderstorm.’
‘They are good-for-nothing rascals, those Sales,’ said Randal.
‘At any rate they know no better, and have had very little in the way of example,’ said Flora. ‘For my part, I am much obliged to Tommy Sale. He has done me a great service.’
This was a pleasant thing to say, but Mabel did not quite know what to make of her friend's manner. Its
‘Are you going back by the combe?’ said Randal politely. ‘Perhaps I may have the pleasure of rowing you in, when you and Miss Ashley have had enough of this. It will spare you some rough walking.’
‘No, Mr. Hawke, thank you,’ said Flora. ‘Two people are quite enough for your boat.’
‘You have no idea of the capacities of my boat,’ said Randal.
‘I won't trouble you to row me,’ replied Flora.
Randal made her a slight bow, smiling faintly. He was even paler than usual. He walked down the beach to the water's edge, and stood there for a minute, looking up and down the river. Mrs. Lancaster stood and stared after him. Then she clasped her hands together, and, to Mabel's extreme horror, made a little gesture of wringing them. It occurred to Mabel, with a shiver of dismay, that this pretty elegant woman, who was so strangely different at different times, could not be quite in her right mind. With a sudden impulse of pity she laid her hand on Flora's arm, and looked up earnestly into her face.
‘What is the matter?’ she said, in a low voice.
‘The matter!’ cried Flora, with a small burst of laughing. ‘My dear Miss Ashley, what are you talking about?’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Mabel, frightened, and instantly withdrawing her hand.
‘O, don't beg my pardon. I am so glad. The world is a charming place, isn't it?’ said Flora. ‘You are a sweet girl. You are sorry for any one who is not so happy as yourself, are you not?’
These strange words, spoken in a clear ringing voice, made Mabel move backwards in horrified amazement, while Randal turned suddenly round and came back to them.
‘Miss Ashley does not understand you, Mrs. Lancaster,’ he said, standing before Flora and looking her straight in the face. ‘Neither do I.’
‘O, doesn't she? Don't you?’ said Flora.
‘Come here,’ said Randal.
He walked a few yards along the beach, and she followed him silently. When they were out of Mabel's hearing, he stopped and looked at her again.
‘What can be your reason for following me about in this way?’
‘You know. You half confessed it yesterday.’
‘I did nothing of the kind. Let me tell you that being jealous and suspicious is the surest way to make yourself and others miserable. And I will not endure this sort of thing.’
His voice and manner seemed to bring Flora back to herself, though it was a miserable self enough.
‘Randal,’ she said, ‘it is you who make me jealous and suspicious. You could make me happy by saying two or three words, and you will not. I want to know the truth—just the truth—for I don't understand you; and if you go on in this way you will drive me mad.’
‘That means, I suppose,’ said Randal, ‘that I am to have no peace till there has been a thorough explanation. Cannot you go quietly home, or is it a pleasure to you to torment yourself and me and that girl in this ridiculous way?
‘Don't put me off like that,’ said Flora. ‘You are a coward; and I have a good mind to go and tell her everything.’
Randal smiled, though even his lips were white.
‘Well, we must talk it out, I see,’ he said quietly.
‘Do; she will be too happy,’ said Flora.
She turned her back on him, and stood gazing over the water, though one may doubt whether she saw anything. The beautiful afternoon was going off a little with the turn of the tide; gray clouds had come up, and a low wind was moaning on the river; it swayed restlessly, and the small waves broke splashing on the shingle. Some wild and melancholy power seemed to have taken possession of the day.
Mabel, waiting in some anxiety, was glad to see Randal coming back to her.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Is Mrs. Lancaster ill?’
‘Not exactly ill,’ said Randal. ‘But she is—very peculiar at times, Mabel. She has troubles which—I know more about than any one; and she can't be satisfied without a talk with me. Would you mind our leaving you here for a few minutes? She wants me to take a turn along the beach with her. We shall not be far off. You won't mind waiting in this safe little corner?’
Randal was agitated, and spoke at first with hesitation, but gained confidence as he went on. Mabel looked at him wonderingly. It was impossible that she should not feel the strangeness of his intimacy with Mrs. Lancaster. It was a mystery, though she was inclined to believe that there was a little oddity about Flora—her manner to herself just now had been so extraordinary.
‘I shall not mind waiting at all,’ she said; and there was in her voice and look a sort of womanly quietness which was very attractive to Randal, horribly disturbed as he was.
‘Thank you, Mabel,’ he said. ‘You are a noble girl. I shall not be long away from you, I hope.’
Mabel did not quite feel her own nobleness. She
Her two friends walked away along the far-stretching beach, at first silently. Flora did not seem able to take her eyes away from the gray and green surface of the water, with its monotonous movement. Randal was looking down and frowning. At last, when Mabel was left far behind, out of sight, he stopped and said,
‘Where are you going, Flora?’
She looked round at him suddenly, as if startled. Her blue eyes were wet with tears, and the bright colour of excitement was gone from her face.
‘I don't know,’ she said. ‘Not to heaven, I fancy.’
‘Don't take such a dreary view of things,’ said Randal. ‘Sit down here. I have a great deal to say to you, if you can listen reasonably.’
I do not think there are many people like Randal Hawke in the world. I hope not. People who have ways of disarming the most righteous anger, and of being still loved by those whose hearts they are coolly breaking.
For a few moments, perhaps, Flora thought it was one of those happy old evenings in the combe, which made up to her for so many weeks and months of lonely faithfulness. And yet no; the combe was peaceful and shady and still, while here that restless river went flowing on, without pause or pity. After all, this was real life, and the other only a dream.
‘I never knew you to be jealous before, Flora,’ Randal said presently. ‘And I have set you no example of it. I did not object to your flirtations with that fool Dick.’
‘No; you certainly had no cause,’ said Flora. ‘Flirtation, do you call that? It did you more good
‘Ah, you always had a great deal of consideration for him.’
‘Don't be absurd as well as cruel! Randal, can't you put an end to all this wretchedness?’
‘Do you think it is pleasant for me?” said Randal.
‘I don't know. You must have left off caring for me completely, or you could not be so cold and horrid. The way in which you spoke and behaved yesterday—O, it was not you at all, it was some indifferent stranger. “What does it all mean?—but I know that too well.’
‘When you talk of my manner yesterday,’ said Randal, ‘you forget that anything I may have said or done was provoked by yourself. You attacked me in a very extraordinary way, and almost accused me of being false to you. You would not be reasonable for a moment; and you are just the same still. You behave like a passionate child, and expect me to be just as foolish and impulsive as yourself.’
Poor Flora! She certainly could not have accounted for the sudden variations in her mood. When one's life seems likely to be wrecked, and all the different aspects of this catastrophe come crowding into one's mind at once, it is a great wonder if that mind remains calm and reasonable. It is more likely to catch at every chance of possible help, however inconsistent and unlikely, as a drowning creature would clutch at the very hand that was pushing it under water. Of course Flora had expected her fears and jealousies to be laughed off at once. She had not really known what they were till Randal had treated them seriously, and had refused to set her mind at ease by flatly contradicting her.
‘O Randal, you are quite mistaken,’ she said very gently. ‘I don't want you to be foolish and impulsive. I only want to know the truth. If you have left off
Randal was touched for the moment by her gentleness. He put his arm round her and kissed her, remembering that after all they had been engaged for two years, and that she had the best right to know his plans and intentions. Of course she must know them some day, poor thing. Only he had intended to put off telling her for some time yet, till they were really quite decided. He had thought he might be an exception to the good old rule—
Because if any evil fate were to turn Mabel obstinately against him, Flora after all was far prettier, and he had cared for her very much in his way. But now this sudden flame of jealousy was come to spoil it all. He blamed himself for not warning Flora against going to the Castle; but it was no use going back to the past; it seemed as if he must make the best he could of the present.
‘As for my leaving off caring for you, Flora,’ he said, ‘that is all nonsense. The thing is impossible. One does not bring half one's life to an end in that way. I have told you all about it many times; how I used to look at you in church, when I was a boy, and think that if I could marry such a beautiful princess as you, life would indeed be worth living. You know that if I had not depended on my father it would have been all right long ago. I might have been a different sort of fellow altogether, and certainly should have spared you and myself all this misery. He would have found that I cost him less in the end, for you would have looked after me, and I should not have ruined myself and him with gambling, as I have.’
‘But it is not too late now to stop all that,’ said Flora eagerly.
Where she found the gleam of hope in this talk of Randal's I do not know. But there was something very sweet to the poor wounded soul in being told even that she might have had a good influence on him. It was not likely, however, that a pretty plebeian like herself would have had any real power to withdraw him from his natural tastes and companions. The thing might have been just possible before they were married; certainly not afterwards.
‘Rather late to talk about stopping,’ said Randal, ‘when I am so tremendously in debt that the only thing left to us is to mortgage Pensand. And naturally my father does not care for that idea.’
‘Is there nothing that can be done? ‘Why didn't you tell me before?’
‘One does not care to talk about such disagreeable things,’ said Randal.
Flora sat and looked at him in silence. She was much calmer now; the change in his manner had done a great deal for her in that way, and she was almost her usual self again. She was able to say very quietly, after a long pause,
‘Is there anything that I can do, Randal?’
‘I want you to understand the state of the case; how hopelessly foolish and imprudent we have been, in this engagement of ours. However likely it was, two years ago, that we might be able to marry some day, the prospect has gone on getting dimmer and dimmer, till at last there's nothing but a blank. I am sorry for you and for myself; but you must quite see that, Flora.’
At that moment Flora Lancaster's usual wits failed her, and she did not in any way connect this explanation with her other anxieties.
‘O,’ she said, ‘if you think I am not willing to wait,
‘I quite expected you to say all that,’ said Randal, ‘but don't you see that by your goodness you are only making things worse for me? It is hard enough to have to give you up, Flora, for any one that I can never love as I do you. It is a terribly hard fate for both of us, my dearest Flora. I wish with all my heart the money belonged to you; but don't you see a man has duties to his family and his home and so on, that make it impossible to follow his own inclinations always? It seems as if my only way to save us from ruin—my father, and all that—was to marry some one with money. I am more sorry than I can tell you—can't bear to think it; but it really is simple madness, in these days, to marry without enough to live on.’
Flora listened quite calmly to all this. ‘How long is it since you made up your mind?’ she said.
‘A few weeks,’ said Randal. ‘At least, I have known for more than that time that something of the sort must happen. But of course, till I saw that things were quite hopeless, I did not wish—’
‘Till you had made sure of the heiress,’ said Flora, with a cold quietness which made him look at her wonderingly. ‘How blind I have been, and how undignified and foolish! I wish you had done me the honour of telling me all this some time ago; not that it really matters—’
‘Don't be so cruel, Flora,’ said Randal, trying to take her hand.
‘Don't touch me, if you please. Cruel! You never cared for me in the least.’
‘I did, and do still, with all my heart,’ said Randal.
She looked so lovely in her indignation that for one wild moment he was tempted to beg her forgiveness, to renounce his designs on Mabel Ashley and her money, to swear eternal faithfulness to Flora and poverty. But Randal's good angel seldom approached him now, or only to fly away with one flutter of his wings. He was there on the beach for a moment, as the young man's cheek crimsoned slowly with shame under the stern eyes of the woman who had risen from her place beside him.
‘You are a miserable liar,’ said Flora deliberately. ‘If you had ever cared for me, you would have not been quite so selfish. You would have thought of me a little, and would have kept yourself out of these debts as far as you could. A few weeks ago! Good heavens! And how many times we have met since then! and what letters you have written!’
‘You will oblige me by returning those letters, perhaps,’ said Randal, who had regained his native coolness on hearing himself called a miserable liar. ‘And I think you had better try and control yourself, Flora. You must have expected something of this kind, at least since yesterday.’
‘Since yesterday! Where was I yesterday? I don't know,’ said Flora.
She put up her hand to her head, and walked down to the water's edge. Randal stood looking after her, and wishing himself well out of this unpleasant business. He had hardly expected Flora, who had worshipped him, to turn round so completely, and behave in this disagreeable, contemptuous, insulting way. As if nobody had ever broken off an engagement before—and for much weaker reasons too. Any pity he had felt for her was fast changing into angry disgust. A woman who could allow herself to call him names, who could show her unwillingness to give him up in this undignified way, did not seem to deserve much consideration. Flora's inbred
Some time passed, he did not know how long, as he stood there thinking, and gazing at Flora, a solitary figure against the gray waste of waters. A cold whistling wind was blowing, and clouds were covering the bright summer sky. Perhaps it was not wonderful that those two should have forgotten the existence of anybody besides themselves. But at last, with a start of real consternation, Randal remembered the girl he had left waiting for him on the beach yonder. He had asked her to wait a few minutes; he thought it must be nearly an hour since he and Flora walked away from her together. He was seized with anxiety; a delicate nervous girl, left alone for so long, and perhaps angry with him for leaving her. Certainly no consideration for Flora Lancaster must interfere with his going back to her at once. Yet he could not leave Flora standing there alone by the river, in her present state of mind. The situation struck Randal as almost comic. He gave himself no time to think about it, however, but walked down and joined Flora where she stood.
‘We have left Miss Ashley alone for a long time,’ he said. ‘Shall we go back to her now?’
‘As you please,’ said Flora. ‘Yes; the poor girl may be frightened.’
Randal was immensely relieved by this answer, and by the ease and coolness of Flora's manner. He walked along by her side without speaking. That pretty stretch of river beach had never seemed so long! But at last they turned a corner, and came to the place where they had left Mabel, among the rocks and grass and wild flowers. There was the boat, swinging by its chain; but Mabel was gone.
The time seemed long to Mabel, alone there in the cove. She soon got tired of waiting; she had gathered her flowers, and there was nothing to do. The cheerfulness of the day, too, seemed to be gone from it, and the breeze that came blowing over the water had the chill in it that often belongs to August evenings—a warning breath of autumn in the summer sir. Mabel walked up and down a little, waited, wondered, felt half angry with Randal for leaving her, and thought he might have talked to Mrs. Lancaster another day.
Time went on, and the length of it became quite extraordinary. Mabel shivered, and feared it was going to rain. She walked a little way along the beach in the direction that those two had taken; but though she could see what seemed like an immense distance, they were nowhere visible. This was because they were sitting down, hidden from her by rocks; but she did not think of that, and began to feel rather miserable. It was so desolate to be left all alone on this wild beach, with no sound but the splashing of the water and the low rattle of the shingle. Mabel was not a girl to submit patiently to this sort of thing, and after a few minutes more of waiting and reflection, it struck her that she might as well walk home. It was rather a long way for her, past the houses, along the rough lane that skirted the combe, and up the hill to the Castle. She could make it shorter, however, by turning into the field where Anthony and she had first met, and going through the garden that way. Randal would no doubt be alarmed when he came
So Mabel turned the corner of the rocks, and went on with slow painful steps, glad to get off the uneven beach and on the stony road by the houses of the ferry.
One or two of these houses, rough and untidy as they were, had small gardens in front of them. The low stone walls that bordered these were bright with flowers, and a great tall drooping fuchsia made an arch over the gate of one. It was a picturesque place altogether. There was a carpenter's yard, with old boats and broken carts lying together in confusion, and a scent of tar and wood in the air; there were fishing-nets spread out, and boats hauled up, on the rough slope of beach from the road to the river. A noise of hammering was going on here, and three or four men were standing round one of the boats, which was being mended. One of these men, in his blue jersey, was a very handsome fellow, with a long black beard; another, tall, brown, and sunburnt, with the sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled up to his elbows, looked like a gentleman. Mabel, as she made her slow progress along the road above, could not help looking at this group. One or two of the men turned their heads and looked at her, and this last one, with a lightning quickness of movement which made his companions stare and smile, pulled down his sleeves, made a dive into the stern of the boat for a blue serge jacket, which he pulled on and buttoned up, and with wet boots and dirty hands walked up the beach towards the young lady, taking off his hat with a smile.
‘How do you do, Miss Ashley? I'm not fit to shake hands with you,’ said Dick.
Mabel forgot herself so far as to blush with pleasure at this meeting. To be met in her trouble and loneliness by somebody at once strong and friendly, though
‘How very strange to meet you here!’ she said.
‘Nothing so strange in that,’ said Dick. ‘I have been out fishing, but the boat sprang a leak, so we were obliged to put in here to have her looked to. But how do you come to be here, in the name of all that's wonderful? Alone, too!’
It appeared to Mabel that she could not answer this question with any circumstance. She did not wish to talk to him of Randal, and still less of Mrs. Lancaster. In fact, a moment's reflection showed her that it was all his fault; it was probably about him that poor Mrs. Lancaster wanted to talk to Randal—though that was odd enough. The world was a mystery, and among the most mysterious things in it was Dick's honest face, with those pleasant smiling eyes that looked so straight and truthfully. Mabel felt again, as she had felt when she saw him before, that her faith in everybody was sadly shaken. If the owner of such a face as that could be a deceiver, it seemed as if no face could tell the truth. Randal, in comparison with Dick, was a whole library of unknown tongues. Dick looked as if he would never wait to be asked what his thoughts were, but would tell them out quite frankly to any one who cared about them. He could have nothing to hide. A shallow nature, some people might say; at any rate a transparent one.
‘I came in a boat,’ said Mabel rather stiffly, ‘and now I am walking home.’
‘You will find that a long business,’ said Dick, with compassion.
‘Yes, I'm afraid I shall,’ said Mabel.
Suddenly, as she stood there, the feeling came over her again of intense loneliness, of weakness, pain, and
But at the same time Mabel's bones were aching, her head was aching, and she felt that to walk to Pensand Castle was as far beyond her strength as to walk to Morebay itself. She half regretted that she had not waited for Randal where he left her; but it was too late now. She stood with drooped eyes, poking at a stone with her parasol. Then suddenly large tears gathered in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She put out her hand to Dick, and muttered a few words:
‘O, do please take me home. I am so tired.’
‘I thought you were,’ said Dick. ‘I thought there was something wrong. Here, take my arm; come this way.’
Mabel felt much too spiritless to rebel. She was conveyed in under the arch of fuchsia, up the garden-walk, and into a stone kitchen, beautifully clean. Here she was put into a large chintz armchair. A young woman with soft dark eyes came forward sympathisingly.
‘Look here, Mrs. Fenner,’ said Dick. ‘This is Miss Ashley of the Castle. She is out alone, and very tired. Give her a cup of tea, will you? I shall be back in two minutes.’
Dick was a little longer than that, having been delayed by a conversation with the ferry-boy, who came up to communicate what he knew of Miss Ashley's
‘Well, the boat will be all right, I suppose, unless you walk off with the cushions, which I don't advise you to do.’
Mrs. Fenner, meanwhile, attended to Mabel with the tenderest hospitality. Her husband was a brother of the St. Denys boatman, and more satisfactory, if not quite so good-looking. He was well off, and owned a cart and pony, besides one or two large boats.
‘Thank you, Mrs. Fenner,’ said Dick, reappearing under the low doorway. ‘I have asked Dan to put the pony in, and to let me drive Miss Ashley up to the Castle. I'll bring it back. Will you give me some water to wash my hands, please? I don't feel fit to drive a lady.’
He looked at Mabel and smiled.
‘O Mr. Northcote,’ she said, ‘I can walk perfectly; indeed I can. You are busy fishing. I can't bear to be so troublesome to you.’
‘I have done fishing for to-day, and the boat is being mended, as you saw,’ said Dick.
‘It's the cart as ain't fit for the young lady to ride in,’ said Mrs. Fenner. ‘Nor for you neither, sir. I am ashamed.’
Mabel thought this was the strangest adventure she had ever had in her life. Dick took his place beside her in the funny little cart, and the pony trotted off at once. They made a sudden turn inland, under the cliff, and so instantly lost sight of the houses with their gardens, the wild smiling children with their dark eyes and shock heads, the picturesque group on the beach, Tommy Sale staring with all his might, the broad gray melancholy-looking river. A rough lane indeed it was, with rugged surfaces of rock here and there, winding its way past more stone cottages, and then between the mill and the
Dick was silent at first, and Mabel made use of this time to scold herself very bitterly. How could she be so silly as to give way always at the wrong time?
‘The combe is very pretty, isn't it?’ she said, determined to talk to her kind driver, and not to be stupid any more.
At that moment the lane began to ascend, and the pony to walk. Dick got down from his place, and walked beside Mabel with his hand on the cart.
‘I can't imagine,’ said Dick, staring at the narrow channel of water, ‘how Hawke meant to bring you back. He might have done it three-quarters of an hour ago; but the tide ebbs here so very fast. I wonder he didn't consider that.’
‘How did you know?’ said Mabel; and stopped in some embarrassment.
‘The boy that rows the ferry-boat told me,’ said Dick. ‘I didn't ask him, Miss Ashley. You did not choose to tell me, and that was enough.’
Mabel was silent for a minute or two, looking gravely straight before her. She reflected that this ferry-boy had no doubt mentioned Mrs. Lancaster's name too.
‘It was not his fault,’ she said, with dignity. ‘If poor Mrs. Lancaster had not wished to talk to him, we should have gone home some time ago.’
‘Well, it was rather cool of them,’ said Dick, ‘to walk off and leave you alone. They might have chosen another time for their confidences.’
In her heart Mabel agreed with him, though she was amazed at his speaking in this unconcerned way; and it struck her that he really ought to be made to feel what he was doing. Even a girl like herself might do some
‘Mrs. Lancaster seemed unhappy, and wished to speak to Randal about some troubles of hers, which were very important,’ she said.
‘O, poor thing! And she joined you on the beach for that purpose?’ said Dick.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Mabel.
‘I see,’ said Dick. ‘Poor woman! I'm sorry for her.’
Mabel could not help staring at him; for it seemed as if such a monster of hard-hearted wickedness, such a literal wolf in sheep's clothing, had never come in her way before. Yet was it difficult to show, or even to feel, the proper amount of abhorrence of him. He walked along so easily, with his long steps, one strong brown hand helping the cart up the hill, looking at her, as he spoke, with such fearless eyes, and saying these heartless things in a jolly sort of voice, without any particular pretence of feeling in it. Mabel thought he was a very dangerous companion, and tried to make herself wish that she had insisted on walking home alone.
‘Mr. Northcote,’ she said, in the grave little manner that amused Dick, though at the same time it made him feel half angry with the silly girl, ‘we shall be at the top of the hill directly.’
‘Yes, we shall,’ said Dick. ‘But there is a longer hill afterwards up to the Castle.’
‘But I can walk up that quite well,’ said Mabel.
‘Please don't take me further than the top of this one.’
‘You must let me do as I think best about that,’ said Dick; and so they went on.
‘Have you had much boating?’ said Dick presently.
‘O no! This is the first day we have been out. I did enjoy it so much. Randal is here very little, you know, so there has not been any opportunity.’
‘You like him, then?’
‘Yes, very much. He is very agreeable.’
‘One of the pleasantest fellows in the world when he chooses, and the cleverest too. Almost too clever to live,’ said Dick.
‘Is he really?’ said Mabel, hardly aware of the tone in Dick's voice, which made this a doubtful compliment.
‘Did he do anything great at college?’
‘Not that I ever heard of,’ said Dick. ‘Clever in the ways of the world, I meant. Not so much with books—though I daresay he would be sharp enough to do anything he chose there. Have you seen my aunt again? I have been away, you know, for several weeks.’
‘No,’ said Mabel. ‘We don't see anybody at Pensand except Mr. Strange.’
‘Have you been to Carweston?’
‘I drove through the village one day with Randal, and we saw Mrs. Strange in the road.’
‘She is a delightful woman,’ said Dick. ‘You ought to know her. There are lots of people about here that you would like, if only you happened to meet them. Suppose we have a picnic—an excursion up the Mora. Randal Hawke and I can arrange it, and ask everybody. Wouldn't it be fun?’
‘Yes, great fun,’ said Mabel, a little doubtfully; she did not feel sure of Randal's opinion.
Dick was not discouraged, and went on talking hopefully about his picnic. There was a little steamer at Morebay which would be just the thing to convey the whole party up the river. They might land and dine under some lovely wooded cliffs, and spend the pleasantest afternoon doing what they chose. Then they would come back in the evening, in the splendid harvest moonlight, and land at St. Denys, not too tired to be cheerful and enjoy the drive home.
Dick went off to one or two New Zealand picnics,
Fenner's stout little pony climbed the last hill; probably it was the first time that he and his cart had ever passed under the old gate-tower, or stopped in front of General Hawke's door. It stood open, so that there was no need to ring the bell; and Mabel, having been helped down from the cart, stood alone on her guardian's threshold, to shake hands with Dick and smile her thanks.
‘You are a friend in need,’ she said.
‘Do you remember our journey?’ said Dick. ‘Is it all pleasanter than you expected then?’
‘Yes, certainly it is,’ said Mabel, with a faint sadness under her smile.
‘That's right. I'm glad to hear it,’ said Dick. ‘Good-bye!’
He got into the cart, and Fenner's pony went rattling off down Pensand hill at a pace that astonished him.
The road down Pensand Combe, through most of its course, ran along close to the edge of the wooded cliff that overhung the creek; but here and there it branched off, making a small angle inland, and passing between a tall field hedge on one side, and a wild mass of brambles on the other, or farther down, between low stone walls, with odd little nooks of garden niched in behind them. There were one or two sharp corners, and Dick, as he went tearing recklessly down, almost ran into two people who were coming round one of these. He pulled up suddenly, very much to the pony's surprise, and got down to speak to them; for they were Randal Hawke and Flora Lancaster.
‘Do you want to break our necks, and your own too?’ said Randal.
He looked pale and cross, and his temper was not improved by Dick's glance at Flora, which, quick as it was, meant pity and surprise. For Dick was startled and shocked by the worn strained misery in Flora's face; she looked years older than when he and she had parted at St. Denys only a few weeks before.
‘Have you taken Miss Ashley home?’ said Randal, in the same sharp tone.
Dick looked hard at him, and there was something in his eyes which reminded Randal that he was making a fool of himself in giving up his usual coolness of manner. It was hardly possible—such a stupid boyish fellow—but Dick at that moment looked as if he might be dangerous.
‘If you have,’ said Randal, ‘I'm much obliged to you. I had to leave her for a few minutes, and I suppose she was tired of waiting. You stepped in at the nick of time.’
‘Yes,’ said Dick. ‘Her walking back to the Castle seemed rather hopeless. She is safe there now. Mrs. Lancaster, are you going to walk back to St. Denys?’
‘Yes,’ said Flora. ‘There is no other way.’
She spoke in a low voice, rather dreamily, and without looking at him. Her eyes had wandered away to the high ground on the other side of the combe.
‘Will you let me row you round to St. Denys?’ said Dick. ‘I am going back at once, if you won't be cold on the water.’
‘You are a bold fellow, Dick. Fish and all!’ said Randal, with a touch of his usual mockery, and a deliberate scanning of Dick from head to foot. ‘You are hardly got up for the occasion; but as Miss Ashley put up with you, perhaps Mrs. Lancaster will.’
‘I shouldn't wonder,’ said Dick. ‘Will you?’ to Flora.
‘Thank you. I shall be very glad,’ said Flora.
‘You have nothing but a fishing-boat there, have you?’ said Randal. ‘Take our boat. You will find it down there. I will send for it to-morrow.’
‘That is just what I thought of doing,’ said Dick.
‘O, no,’ said Flora, suddenly interfering. ‘Let us have the fishing-boat, please. I like it much better.’
An odd half-angry smile curled Randal's lip.
Dick answered her quite gravely,
‘No, that's impossible. It would spoil your clothes;’ and Flora said no more.
‘Good-bye,’ said Randal. ‘I shall see you some day, Dick. Good-bye, Mrs. Lancaster.’
They parted without any shaking of hands. Randal lifted his hat, Dick nodded, and Flora bowed without looking at him. He walked away with light quick steps
Some of Dick's disgust and indignation escaped him in mutterings as he turned to pull in a strap that had loosened itself.
‘To answer him civilly, and not take him by the collar and pitch him over the edge into the mud yonder! I see your little game, Mr. Randal, and I'll be hanged if— Will you get into the cart?’ he said to Flora, suddenly forgetting Randal in sympathy with her. ‘I'll drive gently, and it won't shake you much.’
‘I would rather walk, thank you,’ said Flora.
‘Very well. Then I'll lead the pony; it is not far, after all,’ said Dick.
They walked one on each side of the cart, and neither of them spoke till they reached the beach. Flora seemed to be in a sort of waking dream, and Dick felt too much real sorrow, too much respect for his old love in her trouble, to make conversation about nothing. He thought it a curiously providential thing that he should have met her on this fatal afternoon—he, the only person who knew her secret, and could understand what she must feel. Though how any woman could care for that smooth villain Randal Hawke, with his horrid manners, his odious scented neatness, his second-rate dandyism, Dick confessed himself unable to understand.
Randal's boat had been brought down to the ferry, and was lying there at the little landing-place. Those two were soon out on the open river, alone together in the wild cloudy evening. Flora sat in a stooping attitude, with her eyes bent down, and her shawl drawn tight round her shoulders. Dick's pulling was easy work, going down with the tide, and the light boat darted through the water. Presently Flora leaned forward, and dipped her fingers into the small gray-green waves that came washing up round them.
‘Do you remember,’ she said—they were almost the first words she had spoken to Dick since they parted with Randal—‘how you fell into the water that night at Morebay?’
‘Yes,’ said Dick. He remembered too, sadly enough, how she had reminded him of that before, when he met her on the hill that evening, and carried her parcel, and lingered at her gate in the lovely summer twilight. How happy she had been then, poor Flora, carrying on an innocent little flirtation with her old friend, and keeping her precious secret in the background all the time!
‘I suppose you were not in the water long enough to know what drowning is like?’ Flora went on.
‘Why, no. Those fellows had me out almost before I was in.’
‘They say it is a very peaceful easy death,’ said Flora, staring down into the depths of the Penyr, and dabbling with her fingers in a tiny wave-crest.
‘Don't believe them,’ said Dick. ‘It is horrid choking agony; few things worse. I've heard that from people who really have been almost drowned.’
‘But it is very soon over.’
‘It seems like hours, like a lifetime.’
‘Well,’ said Flora, with a sigh,‘the idea of it is most tempting. Look at this nice gentle water; not even cold. Just a plunge, and I believe one's unhappiness would be over for ever. Yes, I do think so; for in that other world there can be no such cruelty as there is here. Just a plunge down into these green depths—and I know how strong the currents are, they would carry one right out to sea.’
Dick was a perfectly brave man, as far at least as physical courage is concerned. He was even rashly brave sometimes; but at that moment he was terrified. Flora's extraordinary calmness, the dreamy fascinated gaze that she fixed on the water, the longing way in
‘But suppose you did throw yourself in, you don't think you would be drowned here, do you?’
‘What could prevent it?’ said Flora, without raising her eyes.
‘I should prevent it,’ answered Dick. ‘My coat is off already. I should instantly dive after you, get hold of you, and swim with you to that bank. I am one of the best swimmers in the world. We should both get a good wetting, and perhaps catch bad colds. That's all. So when you think of attempting it, let me know.’
Dick spoke with a pleasant smile; he evidently took it all as a joke.
‘O Dick!’ cried Flora suddenly and painfully. ‘You are so cruel; but of course you don't understand.’
Her interest in the water had suddenly ceased; she buried her face in her hands, and rocked herself gently, like a woman in great trouble. ‘I can't bear it,’ she sighed; but Dick just caught the despairing words.
‘I do understand, though,’ he said, ‘only too well. What tries me is to see you wasting your regret on a worthless scoundrel who only deserves a horse-whipping, and may perhaps get his deserts in time.’
‘O, remember that I trusted you,’ said Flora. ‘It is a secret; nobody else knows.’
Dick was silent, and she presently went on:
‘I have suspected it for some days, but to-day on the beach it was made quite clear to me. He told me he must marry some one with money, and we know what that means. Don't you see, Dick? He is going to marry Miss Ashley.’
‘O, is he?’ said Dick.
‘He will have no trouble there; she likes him quite enough. He made sure of that before he told me; and he would not have told me now, if I had not made him. O, to think of it! What shall I do!’
‘I could tell you that,’ said Dick, ‘but of course you wouldn't listen.’
‘I am listening. Go on.’
‘First of all,’ said Dick, with great decision, ‘you should thank God for setting you free in time from one of the most rascally scamps in England. Then you should forget all about him, and be as cheerful as if he had never existed.’
‘Ah, you can't mend your life as you would mend your glove,’ said Flora, shaking her head.
‘It will take a little patience, of course,’ said Dick, rather proud of his preaching, ‘but you will do it in time. Do you know, when you first told me about him, that day in the combe, I knew he was a liar.’
‘Did you?’ said Flora wearily.
It seemed to Dick that he had better not say any more the poor woman had been too much tried, and perhaps silence was best for her. She sat with her head drooped and her hands clasped, thinking or dreaming, and this continued till they reached the quay.
Dick felt very thankful, as he helped Flora on shore, that she was safe there. He had come to the conclusion that the water was the worst place for any one in trouble of mind, like hers; it seemed such a quiet easy refuge close at hand. He thought it would be a long time before he took any one out again, under such circumstances. The fishwomen and all the waterside people stared with great interest at these two, going about together once more.
Dick nodded to many old friends, as he led Flora up the slippery steps and the steep winding lanes of St. Denys. She hardly spoke till they had reached the gate
‘Wait a minute. I want to speak to you,’ she said. ‘Tell me, is she a nice girl?’
‘Yes,’ said Dick. ‘I'm sure she is a nice girl.’
‘Then she ought to be saved from this.’
Dick's own mind had been occupied with the same subject, but he did not quite see his way, and he told Mrs. Lancaster so. She looked at him with wild puzzled eyes, as they stood there together in the gray evening. One long golden curl of her hair had shaken itself down, and was lying on her shoulder, but it did not look pretty; it only added a little dishevelled untidiness to her sad looks. Dick was not the least bit in love with her now. He only felt most heartily sorry for his old friend.
‘Who is to save her?’ said Flora.
‘To tell you the truth, I don't know,’ said Dick. ‘But let me ask you this. Would you mind my telling aunt Kate all about it, and finding out what she thinks? She is very clever; she might hit on some way, without your being pulled into it at all. You can trust her, I assure you.’
‘I know I can,’ said Flora. ‘My brain is in such a strange whirl that I can't think properly. I am all in confusion. You must forgive me.’
‘I can fancy that,’ said Dick.
He waited kindly and patiently for a minute or two, till Flora spoke again.
‘I don't know whether it is right or wrong; but Miss Northcote will know. You may tell her. As to me—it doesn't matter about me. If I was a Roman Catholic, I could go into a convent. As I'm not, I must stay at Rose Cottage. Good-night, Dick. You have been very good to me.’
She gave him her hand with a faint smile that was sadder than any sadness.
‘Good-night,’ he said. ‘You may always depend on me.’
He watched her till she had gone in at the housedoor, and closed it behind her. Then he hurried up the hill towards home.
After dinner that evening, Miss Northcote was sitting at work by her lamp in the drawing-room, when Dick came in and sat down near her at the table.
‘You look very quiet and comfortable,’ he said, ‘but do you know that you are in the midst of a sensation novel?’
‘What do you mean, Dick?’ said his aunt, looking up.
‘I'll tell you all about it, beginning at the very beginning, which was before I went to Yorkshire.’
In the long story which followed on this, what surprised Miss Northcote most was the fact of Randal Hawke's engagement to Mrs. Lancaster. This she seemed hardly able to believe. The rest of the story was far less startling. Randal's intention of marrying ‘money’ in the person of Mabel Ashley seemed only natural in a man of his kind. When Dick described the manner in which he had comforted Flora in the boat, Miss Northcote could not help smiling.
‘If she cared for him,’ said she, ‘which probably she did, the period of thankfulness won't come for some time yet. Poor thing! I am afraid your little sermon was wasted, Dick. What a sad story it is, though! and how very heartless Randal must be! I don't wonder that Anthony dislikes him.’
‘No, indeed,’ said Dick. ‘And now comes the question—is there any way of nipping his beautiful plan in the bud?’
Kate leaned back in her chair, gazed at Dick, and considered.
‘Really, I don't know,’ she said. ‘Miss Ashley belongs to them, you see. Nobody has any right to interfere; she is the General's ward, and we can't take her out of his hands. She can't be got away from Pensand, and as long as she is there of course Randal has it all his own way. I believe she is contented too; for I saw them driving together one day, and certainly she looked quite happy. And Randal may be really attached to her: we don't know. One can't imagine that he would ever have done anything so romantic as to marry Mrs. Lancaster.’
‘Then why did he engage himself to her? She has been abominably used,’ said Dick. ‘I don't see that he would be doing anything so romantic, as you call it. Other people besides Randal—’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Kate. ‘But now I am thinking about Miss Ashley. What can we do? It is no business of ours, you see. I'll go and call again, if you like. That will remind her that there are other people in the world besides Randal and his father. But when you really have no excuse for interfering—’
Dick looked discontented. After a few minutes’ silence he broke out rather angrily,
‘Of course, I know it is not the first time an engagement has been broken off, though I never saw such a horrid instance of it. But the worst of it is the fellow being such a liar, behaving all through in such a wretched cowardly way, and braving it out with that insolent manner of his. I should like to make the whole thing public; and I would too, if it were not for Flora. She wouldn't like it, poor thing.’
‘No, I should think not,’ said Kate. ‘And, after all, she is the first person to be considered. Miss Ashley, poor girl, I don't know how it is, but I can't get up any very deep interest in her, though Anthony is so fond of her, and you seem to like her too. Anthony, by the
‘Yes, you might do that,’ said Dick.
There was another long pause, and then he went on:
‘I do care what becomes of that girl. There is something rather taking about her, poor little thing. I am sorry for her now, just as I was when we travelled down together, only more so.’
‘You have forgiven the little airs she gave herself when we called that day,’ said Miss Northcote.
‘O dear, yes; it was only shyness. One soon gets over that sort of thing,’ said Dick.
He took up a book that he had been reading, and began to turn over the leaves. Kate watched him over her knitting, with a wondering doubtful smile. How very strange, she thought, if that little dark girl was to take possession, one after the other, of both Mrs. Lancaster's lovers! She hardly knew why this fancy came into her head, for Dick showed no consciousness. And being, with all his faults, an utterly unmercenary creature, his aunt felt sure that the conquest, if it was made, would be Mabel's own.
Randal did his very best to efface from Mabel's mind any disagreeable impression which that afternoon might have left on it. He told her he was very sorry, and hoped that Dick Northcote had taken good care of her, in the easiest and pleasantest way.
‘What became of poor Mrs. Lancaster? Did she go home?’ said Mabel.
‘She meant to walk home,’ said Randal; ‘but as we came up the combe together, we met Dick and his cart rattling down. By the bye, you must have been shaken to pieces. So I left her in his charge, and he was going to pull her round to St. Denys in our boat. That would be less tiring than such a long walk.’
‘And was it all right?’ said Mabel. ‘Was he pleased?’
‘Pleased?’ said Randal, looking at her.
‘I thought you seemed to hint that he had not been quite nice to her. I fancied that was what distressed her.’
Mabel coloured, and wished she had not asked any questions. They seemed such an odd jumble altogether, these relations of Randal and Dick and Mrs. Lancaster. She was sorry to show any curiosity about them.
‘O,’ said Randal, ‘it was not Dick entirely; she has lots of things on her mind.’
To do him justice, he spoke gravely enough about Flora, though of course no one could have guessed from his manner that he, and no one else, was to be blamed
For several days after this Mabel saw no one but her companions at Pensand. The General left her and Randal very much alone together, and by this strange arrangement, as it might well have seemed to most people, they grew more intimate day by day. There were some subjects that they avoided: they did not talk of their neighbours; but somehow there always was plenty to talk about, and Randal never let Mabel be dull. She was amused and cheerful, and yet not quite happy, through those soft August days. Things that Randal said did not always ring true; Mabel's instincts rebelled sometimes, though she only scolded herself for being silly. Nearly every day he took her out for a drive; they went far away into the country, through miles of lovely winding roads and lanes, where a few trees were just beginning to show a touch of gold after the long hot summer; far up the rivers, sometimes making a little picnic of their own on some terraced bank where the fern was fading. They had no more boating. Randal seemed to have taken a dislike to the river and the combe, where he had gone through so much that was unpleasant.
Perhaps he could hardly have explained to himself why he did not speak to Mabel, and make it quite sure. With all his assurance, possibly he still felt a little doubtful of her answer, and he wanted her to be perfectly used to him, and accustomed to expect everything from him, before he ran such a great risk.
During those days, though Anthony came two or three times to the Castle, he was not once allowed to see Mabel alone; and while his heart was full of uneasiness about her, there was nothing to rouse his suspicions very strongly, or to give him an excuse for speaking to Randal. Miss Northcote had hinted to him no more
Randal had every reason to be confident. A box of letters and presents, the sad memorials of those two years, had reached him from Mrs. Lancaster. Considering his own nature, it was strange that he had such faith in Flora's honour and reticence; but he felt quite securely certain that—for her own sake, as he chose to put it—she would keep the secret still; nobody would ever know what they had been to each other. He burnt the letters late one night in his father's study-fire; and as he watched the thin black curls that were now nothing, but had once been so much, he felt himself really a free man, and thought he might as well ask Mabel—to-morrow.
‘She is not a bad-looking girl, you know; but I wish she was fair,’ Randal confided to the dying fire.
And then came a terrible flood of recollections. Could it be only two years since he first made love to Flora in the Combe? and was any one ever so pretty as Flora? All that would not bear thinking of at night alone, with nothing to divert his mind; for it was true that even now, for some mysterious reason, after he had left her so cruelly, doing all he could to break her heart, Flora Lancaster was still to this wretched Randal the one woman in the world. But he did not give way long to these morbid thoughts. He left the study and went up-stairs, a free man, quite ready to forget all his past foolishness, and determined that before the next night came the little heiress should be engaged to him.
Randal's continued presence at Pensand had rather a strange effect on his father. He seemed to have grown much older since Mabel first came; he was more silent, less arbitrary; he spent his time more than ever alone,
But the morning after Randal had burnt his letters, General Hawke told them at breakfast that he was going to drive to Morebay, and asked whether they liked to go with him.
‘I have business at the bank,’ he said. ‘You might show Mabel the harbour and the dockyards. You want some variety in your expeditions.’
‘Would you like it, Mabel?’ said Randal.
‘Of course she would like it,’ said the General. ‘Pensand for ever is too much for young people. And she won't refuse me the pleasure of her company, for I am an old man, and failing fast. I may never leave Pensand again.’
Mabel looked up rather anxiously; but the General smiled at her.
‘I should like it of all things,’ she said.
It certainly had been a trial to a young creature, whose curiosity went on growing, to live for so many weeks within a few miles of a place like Morebay, and to have seen nothing of it except the great bustling station, so near the end of her long hot journey from town. This was a fresh beautiful day, with a bright sun, and that light wind blowing which made the St. Denys country look its prettiest, ruffling the surface of its broad gleaming waters. Mabel thoroughly enjoyed the drive, especially the delightful excitement of going on board the chain-ferry, and being drawn across the Mora, horses and all, in company with several carts. Then, as they drove on towards Morebay, there was an occasional view of something blue and great, sparkling and rocking itself against the horizon. And so they came into the white town, with its broad streets and stately buildings, lying
‘How beautiful, how very beautiful it is!’ she said to Randal, half under her breath.
‘Yes, it is a fine town,’ he said; ‘and one of the best situations in England.’
Randal was not quite in his usual spirits. Driving down that morning through St. Denys to the ferry they had passed Captain Cardew's house, and in spite of himself he had been obliged to look that way. And as the carriage went slowly down the hill, Randal, sitting with his back to the horses, had seen the old Captain himself hurry out to the garden-gate, and stand there staring after it in a fixed manner which struck him as rather strange. He felt a little uncomfortable, and as if something troublesome was going to happen; and it occurred to him that the expedition of that day to Morebay might be a fortunate thing for him. If that appearance of Captain Cardew's meant anything serious, what was to prevent him from walking in at Pensand Castle, and creating a disturbance there that might be very difficult to calm down again? If his father knew!
And if Mabel knew! However, at present they did not know, and it was the part of a wise man to make the best of to-day. He had Mabel all to himself to-day, though it might be for the last time, and before the day was out he meant to be on such terms with her that she might stand by him and believe in him against all the world.
General Hawke went to Morebay very seldom, and thus had many people to see, and much business to do. He had brought Stevens with him, intending Randal and Mabel to be free to amuse themselves, which they found no difficulty in doing; and Randal was soon himself again in the interest of showing things to any one so fresh and so enthusiastic as Mabel. He showed her the dockyard, took her out in a boat in the harbour, and finally on board an ironclad, of which he knew some of the officers. The captain received them with a true sailor's hospitality, and insisted on giving them luncheon. Every one on board watched Mabel with interest, as she walked on the beautiful decks, and listened smiling to her questions. She was like a little princess among the fine rough sunburnt fellows, beside whom Randal looked smaller and paler than ever, though he could not be insignificant. His manner to her was quite devoted, and Mabel certainly enjoyed being made so much of, and referred to him most naturally in everything. His friends on board saw the state of the case very plainly, and took the good-humoured interest that friends generally do; they thought it was a good thing for young Hawke. Every one knew he had been going on at a great pace in London, and most likely the old General had saved nothing. To catch a nice girl with fine eyes and seventy thousand pounds was the best thing that could happen to him; his friends were quite agreed in that, though perhaps they thought it a little hard that no one should have been allowed a chance of
Captain Stewart, of H.M.S. Fortune, was a kindhearted man, and felt sorry for the young heiress. He thought of his own daughter, very little younger than Mabel, who was hardly ever let out of her mother's sight, and looked, at least, much better able to take care of herself. He thought it a great pity that General Hawke had not provided some chaperon for his orphan ward, instead of letting her run about alone with his good-for-nothing son, even though she might be engaged to him; and somehow the captain did not feel sure that this was the case. It was no business of his, however, and all he could do was to take good care of the girl while she was on board his ship. He showed her everything in the kindest way, explained the machinery, and how the guns were run out and fired, and told her the names of nearly all the ships in the harbour, and what their different flags meant. They were still deep in signals when Randal joined them; he had been talking to some of the other officers, more of his own age and calibre than Captain Stewart. Mabel was thoroughly sorry to leave the hospitable ship; but Randal had no intention of spending the afternoon there.
There was a fine park at Morebay, on the cliffs to the east of the harbour, where a band used to play on summer afternoons, and people walked about, played games, sat under the trees, and enjoyed the wonderful united beauty of sea and land. The short close grass of the park ran down to the edge of the great shelving red cliffs that dipped their rocky feet in the sea. On that side all the horizon was brilliant sea; on the other, chequered sunshine and shade, green turf and trees, the white terraces of Morebay rising like a great amphitheatre to the far background of blue hills.
After they had landed from the Fortune, Randal took
‘You are very good to say that,’ said Randal. ‘Yes, these things are interesting to any one who has not seen them before. I hope I have not tired you.’
‘O no! how could I be tired? I have been amused all the time.’
‘The most tiring process in the world, it is generally thought,’ said Randal.
‘I have not had enough of it to tire me. I really can't imagine what it would be, to be bored by seeing things. One hears that people are, but indeed I can't understand it,’ said Mabel, smiling.
‘There is something sad, as well as pleasant, in hearing you say that.’
‘Why sad?’
‘Because it sounds as if your life had been such a very dull one.’
‘O, I don't know. Perhaps it is a good thing not to see things too soon. One enjoys them all the more, I think. I am quite contented. One can't expect to understand everything.
This last little bit of moralising was addressed to herself, in answer to the little doubtful misgiving that told her she was not quite contented.
‘What do you want to understand?’ said Randal.
‘You!’ Mabel felt half-inclined to say; but she did not. She only shook her head, smiling, and looked away over the sea.
Randal sat and gazed at the slight figure, the dark
‘Mabel,’ he said, ‘did you hear what my father said this morning, about being an old man, and failing fast?’
‘Yes,’ she said, looking round instantly. ‘But he didn't mean it, did he?’
‘O yes, he meant it. And you must see yourself that it is a fact. Seventy-nine is old, and he had a very hard life of it in India, when he was a young man. And it is quite evident to me—I should have thought it must be so to every one—how fast he has been going downhill lately. Even since you came he talks less, walks less, sleeps more, in fact gets older every day. He is perfectly aware of it all himself, and he thinks it as well that we should know it too.’
There was real sorrow in Mabel's face. ‘I have been very horrid and selfish,’ she said. ‘I have thought of no one but myself all this time.’
‘Nonsense, dear Mabel. Your manner to him has always been charming,’ said Randal gently. ‘His own daughter, if he had one, could not have been more thoughtful or more attentive to all his little whims. It is I who ought to reproach myself. Haven't you often stood up for him, when I have accused him of not being kind enough to you? Don't look so sorrowful, Mabel. It is a compliment to my father, but he wouldn't like it, all the same.’
‘But do you really think he is ill?’ said Mabel.
‘Not ill. Only old. It is the weakness that belongs to old age, and then if any illness does come, there is nothing to stand against it. And he seems to have grown old and weak so quickly somehow. Understand,
A silence, through which they heard the soft splash of waves on the rocks far below.
‘And then, Mabel,’ Randal went on, for she did not speak or look at him, ‘will you be glad to leave the old house where we have spent such happy days this summer? Must we go off on our different ways, and cease to be anything to each other? Or when my father goes, shall he leave two children to miss him instead of one? What do you say, Mabel darling?’
Mabel sat quite still, in a wild maze of strangely conflicting feelings. She did like Randal very much indeed, and Pensand was the only home she had ever known; she could not say that she cared for any other man or any other place. Handsome, graceful, agreeable, kind and thoughtful from the first day of their acquaintance, and now, apparently, in love with her, there seemed to be everything in his favour, and nothing against him. Still, as she sat there blushing, and hardly able to see anything clearly in that mist of confusion, she was aware of the little doubt that Randal often brought into her mind. She did not quite understand him; she was never sure that he was in earnest, and had often wondered what it was that brought a shadow into his face sometimes, when he did not know she was looking at him. Of course he interested her; and yet she had often wished that his eyes were not so dark and deep, but more like Dick Northcote's, blue and frank, and open as the day.
‘What are you thinking of, Mabel, all this time? Is there so much doubt about it?’ said Randal, beginning to feel a little anxious. ‘Is it quite a new idea to you? I assure you that since the first day we met I have thought of nothing else:’
Mabel had a way of honestly forgetting her own advantages, and it did not occur to her that this devotion was not quite all for herself.
‘O, I am so surprised,’ she said, in a very low voice. ‘I can't understand it.’
‘What can't you understand, dearest?’ said Randal tenderly. ‘But I don't care about that. I only want you to believe what I say, that my whole life depends on the answer you give me now. Turn your face this way, Mabel. Look at me and trust me, dear.’
Mabel did turn towards him, but their eyes did not meet. They were caught by the most unwelcome appearance of a rough-looking elderly man, whose red face and reddish-gray whiskers seemed all bristling with anger, as he came round the trees suddenly, and stood in front of them. He had a light stick in his hand, and with this he struck Randal sharply on the shoulder.
‘Stand up, sir, and answer me!’ he cried. ‘You are a jilt and a coward!’
Mrs. Cardew had been anxious about her daughter for some time; in fact, ever since her tiring walk to Pensand Castle. Flora seemed to have lost all her good-tempered serenity; she was nervous, restless, and irritable; she walked about her room at night, instead of sleeping like other people. Mrs. Cardew lay awake and listened on the other side of the wall, for her faithful affection could not rest while Flora was disturbed. She hardly dared ask what was the matter, for this seemed to annoy Flora more than anything, and the consequence generally was that she rushed out of the house and did not come back for hours, then quite exhausted and with a racking headache.
One evening, after a walk, things were worse than ever. Flora sobbed half the night, and came down the next morning with her eyes red and heavy. She was so evidently wretched that the Captain noticed it, and began asking questions in his turn.
‘O, it is nothing,’ said Flora impatiently. ‘I have a cold, and it kept me awake all night. That's all.’
‘Then take care of yourself to-day, and don't go out,’ said her father.
But instead of following this advice, Flora made that expedition to the other side of the Penyr, which ended in Dick Northcote's bringing her back to St. Denys in General Hawke's boat.
After that evening Flora's mood changed entirely, but not in a way to relieve her mother's anxiety. She seemed to be in a state of dull stony indifference. She
Flora had something terrible on her mind; that was quite clear; and the worst of it was that she would not tell her mother.
Flora had not been out for several days, and had spent her time lying on the sofa, or occupied in the melancholy way I have described, when one afternoon Mrs. Cardew came suddenly into the room, and found her with her hat on, standing by the table. In front of her was a small open box, which appeared to be full of letters, tied up with ribbon in separate packets. Mrs. Cardew just saw this before Flora shut down the lid. Then she locked it, and began packing it up in sheets of brown paper, and tying string round it with trembling fingers. Mrs. Cardew came to help her.
‘No, mother, never mind,’ said Flora. ‘I can do it myself.’
‘But your hands are so shaky, dear. Old letters! What are you doing with them?’ said Mrs. Cardew, quite unable to restrain her curiosity.
‘Old letters, yes,’ said Flora. ‘I am going to get rid of them. The best way, isn't it?’
‘I should have thought the fire was the best way,’ said her mother. ‘Where are they going? To the North?’
‘To the Lancasters, I meant,’ Mrs. Cardew ventured to suggest. ‘Have you heard from any of them? They can't want a lot of old letters. Much better put them in the fire.’
‘Do you think so?’ said Flora.
She had tied her string securely; she took up the box and turned towards the door.
‘My dear, you are not going out?’ said Mrs. Cardew anxiously.
Flora looked round and gave her a strange little nod. Then, seeing the consternation in her mother's face, she suddenly smiled, came back to her, and kissed her.
‘Never mind, mother,’ she said, with something like her old considerate gentleness. ‘I shall soon be back. Don't trouble your mind about me, dear.’
‘Ah, you make me very unhappy, Flora,’ said Mrs. Cardew. ‘You have no confidence in those who deserve it most—your father and me. Do you suppose you can be miserable, and we not see it?’
‘Well, then,’ said Flora, ‘if you do see it, mother, help me to get over it by letting me alone and saying nothing. And for goodness’ sake keep my father quiet, for he would drive me mad.’
‘I know that, dear,’ said Mrs. Cardew, sighing. ‘But if you want that box to go to the station, Sarah can run down with it this minute. Don't go out yourself, Flora, to please me.’
‘I must please myself for this once, mother dear,’ said Flora.
She kissed her again, and went, carrying the box in her hand. Mrs. Cardew hoped it was not heavy. She looked out of the front window, and saw Flora go through the garden-gate, and turn up the hill to the
Flora was out an hour or more. She came in without the box, and, though very tired, seemed more cheerful all the evening. But the next day she looked more miserable than ever. She did not come down to breakfast, and Mrs. Cardew was obliged to confess, in answer to the Captain's inquiries, that she thought her very ill.
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Cardew, with tears in her eyes, ‘it's no wonder if she is ill. Sleepless nights by the dozen, and something that keeps her low and wretched all day long. Nobody could stand that for ever, and poor Flora's breaking down.’
‘But what is it?’ shouted the Captain, bringing down his fist on the table.
‘Don't ask me, for I don't know. And don't make all that noise. I can't do anything for my poor child but nurse her to the best of my power, and it will be strange if some day she doesn't tell her old mother everything, just for the sake of peace.’
Captain Cardew went off to Morebay as usual, and the little house was very quiet all that day. Flora came down-stairs; but she seemed weary and stupefied; she would neither speak nor eat, and lay half dozing on the drawing-room sofa.
Mrs. Cardew had lighted the fire there, as it was a cold showery day, and all through the long afternoon she stole in at intervals to look at Flora. There she lay just the same, scarcely moving or opening her eyes as her mother bent over her, looking thin and fair and delicate, and above all things tired, with lines and hues of weariness about her brow and eyes that looked as if they could hardly be done away in this world.
But the last time, to Mrs. Cardew's great relief, she was sleeping soundly; it was a pleasure to hear her
Mrs. Lancaster had led a very independent life since she came back to her parents; her friends and her correspondence were all her own, and the old people were quite aware that she would not like any curious questioning about them. Their admiration and respect for Flora, and their faith in the strength of her character, had kept them quite contented under these circumstances. Flora took possession of her own letters every day, and showed them to nobody. She also had a habit of posting her own. Captain and Mrs. Cardew did not get many letters, or take much interest in the post at all, and Flora was as free in these ways as if she had lived alone. Her father's outburst about Dick Northcote had been quite a solitary event.
Mrs. Cardew was aware, however, when she picked up that letter, that Flora had had many in the same handwriting, small and neat and manly. The edges of this were a little worn, as if with constant reading. Mrs. Cardew, holding it open in her hand, could not help seeing the beginning. The fire just then leaped up too, and lighted the words strangely and suddenly. The letter was dated from London, more than two years before, and began, ‘My own dearest Flora.’
Mrs. Cardew turned white, and laid her hand on her heart, as if to keep it quiet, for she felt a conviction, really like lightning in its sudden awfulness, that now she was going to know all. The worn letter, Flora's companion—so old, but still kept with her in her trouble—this must have something to do with the trouble itself. If Mrs. Cardew stopped to think at all, she thought that Flora's mother had a right to know what had brought her child into this state, and she read on without any doubt or hesitation.
‘My own dearest Flora,—When we parted last night at your gate after those hours of intense happiness in the Combe, I felt, as I feel now, that I should not know how to live till I saw you again. But this misery is nothing to what I suffered for so long before, till I was able to tell you what you were to me, and to have the joy of hearing that my love was returned. I scarcely feel myself worthy of such a treasure, or of your noble confidence, in consenting to keep our engagement secret for the present. I trust the need for secrecy will only last a very short time, perhaps a few weeks, till I feel myself in a position to speak to my father. You know how careful one must be with old people and their prejudices, though I have no fear of the future, for my father need only be acquainted with you to have all his prejudices done away with. Write to me constantly, my own. Among these crowds I can see no face but yours. I am very lonely, and the days will seem like years till I am with you again. I need not tell you to have perfect trust in me, my sweetest Flora. Everything shall soon be as clear as daylight, and as you tell me it is in my power to make you happy, your life shall be happier than the wildest dream. Forget everything that is sorrowful, and above all things have faith and confidence in your devoted lover, Randal Hawke.’
Mrs. Cardew read this letter twice through before she understood it in the least, and stared at the signature for full two minutes afterwards. Then with a deep sigh she murmured, ‘O Lord, have mercy upon us!’ and sat down in a low chair by the fire, being quite unable to stand. She sat there for some time, and read the letter once again. The clock ticked on the mantelpiece; Flora slept on, breathing softly and evenly; light showers pattered against the south windows. At last the Captain's firm active step came up the garden-walk, he opened and shut the house-door, and after taking off his hat and wet coat put his head into the drawing-room.
‘Is she asleep?’ asked the Captain, in a loud whisper. ‘Hallo, are you ill too? You're as white as a ghost.’
‘O John!’ said Mrs. Cardew tremulously, ‘I've found out something—something so dreadful! Come here.’
‘What's the matter now?’ said the Captain. ‘You women are always in some fuss or other;’ but he walked up to the fire, and Mrs. Cardew put the letter into his hand.
‘Read that,’ she said. ‘It is right you should know. O my poor child! What am I to do?’
She took hold of one of the Captain's rough hands, and bowed her forehead on it as he stood beside her.
‘What! is it about Flora?’ said the Captain. ‘Who is it from? Randal Hawke! What on earth—’
‘Hush, hush! read it,’ said Mrs. Cardew.
The Captain's eyes were slower than hers, and he was a long time getting through the letter. At first he made an amazed exclamation or two, then finished it in silence.
‘What nasty confounded underhand business is this?’ he asked sternly, throwing back the letter into his wife's lap. ‘Flora engaged to that young Hawke, and telling us nothing about it all this time! I don't like it, however rich he may be. Such a sneaking affair can't turn
‘O, I have no thoughts to spare for any Dicks,’ said Mrs. Cardew impatiently. ‘You don't see, Captain; you don't understand.’
‘I'll be hanged if I do!’ said the Captain, staring at her.
‘Look at Flora's state. Think of the gossip we have heard about young Hawke and that Miss Ashley, the heiress, the General's ward. Now do you see? He has jilted Flora—half killed her, I think. Everything is clear now. O, I understand it all.’
The Captain looked at her hard for a moment. Then he looked at Flora as she lay on the sofa, sleeping the deep sleep of exhaustion. Then he set his teeth, stamped his foot on the floor, and brought out one or two tremendous words.
‘O, don't! Be still, Captain; you'll wake her!’ exclaimed Mrs. Cardew; but the mischief was done already.
Flora sat up on the sofa, pushing back her hair with both her thin hands, and stared wildly at her father and mother, as they stood there, the letter lying on the hearthrug between them.
‘My darling, my own sweet child!’ said Mrs. Cardew, going to her.
‘What is that letter, mother?’ said Flora, pointing to it.
Mrs. Cardew gave a sort of gasp. Captain Cardew picked up the letter, and held it out by one corner; they both stood still, and looked at Flora.
‘You have read that letter?’ she said. ‘How could you! It was mine!’
Neither of them answered her at once, but after a minute the Captain said, in his gruff voice, which trembled
‘No; give it to me,’ said Flora.
She lay back on the cushion, with her two hands folded over it. Her eyes were unnaturally large in the twilight; and her father and mother stood watching her in a fascinated way, for tragedy was not a well-known element in their family history.
‘You know all about it, you two, if you have read this,’ she said calmly, in a low voice. ‘So I am punished for keeping it. I suppose it was wrong.’
‘Punished, dear!’ murmured her mother.
‘Yes. I was to send back all his letters. You saw them, mother. But I kept this one, because it was the first, and I did not like him to see how much it had been read. Well, it was of a piece with the rest of my folly. Are you angry with me for keeping the secret?’
‘Angry, my poor Flora! My heart's breaking for you,’ said Mrs. Cardew, kneeling down beside her.
‘And you, father?’ said Flora.
‘I am angry,’ said the Captain slowly; ‘much more angry than I ever was in my life before. Not with you; with that scoundrel Hawke. But we'll give him a lesson. We'll bring an action for breach of promise.’
The colour came into Flora's pale face, overspreading it slowly.
‘No, father,’ she said. ‘If you do that, I'll make an end of it all by drowning myself in the Mora. So you know what to expect. Don't be vexed with me. I really could not stand that; it would kill me.’
‘Look here, Flora,’ said the Captain earnestly; ‘I won't say another word about that. But is that fellow who has done you all this harm to go scot-free, and marry any one he likes, without interference from heaven or earth? It's a sinful thing, and I won't consent to it. Now, my dear, if it won't distress you, just tell your
The Captain took a chair by the sofa, and sat there like an old doctor listening to a fanciful patient. Mrs. Cardew knelt on the other side, and wiped away her tears now and then, as Flora quite calmly and tearlessly told her story. The Captain ground his teeth now and then, but with wonderful self-control showed no other signs of rage.
‘The girl is too good for him,’ said Flora, after she had finished, and had paused for a minute or two.
‘There is not a girl in England bad enough for him, said the Captain. ‘And he's to be left, is he, to marry this nice girl, with the character he chooses to give himself? You say Dick Northcote knows? Is he going to stand by and suffer that? If he is, I'm not, as sure as my name's Jack Cardew.’
‘O Captain, don't be violent,’ sighed his wife.
‘I'm not violent,’ said the Captain very truly. ‘Don't you be soft and silly. You see, Flora, I'm the most reasonable man on earth; but what I say now, I mean. If that girl marries Randal Hawke, she shall do it with her eyes open. She and his father shall know this history of his engagement to you, and after that they may settle their affairs their own way. I shall speak to him first, and I shall make him confess it to them in my presence, and then I hope I may never set eyes on any of the lot again.’
Flora lay and looked at him with her sad eyes.
‘I cannot have the thing made public, father. You see that. We should have to leave St. Denys.’
‘Yes, my dear,’ said the Captain, with extraordinary gentleness. ‘But you must see yourself the justice of what I say. A man ought not to play such a trick as this without being punished for it. I shall make short work of it. I shall go to Pensand to-morrow.’
‘You will? Then do keep your word, and do it quietly, and don't for goodness’ sake let any of the servants be in the way,’ said Flora. ‘I can't bear it. It seems so odious of me.’
‘It is not you at all. It is I that choose to do it. And I shall be doing right,’ said Captain Cardew. ‘Take care of that letter. The fellow doesn't know you have got it, probably, and he may deny the fact altogether.’
Flora did not answer. A minute or two afterwards the Captain left the room, and his wife followed him. Flora got up from her sofa, walked feebly across the room, dropped her long-treasured letter into the fire, and saw it burn to ashes.
This was how Captain Cardew came to appear before Randal and Mabel in the park at Morebay.
At that trying moment Randal kept his coolness and self-command.
‘Go away; the man is mad,’ he whispered to Mabel.
Then he started up, snatched the stick from Captain Cardew's hand, and flung it away over the edge of the cliff.
‘What do you mean, Captain Cardew?’ he said. ‘You are in a passion.’
The Captain's conscience smote him a little. He had meant to do this disagreeable business very coolly and quietly, but the sight of those two under the fir-trees had been suddenly too much for him.
‘No, sir, I am not in a passion,’ he said. ‘If I was, I might send you after my stick. I wish to know what you mean by your conduct to my daughter.’
‘Wait till we are alone, at any rate,’ exclaimed Randal. ‘You are under a mistake. I will explain; but we can't discuss the subject in this lady's hearing. Walk slowly towards the town,’ he said to Mabel, in a peremptory voice that trembled in spite of himself. ‘I'll overtake you; don't stay here.’
Mabel gazed at the two men in astonished horror. She had never before heard Randal speak in such a tone, in such a manner. He was in what people call a ‘white rage,’ and no wonder. Her look was too much for him. He came forward, seized her wrist, and almost dragged her away from Captain Cardew to the other side of the fir-trees.
‘Do you hear what I say, Mabel? This man is mad;
Mabel looked at him. She was horrified, but not the least frightened.
‘He is Mrs. Lancaster's father,’ she said.
‘What of that?’ said Randal. Then his manner suddenly changed. ‘My dear Mabel, if you care for me the least, if you believe in me at all, go quietly away, and let me talk to him.’
Mabel felt as if everything was all wrong. It seemed hours ago that she and Randal had been sitting there, that he had been saying those things so difficult to answer. Now there came the strangest feeling, as if all that had been mere play, and this at last was earnest. She had never seen Randal so disturbed, not even when Mrs. Lancaster came to them that day on the beach, a most disagreeable recollection. But of course she had nothing to say, and could only do as Randal asked her. She bowed her head very gravely, and walked away at once into the open park, where the sun was shining, and people who looked free and happy were passing up and down. Randal went back to the old Captain, who was standing with his arms folded, gazing out to sea. The little interval, the necessity of getting Mabel out of the way, had quieted them both.
‘What do you wish to say to me?’ said Randal, as the Captain did not at once turn or look at him.
‘Is that young lady engaged to you?’
‘I fail to see how that concerns you,’ said Randal. ‘However,’ he added, after a moment's thought, ‘to show you that I wish to be candid and friendly, I will tell you that she is not. May I beg that you will not mention her again?’
The Captain took no particular notice of this request.
‘I hear, Mr. Randal Hawke,’ he said, ‘that for more
Randal stood biting his lips, and looking at the Captain under his frowning eyebrows.
There was something so manly, straightforward, and fearless about the old sailor, especially now that he spoke with some degree of calmness, that even Randal felt obliged to respect him.
‘You speak hardly, Captain Cardew,’ he said. ‘But I don't mean to lose my temper with you, for two reasons. First, you are Flora's father; and second, I am more sorry about this unfortunate affair than you can be. You don't imagine that I should have broken off with Flora if I had not been forced to it by necessity. I hoped that she herself perfectly understood that.’
‘I don't know what she understood,’ said Captain Cardew. ‘She only knows, as I do, that you have jilted her in a cruel and cowardly manner, to make a marriage more advantageous for yourself. She is ill, and I shouldn't wonder if she was fool enough to pine away and die—I didn't mean to tell you that, though. And you will be good enough in future to call her Mrs. Lancaster, if you speak of her at all. Flora is for her own people.’
‘Yes, I beg your pardon,’ said Randal, with wonderful meekness. He looked at the Captain, as if waiting for what more he had to say.
‘I assure you, sir,’ said the old sailor more fiercely, ‘that few men would take this affair so quietly as I do.
Randal stroked his moustache, and was silent.
‘What have you to say for yourself?’ demanded the Captain.
‘I am sorry you and Mrs. Lancaster have taken the thing up in this way,’ said Randal. ‘She and I had a long explanation on the subject. I pointed out to her that our engagement would be endless and hopeless. I am not in a position to marry a woman without fortune. Therefore it would have been injustice to her, and misery for both of us, if the thing had dragged on any longer. You yourself could not have wished it for her.’
‘I should not have wished it for her at all, under any circumstances,’ said the Captain. ‘Not if you had been a duke's son, Mr. Randal, and the richest man in the kingdom.’
Randal bowed slightly. He thought this interview tiresome and useless, if nothing worse.
‘Then,’ he said, ‘don't you think we had better say no more about it? Of course I understand your displeasure, and am very sorry to be the cause of it. But Mrs. Lancaster and I talked it over the other day, and quite understood each other. I fancy she would wish the whole thing to be forgotten. These mistakes are constantly made, and people get over them.’
‘I hope they do,’ said the Captain. ‘But some people think that the world was made for their pleasure only, and they have to be shown their mistake. Now, sir, what do you expect me to do?’
Randal stared; he could not quite make out what the old fellow was driving at. But he thought if both sides kept their temper, the affair might blow over without much more mischief.
‘Well, Captain Cardew,’ he said, with a faint smile, ‘you say that under no circumstances you would have
‘O, that's what you think?’ said the Captain, looking at him hard.
‘Yes. And I know Mrs. Lancaster's generous character too well,’ said Randal more gravely, ‘to believe for a moment that she would wish anything else.’
‘So your fortunes are to be built up on her generosity? Very good,’ said the Captain. ‘Well, you might have a chance with her, I daresay; women are so good-natured. But that's not exactly my view; I can't let you off so easily as that.’
‘Explain yourself, please,’ said Randal.
He began walking up and down the small space between the trees and the cliff. Captain Cardew stood like a solid old rock, following him with his eyes.
‘Your character in this neighbourhood would be a good deal affected, sir, if this story was known,’ said the Captain. ‘I have it in my hands, you must remember.’
‘Very obliging of you to say so,’ said Randal, with a perceptible snarl in his voice. He felt that this dreadful father of Flora's would soon make an end of his patience.
‘You've told me what you expect me to do,’ the Captain went on. ‘To shake hands and say no more about it. I think that's hardly reasonable. Now I'll tell you what I expect you to do. Nothing for Flora. You have done your worst by her. If I have my way, she shall never be troubled by thought or word of you again.’
‘Well, what?’ said Randal, still pacing up and down.
‘I don't mean,’ said the Captain, ‘to mention the affair to anybody.’
‘All parties will be obliged to you,’ said Randal.
‘Stop a moment, sir; I have not done yet. I shall
Randal stood still and looked at him with an angry scowl.
‘You won't insist on that!’ he said. ‘What good can it do you?’
‘None whatever,’ said the Captain. ‘I shall insist upon it.’
‘You might as well tell the whole place at once.’
‘As you please, sir.’
‘I would rather you did,’ said Randal.
He was in such a rage that it was with the greatest difficulty he kept himself quiet, and did not knock the Captain down. But a little prudence still remained, and warned himself not to put himself still farther in the wrong. For a minute or two it seemed to him that he was irretrievably ruined. Captain Cardew did not press him, or take him at his word, but let him stand there biting his moustache and staring at the sea. Tell everybody! All the gossips in St. Denys, all his acquaintance in the county, Anthony Strange, Dick Northcote! The last idea was insupportable. Then there was this other plan, to confess to his father and Mabel. Well, he thought he could manage his father, but Mabel was the difficulty. She was hardly sure of him now, and she was a girl of some character and strong prejudices. Still, it ought to touch a girl's heart, he thought, to find out what a scrape he had got into for her sake. He believed he had a great influence over Mabel, and having her to himself at Pensand, surely she might be brought round in time. If only he could speak to her again first, and bring that scene to a close which Captain Cardew had so inopportunely broken in upon. Yes, on the whole
‘I see nothing to laugh at,’ said Captain Cardew. ‘But I can't waste my time going to Pensand; my work is here at Morebay. Your father and the young lady are here. Why not do it here, and to-day?’
‘Look here,’ said Randal. ‘I will tell them to-day, if you like; but why should you insist on being present?’
‘I mean to be present, sir,’ said the Captain. ‘And the least you can do is to consent.’
‘I must consent, of course,’ said Randal. ‘But it is understood that after this interesting scene you will let the affair drop completely. I shall never be twitted with it again?’
‘That was my intention,’ said the Captain. ‘I've some notion of the meaning of two old words, honour and conscience. They had dropped out of the dictionary before you went to school, Mr. Randal.’
‘If you wish to see my father this afternoon,’ said Randal, ‘you can meet us at the George at half-past five.’
‘I shall be there,’ said Captain Cardew.
Randal found Mabel, who, of course, did not know her way about the town, sitting on a bench at the other side of the park, near the band and the people, many of whom looked at her curiously; it seemed as if such a helpless, peculiar-looking little person was hardly fit to be alone.
‘Here I am at last,’ said Randal, as she got up to join him. ‘Come along; I don't want that old fool to overtake us. Poor old man! You think it wrong of me
Randal seemed strangely disturbed and excited. Mabel looked at him with her eyes full of wondering reproach. Those few words that the Captain had said to Randal in her hearing had repeated themselves ever since. ‘You are a jilt and a coward. I wish to know what you mean by your conduct to my daughter.’ They had mixed themselves with the merry tunes that the band was playing; such words were never set to such music before. Could it be that Mabel had been walking all this time blindfold near a precipice, and that those rough words of the old sea-captain had come to warn her just in time? Mabel's meditations went very near the truth as she sat there, scarcely hearing the band or seeing the gaily-dressed crowd of people. When Randal came back to her she had nothing to say to him. She did not take his arm; they walked slowly together along a stone terrace facing the sea, and for some time both were silent.
‘Mabel,’ said he at last, ‘have you been thinking at all of what I asked you?’
‘O yes,’ said Mabel.
‘You dear sweet girl! Forgive me for tormenting you, but I can't think or speak of anything else till I have your answer. You do care for me, Mabel, don't you? I am not mistaken?’
‘O, I don't know. Don't ask me now,’ said Mabel, in a low voice.
‘Then I am very hopeful,’ said Randal. ‘You would say no at once if you disliked me. If you are not sure that way, it is all right.’
Probably Mabel had never heard the old French proverb about ‘Château qui parle, et femme qui écoute,’ but there was something in Randal's hopefulness which
‘You must not be hopeful,’ she said; ‘I can't let you!’
‘How can you help it, my dear child?’ said Randal.
‘Don't speak to me like that, please,’ said Mabel, giving herself an impatient little shake. ‘It is very hard for me,’ she went on, after a moment's pause, in a tired unhappy voice. ‘I have been alone all this time. I have had no friends, nobody to take care of me or advise me, nobody even to speak the truth to me, it seems. I must take care of myself, though I am so young. You won't see that.’
‘I do see it, most clearly,’ said Randal. ‘But the unfortunate circumstances—I have done my best to keep you from feeling friendless, and I want to give you my whole life, if you will only let me. The truth, dear Mabel? I don't quite know what you mean.’
‘O yes, you do,’ said Mabel, with a trembling voice.
Randal did not speak for a minute. Then he said, ‘Well, Mabel, I am not a perfect character, it is true; not nearly good enough for a sweet girl like you. But you will soon know the worst of me.’
Mabel wondered what he could mean, but did not ask him, and he did not explain himself. They strolled slowly on towards the hotel, where they were to meet the General.
When the chimes from the clock tower said that it was half-past five they were all three sitting in a pleasant up-stairs room looking out into the chief square of Morebay. Tea had been brought, and Mabel had poured it out, and was now leaning back in her chair in a little dream. The General also seemed tired, and was reading the paper. Randal had opened the window and gone out into the balcony. Suddenly, as the chimes ceased, he stepped back into the room.
‘Father,’ he said, ‘Captain Cardew is coming in.’
Mabel was roused, and gazed at him anxiously. The General also looked up in some surprise, for there was a curious tone in Randal's voice, a slight tremor very unusual with him.
‘Anything wrong?’ said the General. ‘Why shouldn't he come in? The George is free to everybody.’
‘He is coming here to see you,’ said Randal.
He did not look at Mabel, though she was watching him with painful intensity.
‘What a bore!’ said General Hawke. ‘Did you know he was coming?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you might have prevented it. Mabel and I are resting ourselves.’
‘He won't be here long. He thinks it a matter of necessity,’ said Randal.
The door was opened, and Captain Cardew came ni, Mabel left her chair at the table, and retreated to the farthest window, where she sat down. There was an awkward moment of silence, after the General had shaken hands with Captain Cardew.
‘You have some business with me?’ said the General, in a friendly manner.
‘Your son will explain it,’ answered the old Captain, waving his hand towards Randal.
‘What is all this about, Randal?’ said General Hawke, with some impatience. ‘Shall we go down into the coffee-room?’
He made a sign with his eyebrows in the direction of Mabel.
‘Captain Cardew wishes Miss Ashley to be here,’ said Randal.
‘Look sharp, then,’ said the General.
It is difficult not to pity Randal, for certainly never was a young man in a more awkward position.
‘I have something to tell you, sir,’ he said to his father. ‘You won't interrupt me, I hope, till I have done. Sit down, Captain Cardew.’
‘Thank you; I'll stand,’ said the Captain.
General Hawke sat in his armchair, frowning with amazement. Mabel trembled in the background. Randal stood with his back to the light, and both hands on a chair, quite composed and cool.
‘You always knew,’ he said, addressing his father, ‘that I had a great admiration for Mrs. Lancaster, Captain Cardew's daughter. But you did not know that I had been engaged to her. Our engagement lasted for two years, and was only broken off the other day.’
‘Who broke it off, sir? Who backed out of it?’ said Captain Cardew.
‘It was not in the bond that you should ask me questions,’ said Randal. ‘However, the fact is, I broke it off. It was a foolish affair from the beginning.’
‘Foolish on both sides,’ said the Captain. ‘But only bad and heartless on one.’
‘Look here, Captain Cardew,’ said Randal, stepping forward, ‘I have done what we agreed on. You will oblige me by making no farther remarks. It would be better if you were to leave us.’
Captain Cardew took no notice of these words, or of the young man's flashing eyes and angry movement. He looked at the General, who was leaning back in his chair, turning his eyes in a vague way from one to the other.
‘This is the only compensation I have asked from your son, sir,’ he said, ‘for his behaviour to my daughter. We on our side shall say no more about it, and the sooner his friends forget it, the better for him.’
‘Can't you leave us now, as I asked you?’ said Randal. ‘You have had your will, and my father is not fit to talk to you.’
Mabel suddenly came forward from her corner, and took one of the General's hands between her own.
‘Randal,’ he said, in a low thick voice, ‘I feel ill. Order the carriage. I must go home at once.’
‘Do you hear that?’ said Randal, in a furious whisper, to the Captain. ‘Come down-stairs with me.’
The two men went out together, and Mabel was left with the General. For a minute he did not speak, but stared vacantly across the room. Then he looked up at her and smiled.
‘Randal always talks nonsense, my dear,’ he muttered. ‘He is a funny fellow, but you may depend upon him, in spite of that.’
General Hawke was very ill for some days after this. He had had a slight stroke, and the doctor told Randal that though he might recover to a great extent, it was likely that his mind would never be quite the same again. During those days he often asked for Mabel, and she was glad to go and sit by him; for though she did not feel herself of any use there, his room was a refuge from Randal. He was constantly there, for he nursed his father and watched over him with the attention of a much more unselfish character; but he seemed to feel that love-making was out of place in a sick-room, and Mabel was at peace as she sat there quietly working near the old man's pillow.
Still there were meals, and there were hours in the drawing-room and garden when, if Randal did not persecute her with words, he made her feel what was in his mind all the time. She wished she could make him understand how extraordinary she thought this behaviour of his; did not he know what she must think of him, since she heard the truth about Mrs. Lancaster? but he seemed quite easy on that score. Apparently he did not understand how entirely that history had altered and decided Mabel's feelings towards him. He was just the same as before, only more attentive, more affectionate, more happily confident in his manner, and he would not see the stiffness that she tried to put into hers. He did not allude to his former engagement till one evening, when he came to her in the drawing-room, and told her that he was obliged to go away the next morning, to stay one night. Mabel felt very glad, but she did not say so.
‘My father is really better,’ said Randal, ‘and his mind will soon be quite clear again, whatever Dr. King may say. What do you think he said to me just now, Mabel?’
‘I don't know. What?’
‘He asked me when we were going to be married—you and I.’
‘I hope you told him—never,’ said Mabel, with crimson cheeks.
‘No; I did not,’ said Randal. ‘I told him that I thought we must wait till he was well enough to go to the wedding. He said: “No, that won't do. You might wait for ever.” I believe it would be a wonderful thing for him, if that wish of his was-carried out.’
Mabel sat quite silent, looking on the ground.
‘Have not you had time enough to forgive me, Mabel?’ he said. ‘The best excuse for that most unfortunate affair is that it happened before I knew you. Every one has something to repent of and be forgotten. A good girl like you ought to think it her duty to forgive.’
‘I have nothing to forgive,’ said Mabel, ‘except the way in which you tried to deceive me about that—saying things about Mr. Northcote, as if it was he, and almost pretending that Mrs. Lancaster was out of her mind, poor thing, when all the time—I can't think how you could!’
‘All very wrong, no doubt,’ said Randal; ‘but can't you excuse what was done for love of you?’
‘I don't like such love as that. I don't want it,’ said Mabel.
‘You hate me, then?’ said Randal.
He had walked across to the window, and stood there looking at her as she sat in a corner of the sofa. Her hands were clasped together, the small fingers squeezing each other tightly; the bright flush had faded and left her very pale.
‘No, no,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I don't exactly
‘I assure you, Mabel, you are quite mistaken,’ said Randal solemnly. ‘She is not wretched at all. She has made up her mind; she has had her revenge, by doing her best to blacken me in your eyes. My dear girl, you don't understand that kind of woman. She is a thorough flirt, and flirts don't break their hearts. Trust me, I know all about it.’
Mabel did not believe him; but there was something in Randal—he ought to have succeeded better in life, with that to help him—which generally prevented people from setting themselves violently in opposition to him. Those words against Mrs. Lancaster made her shrink from him all the more, but she said nothing. After a pause she got up and walked towards the door. Randal came hastily after her.
‘I may not see you again to-night,’ he said. ‘Won't you say good-bye? I must be off early to-morrow.’
Mabel gave him her hand: he held it, and looked earnestly into her face.
‘Sleep well,’ he said; ‘and if you think of me at all, try to forgive me. It was a very wrong, but it was for your sake. If you had never come here, you little witch, with those wonderful eyes of yours that read a man's thoughts, nothing of all this would have happened.’
‘O, don't say that! Let me go!’ exclaimed Mabel.
He stood a moment longer, holding her hand, and then suddenly kissed it and let it go.
‘You will have to belong to me one of these days, ma belle!’ he said.
In spite of her lover's injunction, Mabel did not sleep at all well that night. She was very much troubled in mind, and lay awake thinking of him and his obstinacy, wondering what was to be the end of this state of things,
Presently she fell asleep, and dreamed that Mrs. Lancaster, prettier than she ever was by daylight, was reproaching her bitterly for taking Randal away. Mabel tried to defend herself, and woke with tears on her face. But in consequence of this dream she made a resolution. Randal was gone, and for once she would act like an independent woman.
After breakfast, and after visiting the General, who was sleepy, and did not seem to want her, Mabel put her hat on and went out to the stable-yard. She had often been there with Randal to take sugar and apples to the horses, but to-day she went with a different purpose. Randal's horse, Turk, was outside the stable-door, having his legs washed. Jenkins, the groom, looked up from his splashing to touch his cap to Miss Ashley.
‘Is the Turk tired, Jenkins?’ said Mabel.
‘O, dear, no, miss! He's only been as far as the station.’
‘I want very much to go to St. Denys this morning. Do you think you could take me?’
Mabel was alarmed at her own boldness, and spoke very doubtfully.
‘Yes, miss, I could take you,’ said Jenkins, rather surprised. ‘In the dog-cart, did you mean?’
‘Yes. How soon can you be ready?’
‘In twenty minutes, miss.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mabel.
She did not go back into the house, but wandered
‘I want to go to Captain Cardew's house,’ Mabel said, as they drove down the hill. ‘Do you know which it is?’
‘Yes, miss.’
Mabel felt none of the misgivings that poor Flora Lancaster had felt when she came to visit her. She was only eager to be there, and wished unreasonably that the Turk would trot faster. She was delighted to find herself at last at the garden-gate, at the house-door, actually ringing the bell. It was only when the little maid had opened the door and was staring at her that she was suddenly seized with a nervous fear: perhaps Mrs. Lancaster would not see her; perhaps she would be angry and reproachful, as she was in the dream.
Mabel provided against the first danger by following the maid straight into the drawing-room, where Flora, pale, hollow-eyed, and wrapped in a large shawl, was sitting in an armchair. Mrs. Cardew, in a very old gown and cap with a duster in her hand, was settling the ornaments on the chimneypiece. Neither of them dreamed of a visitor so early in the day. Mrs. Cardew, turning round in consternation, and having only had distant glimpses of Mabel driving by, did not at first know who this dark slight girl could be, who came forward to Flora with such a sad face, and such a shy yet eager manner.
Flora's pale face became rosy all of a sudden; she got up, holding her visitor's hand, and looking at her wonderingly.
Mabel broke the very awkward silence, looking at Mrs. Cardew.
‘Is it—your mamma?’ she said softly to Flora.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Cardew, smiling and nodding. She
‘This is Miss Ashley, mother,’ said Flora, speaking with an effort.
Mrs. Cardew's face became grave immediately. Mabel guessed that she wondered what business Miss Ashley could have with her daughter.
‘I have only a few minutes,’ said Mabel, who had a loyal fear of the Turk's catching cold, ‘but I wanted most particularly to speak to you.’
Flora looked at her mother, and Mrs. Cardew, the most dutiful of women, went quietly out of the room.
‘Sit down,’ said Flora. ‘There is a nice little chair. This is not quite such a breezy meeting as our last one on the beach, Miss Ashley.’
She sank back into her own chair, smiling at Mabel, who felt now as if she could not speak. The wreck of Flora's beauty struck her as too terrible. And was this all her fault?
She could not sit still in her chair, like a grown-up civilised woman. She came and knelt down by Flora, looking up into her face with wet imploring eyes.
‘O, do forgive me!’ she said. ‘I did not know, and yet it is all my fault. But I hate him!’
She had taken off her hat as she left her chair, and now she stooped her head down and laid her cheek against Flora's hand, as it rested on the arm of the chair. Flora's outward calmness deserted her for a moment then. She looked at the small head with its soft dark waves of hair, at the slight little figure crouching there beside her, and shivered suddenly all over.
‘O child, don't!’ she cried, with a sharp pain in her voice. Then, yielding to a strong attraction that she could not herself understand, she bent down over Mabel, drew her gently into her arms, and kissed her many times.
‘Did you come to comfort me, you dear child?’ she said presently.
‘I don't know,’ said Mabel. ‘I came to see you, and to tell you that I never would—and to ask you something too.’
‘What is it?’ said Flora.
‘What I am to do. He is so dreadfully determined. He does not mind what I say, and it is more horrid than I can tell you, now that the General is ill. Last night I could not sleep for thinking of it. It is so trying for a girl like me.’
‘You don't care for him at all?’ said Flora, in a low voice. Her arm was still round Mabel, and the girl was leaning against her. It was too strange and sweet, this sympathy, to be given up quickly, and Mabel felt that she must be doubly safe from Randal, guarded thus by his old love.
‘No; I did like him rather, but never so much as that. And now I can't bear to see him or think of him,’ said Mabel gravely. ‘And I can't possibly understand why he cares for me.’
‘Does he care for you?’ said Flora.
‘He says so,’ answered Mabel, with startled eyes.
‘I should like you to think a little,’ said Flora, after a pause, ‘and try to find out why he professes to care so much for you. Think of the differences between you and me—your superiority to me.’
Mabel blushed and almost laughed as she looked up at her friend.
‘I can't think of that, because it does not exist,’ she said. ‘You are entirely superior to me. That is part of the mystery of it.’
‘No; I am your inferior,’ said Flora, ‘in birth, but that does not matter so much. And in something else, which is everything.’
‘You don't mean money?’
‘Yes; I do. Listen,’ said Flora. ‘If you had cared for him at all, I should never have told you this. But as you don't, and as you want to know what it is that interests him so much in you, and as you are too innocent and noble-minded to have guessed the truth for yourself, I think you had better be made to understand it. When he broke off his engagement with me that day on the beach, he told me that it was necessary for him to marry some one with a fortune. It is a bad world, and one had better not set one's heart on it,’ said Flora, ending with a sigh.
‘I was most wonderfully stupid not to think of it before.’ said Mabel. ‘O, horrid wretch, how could he!’
‘On the whole,’ said Flora, ‘I don't suppose he is more horrid than half the young men in England. But don't let us talk about him any more. I hope you will soon meet somebody who cares for you for yourself, dear.’
She sat dreamily gazing at Mabel, and stroking the hair back from her forehead with slow unconscious fingers.
‘But what am I to do?’ said Mabel.
‘Be resolute, and try and leave Pensand as soon as you can. Have you no excuse for going away?’
‘No, I have no friends to ask me.’
‘Mrs. Strange?’
‘I just know her, but I can't ask to go there,’ said Mabel, shaking her head.
On that subject it seemed impossible to come to any conclusion. Flora could not help Mabel herself, and was not in a position to ask any one else to help her; it seemed as if the poor little heiress must fight her own battle as best she could. But in spite of that she felt stronger and happier, now that she and Mrs. Lancaster really understood each other. They were friends, and that was something, though it was not a friendship that could be of any use.
Mabel's first visit to St. Denys was a long one. Jenkins was tired of driving up and down the hill before she appeared; the Turk was impatient too, and flew home as if his master was behind him.
Mabel was not Flora's only visitor that day. Dick Northcote came in towards evening, and told her that his aunt was at Carweston, and he was very dull at home.
‘You people in this neighbourhood are very selfish, I think,’ said Flora. ‘You enjoy yourselves, going to each other's houses, and never think of that poor girl at Pensand, who is quite miserable all this time.’
‘Because General Hawke is ill?’ said Dick.
‘That certainly does not make her any happier, because it throws her entirely with the man who wishes to marry her, and whom she dislikes with all her heart.’
‘How