“But ill for him who, bettering not with time,Corrupts the strength of Heaven-descended will,And ever weaker grows through acted crime,Or seeming genial venial fault.”—Tennyson.
“But ill for him who, bettering not with time,Corrupts the strength of Heaven-descended will,And ever weaker grows through acted crime,Or seeming genial venial fault.”
—Tennyson.
“ManFriday hope piccaniny live well—bring her buckra fish from sea!” Such was the greeting from Lord Rotherwood to Thekla when the whole party walked over in time for tea on the lawn, before church at Clipstone, as he presented her with a facsimile oyster which he had hunted up in a sweet shop, making an absurd bow and scrape.
Poor Thekla coloured, and mumbled a shy, “Thank you, my—my—” having had a lecture from Vera on treating a marquis with over familiarity and it was left to Primrose to ask where Friday learnt nigger language. “By nature, Missy buckra,” he responded; “all same nigger everywhere.” And he repeated his bow so drolly that Primrose’s laugh carried Thekla’s along with it, as Lady Phyllis walked up with, “Come, father, you are wanted to congratulate.”
“Eh! Am I? So they have perpetrated it, have they? More’s the pity is what I should say in the Palace of Truth; but the maiden has landed a better fish than she knows—that is, if she have landed him.”
“There! take care, don’t be tiresome, Papa!” admonished Lady Phyllis, drawing him on, when he met Vera with a courtly manner, and, “I hope I see you recovered, Miss Prescott, and able to rejoice in the pleasant consequences of your adventure.”
Vera blushed, and looked very pretty and modest, making not much answer as she retreated among her contemporaries to show them her ring, a hoop of pearls, which Wilfred insisted were Roman pearls, fishes’ eyes, most appropriate; but Flapsy felt immeasurably older than Wilfred to-day, and able to despise his teasing, though Hubert Delrio was not present, and indeed Wilfred was not disposed to bestow much of his attention upon her, having much more inclination to beset his cousin, Lady Phyllis, who surely ought to perceive that he had attained at least the same height as his brother Jasper, and could, in his absence, pose as the young man of the household.
Phyllis had not much to say to him, nor after the first to Vera, though she duly admired the ring so exultantly shown, and accepted the assurance that Hubert was the dearest fellow in the world. But there was no getting any condolence out of her upon the misery of having to wait four whole years. She said, “It was a very good thing! There was her cousin Gillian, who had insisted on waiting three years to finish her education.”
“Oh, but dear Hubert likes me as I am,” simpered Vera.
“You might wish that he should find more in you to like. Gillian,” said Phyllis, coming up to her and Agatha, “I want you to assure Vera that four years is not such a great trial in waiting.”
“It is what I have been trying to persuade her,” said Agatha; “she is hardly seventeen.”
“And I would not have been married at seventeen for anything,” said Gillian to the pouting Vera. “I want to be more worth having.”
Vera did not like it, she had heard the like at home, and she fell back upon Valetta, while the others walked on. “Poor little Flapsy!” said Agatha, “I do hope this engagement may make more of a woman of her.”
“My father was very much struck by Mr. Delrio,” said Phyllis, “both as artist and personally.”
“You must be glad of the time for putting her up to his level,” said Gillian.
“Do you think such things are to be done?” asked Agatha.
“Yes,” said Phyllis stoutly. “You may not make her able to be a Senior Wrangler—(Oh you are Oxford!)—or capable of it, like this Gillyflower; but you can get the stuff into her that makes a sound sensible wife.”
Gillian caught a little hopeless sigh of “can,” and answered it with, “When all this effervescence is blown off, then will be the time for working at the substance, and she may be all the better wife—especially for the artist temperament, if she is of the homely sort.”
“How angry she would be if she heard you say so!” returned Agatha. “Yet certainly I do feel relieved that wifehood is to be my poor Flapsy’s portion, for she is not of the sort that can stand alone and make her own way.”
“There will always be plenty of such women in the world,” said Gillian.
“So much the better for the world,” retorted Phyllis, who had never shown any symptoms of exclusive devotion to any one of the other sex, except her father.
One thing Agatha wanted to know, and dared not ask, namely, what impression Vera had made in theKittiwakeand what Hubert had said about her; for she and Paula had begun to remark that, lover as he was, not a word about her heroism had escaped him. And it was as well that she did not hear what the extra plain spoken Primrose did not spare the boasting Thekla. “Cousin Rotherwood and Fly both say they can’t think how Mr. Delrio got on with such a silly little hysterical goose upon his hands; and that it is a foolish romantic unlucky notion that he ought to be engaged to her. I think Mamma will tell Miss Prescott so.”
TheKittiwake, having arrived three days later than had been expected, there had been an amount of revolution in the general arrangements. The break up of the High School was to be on an early day of the next week. It had become a much more extensive and public matter than in the days of Valetta and Maura, though these were not so very long ago, and there was a great day of exhibitions and speeches to the parents and neighbourhood generally. Two ladies had been secured for the purpose, Elizabeth Merrifield and Miss Arthuret, and the former arrived on the Saturday afternoon, but as the Rotherwood party almost overflowed Clipstone, she was transferred to Miss Mohun.
After the death of their parents, about three years previously, Susan and Elizabeth had gone to live at Coalham, and to be useful to their brother David’s parish; Susan betaking herself to the poor, and Bessie finding herself specially available in the various forms of improvement undertaken by ladies in modern days. To her own surprise, and her sister’s discomfiture, her talent as a public speaker had become developed. With a little assistance from her sister-in-law Agnes’s unwilling stage experience, and entreaties, not easily to be withstood, came from various quarters that she would come and advocate the good cause.
Of course she was ever welcome at Clipstone, and she walked up thither with General Mohun, arriving just after the others from the Goyle; and in the general confusion of greetings, and the Babel of cousinly tongues, there were no introductions nor naming of names. Bessie declared herself delighted with the chance of seeing Lady Ivinghoe, whom she considered more to realise the beauty of women than any one she had hitherto beheld, and the fair face had not lost its simplicity, but rather gained in loveliness by the sweetness of early motherhood, as she and Phyllis sat by Mysie, regaling her with tales of what they regarded as the remarkable precocity of the infant Claude, reluctantly left to his grandmother.
“But where’s Dolores?” asked Bessie. “I miss her among the swarm of mice!”
“Dolores is at Vale Leston,” answered Gillian. “She has been a long time making up her mind to go there, to Gerald’s home; and now she is there, they will not let her go till some birthday is over.”
“Uncle Felix’s!” whispered Franceska to Mysie. “You know it was dear Gerald’s place. She had never seen it.”
Another voice was now raised, asking, “What had become of Miss Arthuret?”
“She only comes down on Monday,” said Bessie. “Just in time for the meeting. She is too valuable to come for more than one meeting.”
“But who is she?”
“Arthurine Arthuret? She is a girl, or rather woman, who has some property at Stokesley. In fact, she is one of those magnets that seem to attract inheritance without effort—like the Hapsburgs, though happily she makes a most beneficent, though, sometimes, original use of them.”
“Is not that very dangerous?” said Aunt Lily.
“The first came to her early, and coming into it very young, and overflowing with new ideas, she began rather grotesquely; but she has tamed down a good deal since, and really has done an immense deal of good in finding employment for people, making improvements and the like, though she is Sam’s pet aversion, a tremendous Liberal, almost a Socialist. They are so like cat and dog that Susan and I were really glad to be away from Stokesley, especially at election times; but altogether she is an admirable person.”
Lady Merrifield thought she detected a start of Miss Prescott at the name Stokesley, and that her eyes looked anxiously at the speaker. Bessie was not of the sandy part of the family. Was the unattractive schoolboy, once seen, like his sisters? All that was observable was startling similitudes to her own children, though in them the elements of the handsome dark Mohun generally predominated.
But by and by, in a quiet moment, Bessie suddenly asked, “Did you say her name was Magdalen?”
Lady Merrifield laughed. “Four yearsmaydo a good deal at that time of life,” she said. “I suppose no time ever so changes—changes—what shall I say?—eyes—views—characters. Only constancy in absence is the dangerous thing. There are distinguished examples of—of the mischief of being constant without knowing what one is constant to. Virulent constancy, as Mrs. Malaprop has it.”
Magdalen thanked and smiled. Perhaps there was a certain virulent constancy in a remote corner of her heart which had been revived by a certain indescribable look in the eyes and contour of Bessie Merrifield.
And Bessie herself, while sitting under the verandah with Lady Merrifield, while all the others were walking down to embark Lord and Lady Ivinghoe in the yacht, suddenly repeated, “Did you say that her name was Magdalen?”
“Yes; I saw it startled you, my dear.”
“It revived an old, old story. I do not know whether there was anything in it. Who or what is she, Aunt Lily? I only know her as the sister of the girl that the Ivinghoes picked up.”
“She is the owner of a little property at Arnscombe, and has taken home her four young half-sisters to live with her, after having slaved for them as a governess till she came into this inheritance. She is an excellent person.”
“Ah! Was her house at Filsted?”
“I am not sure. Yes, I think the young ones were at school there. You think—”
“I feel certain. May I tell you, Aunt Lily? Some of the others cannot bear to mention my poor Hal; but to me the worst of the sting is gone, since I know he repented.”
“My dear, I should be very glad to hear. Your father and mother never mention your brother, and we were away at the time.”
“Poor Hal! I am afraid there was a weakness in him. He never had that determination that carried all the others on. He never could get through an examination, and my father put him into a bank at Filsted. By and by, after some years, came a letter telling my father he was gambling very seriously, getting into temptation, and engaging himself to an attorney’s daughter. It was while I was living with grandmamma, and he used sometimes to look in on me, and talk to me about this Magdalen. Once he showed me her photograph and I thought I knew her face again. But my father went off, very angry. I have always feared he found poor Hal on the verge of tampering with the bank money, but he never would say a word. He broke everything up, put an end to the engagement if there was one, and sent Hal off to John and George, who had just got their farm in Manitoba, and were getting on by dint of hard work.”
“They have done very well, have they not?”
“Yes, by working and living harder than any day labourer at Stokesley. Hal could not stand it, and—and I’m afraid the boys were not very merciful to him, poor fellow, and he got something to do in Winnipeg. There he fell in with a speculator called Golding, they all did in fact; he was a plausible man, whom they all liked, and used to put up at his house when they took waggons in with their produce. He had a daughter, and Johnnie got engaged to her, or thought he was. They all were persuaded to put money into a horrid building speculation,—Henry, what he had brought out, the other two what they had realised. Well, suddenly it all ended. They were all gone, Golding, daughter, Hal and all—yes, all—the money the other boys had put in the thing, off to the States, as we suppose! No trace ever found.”
“Really no trace?”
“None! The poor boys lost all they had, and were obliged to begin over again.”
“And has really nothing been heard of this unfortunate Hal?”
“There is one thing that does give me a hope. There did come to Stokesley a letter from a Brisbane bank, addressed to J. and G. Merrifield, to the care of Rear-Admiral Merrifield, and in it were bank bills up to the value of what the boys had been robbed of, about two hundred and fifty pounds. Poor Henry must have repented, and wished to make restitution.”
“Was there no name, no clue?”
“None at all. We know no more.”
“But was there no inquiry made at Brisbane?”
“It was when my father was very ill. The parcel was not opened at first. I have been always sorry he never heard of it; but after all there was no asking of forgiveness, nor anything that could be answered. The boys got it with the tidings of our dear father’s death. John came home to see about things, George stayed to look after his Stokesley. They were well over their troubles by that time, and they gave the restored money to David for his churches.”
“And no more was done, not even by David?” said Lady Merrifield, thinking over what she had heard from Geraldine Grinstead, and how the Underwoods would have accepted such a token from their lost sheep.
“David did write to Brisbane to the bank, but there never was any answer. There is no knowing how it might have been, if any one had gone out and done his best; but you see we were all much taken up with home duties and cares, and I am afraid we have not dwelt enough upon our poor boy, and he had much against him. The discipline from my dear father, that all the elders responded to with a sort of loyal exultation, only frightened him and made him shifty. They despised him, and I do not think any of us were as kind to him as we ought to have been; though on the whole he liked me the best, for he cared for books and quiet pursuits, such as all laughed at, except David. I wish he could have seen more of David.”
“Did your mother hear of this ray of hope?”
“Susan thought it best not to tell her. We used to hear her murmuring his name among all ours in her prayers, Susie, Sam, Hal, Bessie, and so on; but she never was herself enough to understand, and they thought it might only stir her up to expect to see him. Oh, Aunt Lily, I don’t think you—any of you—would have gone on so; but you are all much more affectionate and demonstrative than our branch of the family.”
“Ah, my dear, I am sure there was a pang in your mother’s heart that she never durst mention,” said Lady Merrifield, her imagination dwelling in terror on her Wilfred, the one child in whom she could not help detecting the weakness of character of his unhappy cousin. “Depend upon it, Bessie, her prayers were hovering round him all the time, and bringing that act of restitution, though she was not allowed to hear of it.”
“I had not thought of that,” said Bessie, in a low tone, “though I think David has. I have heard his voice choke over an intercession for the absent.”
“Think of it now, my dear, and do not let habitual reserve hinder you from speaking of it to Susan and David, though most likely they have the habit already. Who knows what united prayer may do with Him who deviseth means to bring home His banished?”
Steps returning, Bessie wiped away her tears in haste, actually the first she had shed for the lost Hal, though there was a heartache too deep for tears.
“And happier than the merriest gamesIs the joy of our new and nobler aims.”F. R.Havergal.
“And happier than the merriest gamesIs the joy of our new and nobler aims.”
F. R.Havergal.
Miss Mohunand Miss Merrifield encountered Miss Prescott and Agatha among a perfect herd of cycles, making Bessie laugh over the recollections of the horror caused at Stokesley by the arrival of Arthurine Arthuret on a tricycle twelve years previously.
The place was the Town Hall, the High School having proved too small for the number of the intended audience, and Lord Rotherwood having been captured, in spite of theKittiwakebeing pronounced ready to sail, and all the younger passengers being actually on board, entertaining a party from Clipstone. There he sat enthroned on the platform, with portraits of himself, his Elizabethan ancestor, and the Prince of Wales overhead, and, inpropria personaon either side, the Mayor of Rockstone, Captain Henderson, and a sprinkling of the committee, Jane, of course, being one; while in the space beneath was a sea of hats, more or less beflowered and befeathered.
Lord Rotherwood began by complaining of an act of piracy! After being exposed to a tempest and forced to put in for supplies, here he was captured, and called upon to distribute prizes! He perceived that it was a new act of aggression on the part of the ladies, proving to what lengths they were coming. Tyrants they had always been, but to find them wreckers to boot was a novelty. However, prizes were the natural sequence of a maritime exploit, and he was happy to distribute them to the maidens about to start on the voyage of life, hoping that these dainty logbooks would prove a stimulus and a compass to steer by even into unexplored seas, such as he believed the better-informed ladies were about to describe to them.
Rockstone was used to its Marquis’s speeches, and always enjoyed them; and he handed the prize-books to the recipients with a shake of the hand, and a word or two of congratulation appropriate to each, especially when he knew their names; and then he declared that they were about to hear what education was good for, much better than from himself, from such noted examples as Miss Arthuret and Miss Merrifield, better known to them as Mesa. Wherewith he waved forward Miss Arthuret, a slight, youthful-looking lady, fashionably attired, and made his escape with rapid foot and hasty nods, almost furtively, while the audience were clapping her.
She spoke with voice and utterance notably superior to his well-known halting periods, scarcely saved by long training and use from being a stutter. The female population eagerly listened, while she painted in vivid colours the aim of education, in raising the status of women, and extending their spheres not only of influence in the occult manner which had hitherto been their way of working through others, but in an open manner, which compelled attention; and she dwelt on certain brilliant achievements of women, and of others which stood before them, and towards which their education, passing out of the old grooves, was preparing them to take their place among men, and temper their harshness and indifference to suffering with the laws of mercy and humanity, speaking with an authority and equality such as should ensure attention, no longer in home and nursery whispering alone, but with open face asserting and claiming justice for the weakest.
It was a powerful and effective speech; and Agatha’s eye lighted with enthusiasm, as did those of several others of the elder scholars and younger teachers, as these high aims were unfolded to them.
Then followed Elizabeth Merrifield, not contradictory, but recognising what wide fields had been opened to womanhood, dwelling on such being the work of Christianity, which had always tended to repress the power of brute animal strength and jealousy, and to give preponderance to the force of character and the just influence of sweet homely affection. Exceptional flashes, even in heathen lands, and still more under the Divine guidance of the Israelites, showed what women were capable of; and ever since a woman had been the chosen instrument of the mystery of the Incarnation, the Church, the chosen emblem of the union of humanity with her Lord, had gradually purified and exalted the sex by training them through the duties of mercy, of wifehood and motherhood, to be capable of undertaking and fulfilling higher and more extensive tasks, always by the appointment and with the help of Him who had increased their outside powers, for the sake of the weaker ones of His flock. What might, by His will, in the government and politics of the country, be put into their hands, no one could tell; but it was right to be prepared for it, by extending their intellectual ability and knowledge of the past, as well as of the laws of physical nature—all, in short, that modern education aimed at opening young minds to pursue with growing faculties. This was what made her rejoice in the studies here followed with good success, as the prizes testified so pleasantly; and she trusted that the cultivation, which here went on so prosperously, was leading—if she might use old well-accustomed words—to the advancement of God’s glory, the good of His Church, aye! and to the safety, honour, and welfare of our Sovereign and her dominions.
The words brought tears of feeling into the eyes of some; but Jane Mohun could not help observing, “Ah! I was afraid you were going to hold up to us the example of the ants and bees, where the old maids do all the working and fighting and governing! Don’t make Gillian regret that she is falling away from the spinsterhood.”
“Come, Aunt Jane, Bessie never did make it the praise of spinsters. I am sure married women can do as much as spinsters, and have more weight,” said Gillian, facing round gallantly, and winning the approval of her aunt and of Bessie. There was no doubt but that since her engagement she had been much quieter and less opinionative.
With what different sensations the same occasion may be attended! To Bessie Merrifield, the primary object was, as ever, woman’s work, especially her own, for the Church; and the actual business absorbed her. In spite of her evenings’ talk to her Aunt Lilias, and the sad and painful recollections it had aroused, still her only look at Magdalen Prescott’s face was one half of curiosity half of sorrow, as of the object of the brief calf-love of one of many brothers, and who had been now lost sight of, with the passing wonder whether, if the affection had survived and been encouraged, it might have led him to better things.
While Magdalen felt the poignant renewal of the one romance of a lifetime, as she caught tones, watched little gestures and recognised those indescribable hereditary similarities which more and more bore in upon her the fraternal connection of the bright earnest woman with the lively pleasant young man who had brought the attraction of a higher tone of manners and cultivation into the country town. No more had been heard of him since his promise to write, a promise that had been only once remembered, so that she had tried to take refuge in the supposition, unlikely as it was, that her stepmother had confiscated his letters. All was a blank since that last stolen kiss; and the wonder whether she could by any means discover anything further from Lady Merrifield or Gillian, so occupied her that she hardly heard the tenor of the two speeches, and did not observe Agatha’s glowing cheeks and burning eyes, which might have told her that this was one of the moments which direct the current of life.
When Hubert Delrio came up in the evening he was curious to hear about the meeting. His young landlady, who had been a High School girl for a short time, thought Miss Arthuret’s speech the most beautiful discourse that ever was spoken; while other reports said that Lady Flight and Miss Mohun were very much shocked, and thought it unwholesome, not to say dangerous; and he wanted to know the meaning of it. Magdalen was quite dismayed to find how entirely her attention had been absent, and how little account she could give of what had passed by her like the wind; but she need not have been at a loss, for Agatha, with sparkling eyes and clasped hands, burst out into a very able and spirited abstract of the speech, and the future it portrayed, showing perhaps more enthusiasm than the practised public speaker thought it prudent to manifest.
“I see,” said Hubert with something of a smile, “you ladies are charmed with the great future opened to you.”
“I’m sure,” said Vera, perhaps a little nettled by attention paid so long to Agatha, “I can’t see the sense of it all; I think a woman is made just to love her husband, and be his pet, without all that fuss about societies, and speeches and learning and fuss!” And she gave a little caress to Hubert’s hand, which was returned, as he said, “She may well be loved, but, without publicly coming forward, she may become the more valuable to her home.”
“Of course she may, at home or abroad. She ought—” began Agatha, but Vera snapped her off. “Well, it only comes to being one of a lot of horrid old maids; and you don’t want me to be one of them, do you, darling? Come and look at my doves!”
“What do you think of it all, sister?” asked Paulina.
“So far as I grasp the subject,” said Magdalen, to whom, of course, this was not new, “I think that if a larger scope is to be given to women, it is for the sake and under the direction of the Church that it can be rightly and safely used.”
She knew she was speaking by rote, and was not surprised that Agatha said, “That is just what one has heard so often, and what Miss Merrifield harped upon! I want to breathe in a fresh atmosphere beyond the old traditions, and know which are Divine and which are only the superstructure of those who have always had the dominion and justified it in their own way!”
“Who gave them that dominion?” said Magdalen.
“Brute strength,” began Agatha.
“Nag, Nag!” cried Paula. “Surely you believe—”
“I did not say—I did not mean—I only meant to think it out, and understand what is Divine and what is in the eternal fitness of things.”
Here came an interruption, leaving Magdalen conscious of the want of preparation for guiding the thought of these young things, and of self-reproach too, for having let herself be so absorbed in the thought of “her broken reed of earth beneath,” as not to have dwelt on what might be the deep impressions of the young sisters under her charge.
A few days later, as Agatha sat reading in the garden, two figures appeared on the drive, wheeling up their bicycles. One was Gillian, the other had a general air of the family, but much darker, and not one of the old acquaintances. Advancing to meet them, she said, “I am the only one at home. My sisters are all at lessons or in the village.”
“I’ll leave a message,” said Gillian. “My mother wants you all to come up to picnic tea to see the foxgloves in the dell, on Monday, and to bring Mr. Delrio—”
“Oh! thank you.”
“I forgot, you had not seen my cousin Dolores Mohun before. Mysie calls her a cousin-twin, if you know what that is.”
Agatha thought the newcomer’s great pensive dark eyes and overhanging brow under very black hair made her look older than Mysie, or indeed than Gillian herself; and when the message had been disposed of, the latter continued, “Dolores wanted to know about Miss Arthuret’s lecture, being rather in that line herself. She could not get home in time for it, and I was seeing theKittiwakeparty on board, and only crept in at the other end of the hall in time for Bessie’s faint echoes.”
“I was in the very antipodes,” said Dolores, “in a haunt of ancient peace, whence they would not let me come away soon enough.”
“And, Agatha, Aunt Jane says she saw you devouring Miss Arthuret with your eyes,” said Gillian.
“It gave one a sense of new life,” said Agatha; and she related again Miss Arthuret’s speech, broken only by appreciative questions and comments from Dolores’ auditor, to whom, in the true fashion of nineteen, Agatha straightway lost her heart. Dolores, who had seen much more of the outer world than her cousins, and had had besides a deeply felt inward experience which might well render her far more responsive, and able to comprehend the questions working in the girl’s mind, and which found expression in, “I went to St. Robert’s only wanting to get my education carried on so that I might be a better governess; but I see now there are much farther on, much greater things to aim at, than I ever thought of.”
“Alps on Alps arise!” said Dolores. “Yes—till they lose themselves—and where?”
“Miss Merrifield would say in Heaven, by way of the Church.”
“The all things in earth or under the earth rising up in circles of praise to the Cherubim and the Great White Throne,” said Dolores, her dark eyes raised in a moment’s contemplation.
“Ah! One knows. But is that thought the one to be brought home to every one, as if they could bear it always? Are not we to do something—something—for the helping people here in this life, not always going on to the other life—”
“Temporal or spiritual?” said Dolores; “or spiritual through temporal?”
“And our part in helping,” said Agatha.
“There is an immense deal to be thought out,” said Dolores. “I feel only at the beginning of the questions, and there is study and experience to go to them.”
“You mean what one gets at Oxford?”
“Partly. Thorough—at least, as thorough as one can—of the physical and material nature of things, then of the precedent which then results, also of reasoning.”
“Metaphysical, do you mean, or logical?”
“That comes in; but I was thinking of mathematical in the indirect training of the mind. It all works into needful equipment, and so does actual life.”
“It takes one’s breath away.”
“Well, we have begun our training,” said Dolores, with a sweet sad smile. “At least, I hope so.”
“At St. Robert’s, you mean?”
“You have, I think. But I believe my aunt will be expecting us.”
“Oh! And then they talk about modesty and womanliness and retiring! What do you think about all that?”
“That we never shall do any good without it.”
They were interrupted by the hasty rushing up of Paula, who had committed her bicycle to Vera, and came dashing up the steep slope, crying, “O Nag, Nag, they are going away!”
The announcement was interrupted as she perceived the presence of the visitor, and they rose to meet her, but saw that there were tears in her eyes, and she had rushed up so fast that she was panting and could hardly speak, though she gave her hand, as Agatha, after naming the two cousins, asked, “Who are going?”
“The Sisters—Sister Mena—” with another overflow of tears which made Dolores and Gillian think they had better retreat and leave her to her sister’s consolation; so they took leave hastily, Agatha however, coming as far as their machines, and confiding to them, “Poor Polly, it is a great blow to her, but I believe it is very good for her.”
“There’s stuff in that girl,” said Dolores, as soon as they were out of reach. “She has the faculty of hearkening as well as of hearing.”
“You would say so if you saw her at a lecture; and she is also gaining power of expressing and reproducing,” said Gillian.
“She will be a power by and by, unless some blight comes across her.”
“Will me, will me, it seems as if wehadto do it. Even Mamma, whose ideal was chivalry, Church and home, has to be drawn out to take a certain public part; Aunt Jane, who only wished to live to potter about among neighbours, poor and rich, must needs come out of her traditional conventions, and relate her experiences, and you—”
“Oh, I am only trying to do the work Gerald aimed at!”
“Any way we have our work before us, whether we call it for the Church or mankind.”
“Charity or Altruism,” said Dolores.
“May not altruism lead to charity?” said Gillian.
“Sometimes, but sometimes disappointment leads only to intolerance of those whose methods differ. Altruism will not stand without a foundation,” said Dolores.
“Mysie has been impressing on me, with what she heard from Phyllis Devereux, of the work Sister Angela has been doing at Albertstown—the most utter self-abnegation, through bitter disappointment in her most promising pupils—only the charity that is rooted could endure. It is just the old difference Tennyson points out between Wisdom and Knowledge.”
“And with wisdom come those feminine attributes that Agatha began asking about.”
“Yes, softening, gentleness, tact. If people have not grown up to them, they must be taught as parts of wisdom.”
Gillian sighed. “I wonder what Ernley Armitage will say when he comes home?”
“He won’t want you to throw up everything.”
“I don’t think he will! But if he did—No, I think he will be a staff to guide a silly, priggish heart to the deeper wisdom.”
“With her venturous climbings, and tumbles, and childish escapes.”Tennyson.
“With her venturous climbings, and tumbles, and childish escapes.”
Tennyson.
Hubert Delrio, pleased and gratified, but very shy, joined the ladies from the Goyle in their walk to Clipstone, expecting perhaps a good deal of stiffness and constraint, since every one at St. Kenelm’s told him what a severe and formidable person Sir Jasper Merrifield was, and that all Lady Merrifield’s surroundings were “so very clever.” “They did wantsuchbooks ordered in the library.”
Magdalen laughed, and said her only chance of seeing a book she wanted was that Lady Merrifield should have asked for it. At Clipstone, they were directed to the dell where the foxgloves were unusually fine that year, covering one of the banks of the ravine with a perfect cloud of close-grown spikes, nodding with thick clustered bells, spotted withinside, and without, of that indescribable light crimson or purple, enchanting in reality but impossible to reproduce. It was like a dream of fairy land to Hubert to wander thither with his Vera, count the tiers of bells, admire the rings of purple and the crooked stamens, measure the height of the tall ones, some almost equal to himself in stature, and recall the fairy lore and poetry connected with them, while Vera listened and thought she enjoyed, but kept herself entertained by surreptitiously popping the blossoms, and trying to wreath her hat with wild roses.
Thekla meantime admired from the opposite bank, in a state of much elevation at acquiring a dear delicious brother-in-law, and insisted on Primrose sharing her sentiments till her boasting at last provoked the exclamation, “I wouldn’t be so cocky! I don’t make such a fuss if my sisters do go and fall in love. I have two brothers-in-law out in India, and Gillian has a captain, an Egyptian hero, with a medal, a post captain out at sea in theNivelle. You shall see his photograph coloured in his lovely uniform, with his sword and all! Your Flapsy’s man isn’t even an officer!”
“He is a poet, and that’s better!”
“Better! why, if youwillhave it, Wilfred and Fergus always call him that ‘painter cad,’” broke out Primrose, who had not outgrown her childish power of rudeness, especially out of hearing of her elders.
“Then it is very wicked of them,” exclaimed Thekla, “when the Marquis of Rotherwood himself said that Hubert Delrio is a very superior young man” (each syllable triumphantly rounded off).
Primrose was equal to the occasion. “Oh, they all laugh at Cousin Rotherwood; and, besides, a superior young man does not mean a gentleman.”
Thekla burst into angry tears and sobs, which brought Gillian, and a grave, dark young lady from the other side of a rock to inquire what was the matter—there was a confession on the two tongues of “she did,” and “I didn’t” of “painter cad, superior young man and no gentleman,” but at last it cleared itself into Primrose allowing that, to take down Thekla’s conceit, she had declared that a very superior young man did not mean a gentleman.
“I could not have believed that you could have been so abominably ill-mannered,” said Gillian gravely; “you ought to apologise to Thekla.”
“Oh, never mind,” began Thekla ashamed; and at that moment a frantic barking was heard in the depths, and Valetta, Wilfred, Fergus and a dog or two darted headlong past, calling out, “Hedgehogs, hedgehogs! Run! come!” And Primrose, giving a hand to Thekla, joined in the general rush down the glade.
“A situation relieved!” said the newcomer.
“For all ran to see,For they took him to beAn Egyptian porcupig,”
“For all ran to see,For they took him to beAn Egyptian porcupig,”
quoted Gillian. “They have wanted such a beast for some time for their menagerie; but really Primrose is getting much too old to indulge in such babyish incivility to a guest, true though the speech was, ‘a superior young man,’ not necessarily a gentleman.”
“I am colonial enough to like him the better for the absence of a hall mark.”
“Should you have missed it? He is very good looking, and has a sensible refined countenance, poor man!”
“He is a little too point device, too obviously got up for the occasion!”
“Too like the best electroplate! No; that is not fair, for it is not pretence, at least, I should think there was sound material below, and that never would brighten instead of dimming it.”
“According to Mysie and Fly, there is plenty of good taste; and his principle is vouched for. Mysie is quite furious at any lady-love having gone to sleep to the sound of original verses from a lover!”
“Dear old Mysie! No, she would not. She has a practical vein in her! Would you?”
“I’m not likely to be tried!” said Gillian merrily. “Catch Ernley either practising or not minding his boat! But come! Mamma will want me, I feel only deputy daughter, with Mysie away.”
The two girls rose from the mossy bank, and proceeded across the paddock to the opening of the glade.
On the turf Lady Merrifield sat enthroned; making a nucleus to the festivities and delicacies of all sorts, from sandwiches and cakes down to strawberries, cherries and Devonshire cream, were displayed before her; and the others drifted up gradually, Miss Mohun first. “I am later than I meant to be,” she said, “but I was delayed by a talk with Sister Beata. I never saw a woman more knocked down than she is by that adventure of Vera’s.”
“I know,” said Magdalen, rousing herself. “It has made her look ten years older, and she could not talk it over or let a word be said to comfort her. She says it was all her fault, and I should have thought it was that silly little Sister Mena’s, if that is her name.
“She considers it her fault for objecting to strict discipline in things of which she did not see the use,” said Jane Mohun, “and so getting absorbed in her own work, and having no fixed rule by which to train Mena.”
“I see,” said Lady Merrifield; “it reminds me of a story told in Madame de Chantal’s life, how, when,par mortification, a Sister quietly ate up a rotten apple without complaint and another made signs of amusement, a rule was made that no one should raise her eyes at meals. It shows that some rules which seem unreasonable may have a foundation.”
“It is an unnatural life altogether,” said Dolores. “Why should the rotten apple have been swallowed? or, if it was, I should think a joke over it might have been wholesome.”
“Hindering priggishness in the mortified Sister,” said Gillian.
“The fact is,” said Lady Merrifield, “that if you vow yourself to an unnatural life, so to speak, you must submit to the rules that have been found best to work for it.”
“And poor Sister Beata did neither the one nor the other, by her own account,” said Jane. “She called herself a Sister, but disliked each rule, and chose to go her own way, like any other benevolent woman, doing very admirable work herself, but letting little Mena have the prestige of a Sister, while too busy to look after her, and without rules to restrain her.”
“But surely there has been no harm!” exclaimed Lady Merrifield.
“No harm, only a little incipient flirtation with the organist, nothing in any one else, but not quite like a convent maid.”
“Ah! I rather suspected,” said Agatha.
“I should think the best thing for Sister Mena would be to go to a good school, leave off her veil, in which she looks so pretty, and be treated like an ordinary girl,” said Lady Merrifield.
“That is just what Sister Beata intends,” said Miss Mohun. “She is to sink down into Miss Marian Jenkins, to wear a straw hat and blue frock, and go to school with the other girls, the pupils, while Sister Beata begins life as a probationer at Dearport.”
“Poor Sister Beata!”
“She says she has experienced that it is best to learn to obey before one begins to rule. It is most touching to see how humble she is. Such a real good woman too! I doubt whether she gets a night’s rest three days in a week, and she looks quite haggard with this distress,” said Jane.
“She will be a great power by and by! But what will Mr. Flight and St. Kenelm’s do without her?”
“He is promised relays of Sisters from Dearport, which has stood so many years that they have a supply. You see, he, like Sister Beata, tried a little too much to be original and stand aloof.”
“Ah!” said Lady Merrifield, “that is the benefit of institutions. They hinder works from dying away with the original clergyman or the wonderful woman.”
“But, Aunt Lily,” put in Dolores, “institutions get slack?”
“They have theirdowns, but they also have their ups. There is something to fall back upon with public schools.”
“Yes, like croquet,” laughed Aunt Jane. “We saw it rise and saw it fall; and here come all the players, the revival. Well, how went the game?”
So the party collected, and the two Generals came in from some vanity of inspection to grumble a little merrily at the open air banquet, but to take their places in all good humour, and the lively meal began with all the home witticisms, yet not such as to exclude strangers. Indeed, Hubert Delrio was treated with something like distinction, and was evidently very happy, with Vera by his side. Perhaps Magdalen perceived that there was not the perfect ease of absolute equality and familiarity; but his poetical and chivalrous nature was gratified by the notice of a Crimean hero, and he infinitely admired the dignity and courtesy of Lady Merrifield, and the grace and ease of her daughters, finding himself in a new world of exquisite charm for him.
And before they broke up, Magdalen had a quiet time with Lady Merrifield, in which she was able, not without a tell-tale blush even at her years, to ascertain that there were two Henry Merrifields, and that, alas! there was nothing good known of the son of Stokesley, except that anonymous attempt at restitution which gave hopes of repentance.
“And if I leave the thing that lieth next,To go and do the thing that is afar,I take the very strength out of my deed.”—Macdonald.
“And if I leave the thing that lieth next,To go and do the thing that is afar,I take the very strength out of my deed.”
—Macdonald.
Thosewere happy days that succeeded Vera’s engagement. It had made her more womanly, or at least less childish; and the intercourse with Hubert Delrio became an increasing delight to her sisters, who had never known anything so like a brother.
He was at first shy and not at ease with Magdalen, who, on her side, perceived the lack of public school and university training; but in grain he was so completely a good man, a churchman, and a gentleman, and had so much right sense as well as talent, that she liked him thoroughly and began to rely on him, as a woman with unaccustomed property is glad to do with a male relation.
And to him, the society of the Goyle was a new charm. He had been brought up to the technicalities and the business relations of art, and had a cultivated taste; but to be with a thoughtful, highly educated lady, able to enter into its higher and deeper associations, was an unspeakable delight and improvement to him. Vera was fairly satisfied as long as he sketched her in various attitudes, and held her hand while he talked; though she did grudge having so much time spent on “taste, Shakespeare and the musical glasses.” Paula had various ecclesiastical interests in common with him, and began to expand and enter more into realities, while Thekla had in him a dear delightful delicious brother, who petted her, bantered her, mended her rabbit hutch, caught her hedgehog, taught her to guide her bicycle, drew picture games for her, and taught her to sketch.
Agatha had endless discussions with him on his various aspirations, in some of which Magdalen took her share, sometimes thinking with a pang of regret and self-reproach that that brief time of intercourse with Hal Merrifield had been spent in youthful nonsense that could have left no permanent influence for good.
In fact, whether through Hubert or through Agatha, a certain intellectual waft had breathed upon the Goyle. Hubert was eager for assistance in learning German and Italian, and read and discussed books of interest; and even when he had left Rockstone, and his work at St. Kenelm’s being finished, the stimulus was kept up by his letters, comments and questions; and the younger girls had entirely ceased to form an opposite camp, or to view “sister” as a taskmistress, even when Agatha had returned to St. Robert’s.
Mysie had come home, very brown, fuller of Scott than ever for her mother, and of Hugh Miller for Fergus, for whom she had brought so many specimens that Cousin Rotherwood declared that she would sink theKittiwake. Over the sketches and photographs of Iona, she and Paulina became great friends, and Paula was admitted to hear accounts of the modern missions that had come from the other Harry Merrifield among the Karens in Burmah, or again through Franciska Ivinghoe, of her Aunt Angela Underwood, who was considered to have a peculiar faculty for dealing with those very unpromising natives, the Australian gins. Franciska remembered her tender nursing and bright manner in the days of fever at Vale Leston, and had a longing hope that she would take a holiday and come home; but at present she was bound to the couch of her slowly declining old friend, Sister Constance, the Mother of Dearport. It was another bond of interest with Magdalen, to whom missions to the heathens had always been a dream.
Thus had passed a year uneventful and peaceable, with visits from Hubert whenever he had a day or two to spare. They were looked forward to with delight; but if there were a drawback it was in Vera’s viewing him partly as one who held her in a sort of chain, and partly as one whom it was pleasant to tease by allowing little casual civilities from Wilfred Merrifield.
For Wilfred was an embarrassment to his family. He had never been strong, his public school career had been shortened by failure in health, and headaches in the summer, and coughs in the winter made it needful to keep him at home, and trust to cramming at Rockstone, enforced by his father’s stern discipline and his mother’s authoritative influence.
Thus he was always within reach of the mild social gaieties in which each family indulged, and Vera was not quite so ready as were his sisters to contrast unfavourably his hatred of all self-improvement with Hubert Delrio’s eagerness to pick up every crumb of information, thus deservedly getting on well in his profession.
One morning, at breakfast, Hubert opened a letter and made a sudden exclamation; and in answer to Vera’s vehement inquiry said, “It seems that the great millionaire swell, Pettifer—is that his name?”
“Oh, yes, he was at Rock Quay.”
“Well, he went to see St. Kenelm’s, fell in love with the ceiling, and offered Pratt and Pavis any sum they like to decorate a huge new hall he is building in the same style. So they write to propose to me to come and do it, with a promise of future work, at any terms I like to ask.”
“Oh! but that’s jolly,” cried Vera. “Can’t you?”
“No,” he said; “this is immediate, and I have two churches, reredos and walls, on my hands, enough to last me all the year. Nor could I throw over Eccles and Beamster.”
“Is there an agreement with them?” asked Magdalen.
“Not regularly; but Mr. Eccles has been very kind to me, and promised me employment for four years to come; in fact, he has made engagements on that understanding.”
“I see,” said Magdalen. “You could not break with them.”
“Certainly not. Nor do I entirely like the line of this other house. It is a good deal more secular.”
“And you have dedicated your talents to the Church!” cried Paulina.
“Not that exactly, Paula,” he said, smiling; “but I had rather work for the Church, so I am glad the matter is definitely settled for me.”
To that he kept, though he had a very kind letter from Mr. Eccles, who had evidently been applied to, wishing not to stand in his light, especially as he was engaged to be married, and telling him how it might be possible to fairly compensate for the loss to the firm. Between the lines, however, it was plain that it would be a great blow, only possible because the agreement had been neglected; and Hubert was only the more determined, out of gratitude for the generosity, not to break what he felt to be an implied pledge; and all the sisters sympathised with his determination.
He adhered to it even after his return to London, though his father thought it a pity to lose the chance, if it could be accepted without discourtesy to Mr. Eccles; and he had been interviewed by various parties concerned, and there had been an attempt to dazzle him by the prospects held out to him by an enthusiastic young member of the firm. Perhaps he was too shrewd entirely to trust them, but at any rate he felt his good faith to Eccles and Beamster a bond to hold him fast from the temptation; and his heart was really set on the consecration of the higher uses of his art; so that regard to the simple rule of honour was an absolute relief to him.
So he wrote to Vera, who, if there were a secret wish on her part, did not dare to give it shape; while all her sisters, to whom she showed the letters that she scarcely comprehended, were open-mouthed in their admiration. Thekla, who had been seized with a fit of hagiology, went the length of comparing him to St. Barbara; even Paula pronounced it a far-fetched resemblance.
It was some months later that Sir Ferdinand Travis Underwood had decided on building a magnificent cathedral-like church for the population rising around him in the Rocky Mountains; and meeting Lord Rotherwood in London heard of the work at St. Kenelm’s, and resorted to Eccles and Beamster as the employers of young Delrio. There would be plenty of varieties of beautiful material to be found near at hand in the mountains; but Hubert was sent first for a short journey in Italy to study the effect of the old mosaics as well as the frescoes, and then to go out to America to the work that would last a considerable time.
Vera was much excited by the notion of the Italian journey, and thought she ought to have been married at once and have shared it, including as it did a short visit to Rocca Marina. But she was scarcely eighteen, and neither her trustee nor her elder sister thought it advisable to dispense with the decision that her twenty-first birthday must be waited for, at which she pouted. Hubert came for two nights on his return, and was exceedingly full of his tour, talking over Italian scenes and churches with Magdalen, who had never seen them, but had the descriptions and the history at her fingers’ ends, and listened with delight to all the impressions of a mind full of feeling and poetry. The time was only too short to discuss or look out everything, and much was left to be copied and sent after him, with many promises on Vera’s part of writing everything for him, and translating the books that Magdalen would refer to. He was allowed to take Vera and Paulina to Filsted for a hurried visit to his parents. When they came home again, it soon became plain that it had not been a success. “I am glad to be at home again,” said Paula, as the pony carriage turned up the steep drive, and the girls jumped out to walk. “I am quite glad to feel the stones under my feet again!”
Magdalen laughed. “A new sentiment!” she said.
“I don’t like the stones,” said Vera, “but I did not know Filsted was such a poky place.”
“A dead flat!” added Paula. “No sea, no torrs! one wanted something to look at! andsucha church!”
“Did you see Minnie Maitland?” put in Thekla.
“I saw all the Maitlands in a hurry,” said Vera. “I don’t remember which was which. They were all dressed alike in horrid colours. Hubert said they set his teeth on edge!”
“How was old Mrs. Delrio?”
“Just the same as ever, lean and pinched.”
“But so kind!” added Paula. “She could not make enough of Flapsy.”
“I should think not!” ejaculated Vera. “Enough! aye, and too much! just fancy, no dinner napkins! and Edith went away and made the scones herself!”
“Very praiseworthy,” said Magdalen. “Don’t you know how Hubert always tells us what a dear devoted good girl she is?”
“Well, I only hope Hubert does not expect me to live in that way,” said Vera. “His mother looks like a half-starved hare, and Edith is giving lessons as a daily governess!
“Edith is very nice,” said Paula; “and I never understood before how excellent old Mr. Delrio’s pictures are! Do you remember his ‘Country Lane’? What a pity it did not sell!”
“Poor man!” said Magdalen. “He married too soon, and that has kept him down.”
“It is beautiful to see how proud they are of Hubert,” said Paula, “and his pretty gentle attention and deference to them both. Mr. Delrio is really a gentleman, I am sure; but, Maidie,” she said, falling back with her, while Vera and Thekla mounted faster, “it was very odd to see how different things looked to us from what they seemed when we were at Mrs. Best’s. Filsted High Street has grown so small, and one could hardly breathe in Mrs. Delrio’s stuffy drawing-room. And as to Waring Grange, which we used to think just perfect, it was all so pretentious and in such bad taste. Hubert saw it as much as we did, but I could see he was on thorns to hinder Flapsy from making observations.”
Certainly the visit had not done much good, except in making the girls appreciate the refinement of their surroundings at the Goyle.
And when letters arrived from Hubert at the American Vale Leston, asking questions requiring some research in books, either Magdalen’s or at the Rock Quay library, Vera dawdled and sighed over them; and when the more zealous Magdalen or Paula took all the trouble, and left nothing for her to do but to copy their notes, and write the letters, she grew cross. “It was for Hubert, and she did not want any one else to meddle! So stupid! If he had only taken Pratt and Pavis’s offer, there would not have been all this bother!”
That, of course, she only ventured to utter before Paula and Thekla, and it made them both so furious that she declared she was only in joke, and did not mean it.
She was indulging in reflections on the general dulness of her lot, and the lack of sympathy in her sisters, as she lingered by the confectioner’s window, with her eyes fixed on a gorgeous combination of coloured bonbons, when Wilfred Merrifield sauntered out. “Fresh from Paris!” he said. “Going to choose some?”
“Oh no, I haven’t got any cash. M. A. keeps us horribly short.”
“As usual with governors! But look here! Pocket this. Sweets to the sweet, from an old chum!”
“Oh, Will, how jolly! Such a love of a box.”
“Make haste! Some of the girls are lurking about, and if there is any mischief to be made, trust Gill for doing it.”
“Mischief!—” but before the words were out of her mouth, Gillian and Mysie appeared from the next shop, a bootmaker’s, and Mysie stood aghast with, “Whatareyou doing? Buying goodies! How very ridiculous!”
“The proper thing between chums, isn’t it, Vera?” said Wilfred, with an indifferent air. “We aren’t unlucky Sunday scholars, Mysie, to be jumped upon! Good-bye, Vera,au revoir!”
He sauntered away with his hands in his pockets; while Gillian, from her eldership of two years, and her engagement, gravely said, “Vera, perhaps you do not fully know, but I should say this is not quite the thing.”
“He told you we are just chums!” exclaimed Vera. “As if there were any harm in it! You’ve not got a sweet tooth yourself, so you need not grudge me just a few goodies.”
Gillian saw that it was of no use to prolong the dispute either for the place or the time, and she hushed Mysie, who was about to expostulate farther, and made her go away with a brief parting, such as she hoped would impress on Vera that the sisters thought very badly of her discretion and loyalty. They could not hear the reflection, “They need not be so particular and so cross. Hubert never thought of giving me anything nice like this. Why should not my chum? Such a sweet little box too, with a dear girl’s head on it! Would Polly fuss about it, and set on Sister? I shall put it into my own drawer, and then if they notice it, they may think somebody at Filsted gave it! No one has any business to worry me about Hubert, and Wilfred being civil to me. Heisa gentleman.”
The gentleman had been overtaken by his sisters. He was walking his bicycle up the hill rather breathlessly and slowly. Mysie indignantly began, “Of all the stupid things to do, to give goodies to that girl, like a baby!”
“I have been wishing to speak to you,” said Gillian. “You are going the way to get that foolish girl into a scrape.”
“Oh, yes, of course. Sisters uniformly object to a little civility to a pretty girl,” carelessly answered Wilfred.
“Nonsense!” returned Mysie, hotly. “We don’t care! only it is not fair on Mr. Delrio.”
“The painter cad! A very good thing too! The sacrifice ought to be prevented. Is not that the general sentiment?”
“Wilfred!” cried the scandalised Mysie, “when it is all the other way, and he is ever so much too good for her.”
“Consummate prig! The cheek of him pretending to a lady!”
“But, Wilfred,” went on downright Mysie, “is it only mischief, or do you want to marry her yourself?”
“Draw your own conclusions,” responded Wilfred, mounting his machine, and spinning down the hill faster than they could follow on foot.
“What is to be done, Gill?” sighed Mysie. “Ought we to get mamma to speak to him?”
“Better not,” said Gillian, with more experience. “It would only make it worse to take it seriously. Half of it is play—and half to tease you.”
“And,” said Mysie, with due deference to the engaged sister, “how about Mr. Delrio? Will it make him unhappy?”
“If he finds out in time what a horrid little thing it is, I should say it would be very well for him; but I don’t want Will to be the means.”
“Oh! when his examination is over, and he gets an appointment, he will go away, and it will be safe.”
“I have not much hopes of his getting in!”
“Oh, Gill, none of us ever failed before.”
On the side of the Goyle not much was known or cared about Wilfred’s little attentions, which were generally out of sight of Magdalen, and did not amount to much; but Paula saw enough of them to consult Agatha on, and to observe that Flapsy was going on just as she used to at Filsted, and she thought Hubert would not like it.
“I believe Flapsy can’t live without it,” sighed Agatha.
“But would you speak to her? I don’t think she ought to let him give her boxes of bonbons—to keep up in her room, and never give a hint to Maidie.”
Agatha did speak but the effect was to set Vera into crying out at every one being so intolerably cross about such a trifle, Gillian Merrifield and all!
“Did Gillian speak to you?”
“Yes, as if she had any business to do so!”
“I am sure it is not the way she would treat Captain Armitage.”
“I don’t believe she cares for Captain Armitage one bit! You said yourself that all the girls at Oxford thought she cared much more for her horrid examination! I wouldn’t be a dry, cold-hearted, insensible stick like her for the world.”
“Perhaps she is the more quietly in earnest,” said Agatha, repenting a little that she had told before Vera the college jokes over what had leaked out of Gillian’s reception of Ernley Armitage when he had hastened up to Oxford as soon as his ship was paid off, and she had been called down to him in the Lady Principal’s room. Report said that she had only prayed him to keep out of the way, and not to upset her brain, and that he had meekly obeyed—as one who knew what it was to have promotion depending on it.
It was a half truth, exaggerated, but it had not a happy effect on Vera. Nevertheless, the finishing push of preparation brought on such a succession of violent headaches as quite to disable the really delicate boy. Moreover, the tutor declared that there had been little chance of his success, and Dr. Dagger said that he had much better not try again. The best hope for his health, and even for his life, was to keep him at home for a few years, and give him light work.
He had never been the pleasantest element in the household; and if his parents were glad of the avoidance of the risk of a launch into the world, and his mother’s love rejoiced in the power of watching over him, there were others who felt his temper a continual trial, while his career was a perplexity.
However, Captain Henderson offered a clerkship at the Marble Works, subject to Mr. White’s approval; and this was gratefully accepted. Nor did Agatha come home again at the Long Vacation for more than two days, in which there was no time for consultation with her sisters on matters of uncertain import.
Miss Arthuret and Elizabeth Merrifield had arranged together to take the old roomy farmhouse on Penbeacon for three or four months, and there receive parties of young women in need of rest, fresh air, and, in some cases, of classes, or time for study. It was to be a sort of Holiday House, though not altogether of idleness; and Dolores undertook to be a kind of vice-president, with Agatha to pursue her reading under her superintendence, and to assist in helping others, governesses, students, schoolmistresses from Coalham, in whose behalf indeed the scheme had been first started, and it was extremely delightful to Agatha, among many others.