"What god, then, bade those two stand forth and strive?"—C. S. CALVERLEY.
All the world of Slabbert's Poort was enclosed within the walls of "Lutwyche's." The funeral feast waxed noisier and noisier; there were the elements of discord trembling in the cup. Boerv.Briton was soon to be the order of the day, and the present company was largely composed of disappointed men—those who had come to clutch diamonds, and had found none. Their sense that the times were out of joint had been growing by degrees, in proportion as their prospects waned; and the war rumours were fanning it into flame. Visions of plunder danced before their eyes. They would have torn treasure from the bowels of the earth; if this was denied them, there was many a rich homestead for the sacking, much plunder scattered here and there over the wide land. This was what war meant to most of them. A few were English, but the great majority were Africanders. Amurrica was the only man of ability among them. He meant to throw in his lot with the winning side, "anyway"; but he had for days past been making highly inflammatory speeches, from the Boer point of view, in the saloon of the Vierkleur.
The festivities were well begun when Bert Mestaer walked in. He was not popular now. Most of those present were jealous of his possessions, and of his great physical strength. They thought him reserved, and nobody ever forgot that his mother was English. It was not considered certain which side he would take in the forthcoming struggle.
He was greeted with a clamour of welcome which held an underlying sneer. He took no notice; he was not quarrelling to-day. His courage and strength were facts too universally accepted for him to care to prove them. His grey eyes went like lightning about the room, till he discerned Millie, a large apron pinned over her black dress, staggering under the pile of plates which she was carrying to the wash-house. He pressed forward at once, as if nobody else had been present, took the girl's burden from her; and they went out of the room together, followed by laughter and jeers.
They reached the sink, already piled with unwashed dishes. Bert deposited those which he carried, looked around, spied a broken-backed chair, and brought it to the girl.
"Sit down!" he said.
Millie began to roll up her sleeves. "I got to wash these," she said.
"Sit down, I tell you," said Bert, in a low voice. He stood between her and her work. "Can't I see that you're just fit to drop in your tracks? Sit down! If there's washing-up to be done, where's the nigger girl?"
Millie did not sit down. She stood her ground: but she did a thing she had never done before—lifted her heavy lids, and looked up right into her lover's eyes. A wash of delicate carmine dyed her thin cheek-bones. "It keeps me out of the room—away from those swine," she said, with a note almost of appeal in her voice.
Bert felt his inmost being surge up wildly, as his whole heart went forth to her, in answer to her first confidence: the only word she had ever spoken which seemed to distinguish between him and "those swine." All that was best in him arose, and strove to meet and honour the favour she had shown.
"That's all right," he said, in tones of easy friendship. "You sit down an' tell me what to do. I'm on to this job."
In a second his coat was off and his sleeves rolled up. He had flashed a look round, spied a boiling kettle on a vilely-smelling paraffin stove, and filled the greasy washbowl. Millie subsided upon the chair with a resignation which, had he known her better, would have alarmed him. As things were, it filled him with a wild enthusiasm. But he determined to walk warily. His face glowed with enjoyment as he proceeded with his menial task. He buckled down to work in good earnest, methodically scraping the broken food off the dishes into the dog-trough set by for the purpose, and handling the crockery with skill which surprised the girl, who, sunk back in the chair, watched him without a word.
But he was human. After a while, it seemed to him that his strenuous efforts merited encouragement. He ventured greatly.
"Millie, if these Britishers write and ask you to come to them, shall you go?"
The girl started, as if his voice had roused her from stupor.
"What business is it o' yours?" she asked.
"I told you that the night your father died," said Bert, quite simply.
"Well, if you want to know, I shall go, whether they want me or whether they don't, so it won't make any difference to you," she replied coldly.
He bit back the oath that leapt to his lips.
"You've made up your mind to that?" he said; his voice was audibly unsteady.
"Think I'd stay here, with all the world to choose from?" said she scornfully. "Not if Slabbert's Poort was paved with diamonds! No, indeed; I do know enough to know that all the world's not like this. I'm going to see what it is like."
Bert had completed the washing-up and rinsed his big hands in clean water. He stood wiping them on the roller-towel, looking down upon her, so sudden a dilation in his heart and throat that for a space he was unable to articulate. He had forgotten the party in the room beyond as though it never existed.
"Millie, let me take yer! Marry me, Millie, and let's cut an' run together. Oh ... you don' know how good I could be to yer! Millie, little woman!"
"Drop it, Bert Mestaer! I can't stand it," gasped the girl, dragging herself to her feet. "You're always the same, if ever I trust myself with you for a minute alone. Why can't you hold your tongue?"
"Hold my tongue, an' lose you? Why, what d'you s'pose I got ter live for?" he cried out, stung through and through by the idea of his own impotence, his utter failure to arouse one spark of feeling in the girl.
He was shaking from head to foot. It seemed so enraging, so absurd, that he, whose great strength could compel this frail creature to anything, absolutely dare not touch her—was reduced to stammering, humiliated silence, by her unconcealed disdain. It always came to this between them. He stood, fighting his feeling, facing the blank wall of her indifference, when there was a sudden increase of sound from the scene of the revels—a door opened, a furious voice bellowed: "Millie!"
It was enough; he was by her side again at once. Snatching the pile of spoons and forks, he put them into her apron, picking up a pyramid of plates himself, and they went back to the supper-room.
They were received with a babel of derisive remarks, the pith of which seemed to be that Millie had been away with one young man, when she was going to be married to another.
"Come along, Millie!" said the deep, guttural voice of Oom Pieters, rumbling in his hairy throat; "we're only waiting for you, to drink your health."
Since the irruption of diamond-seekers into the pastoral district, the temperate Boer habits had sadly altered. Peach brandy was on the table in generous quantity, and many of the more old-fashioned sort, following a bad fashion, had partaken, and not being used to such things, were not perfectly under their own control.
Amurrica was seated on Tante Wilma's right, leaning back in his tilted chair, and sending out smoke rings from a mouth which wore a gratified smile.
"Goin' to marry Otis," was bandied from lip to lip. "He's bought a share in the Vierkleur from Maarten Brandt, and he says, when Millie's a bit fatter she'll do fine in the bar. Goin' to sit up together to-night."
This in allusion to the old Boer custom which decrees that an engaged couple shall ratify their troth by sitting up all night together, and burning candles.
"Sh! Hold your tongue," said Millie, in a low voice to Bert, who was about to explode. "They're all drunk; what's the good of noticing?"
"They're all goin' to clear out o' this before I'm much older," growled Bert, shaking with fury.
He broke off; for, to his amazement, Amurrica had risen, and was calling for silence.
As the man stood up, his long, sinewy frame, with a subtle twist in the carriage, outlined against the dark, smoky background, swaying slightly on his feet, as a result of his potations—the humorous curve on his thin lips which fascinated women and made Bert hate him—he would have made a study for the brush of Franz Hals. One thing which the Boers admired about him, was his mastery of the Taal. The man was a born linguist; he chose that language now.
He said he had the happiness to announce that he was the accepted suitor of Miss Lutwyche, and the marriage was to take place the following day. "Their esteemed Predikant"—then present, and somewhat blear-eyed—"had promised to unite them, in view of which festivity, he invited them all to a supper at the Vierkleur Hotel to-morrow. It had been suggested that the English minister, Mayne, had been left guardian of Miss Lutwyche. But this was to be set aside. If it were so, he had doubtless obtained such power by exerting undue influence over the dying man's conscience, and for his own sinister reasons. Vrouw Lutwyche was going to law about it. But in any case, possession was nine points of the law, and when he was the husband of Miss Millie he didn't quite know where the Britisher was coming in; not into his house, he was almighty sure about that."
There was a deep silence all the time he was speaking. Bert Mestaer stood up motionless, just opposite, behind the row of seated guests, and Millie stood quite near him. He was both hungry and thirsty, and he had, immediately upon entering, helped himself to coffee from a big pot on a side-table. He stood holding the untasted drink in his hand while he listened to the unfolding of Amurrica's plot. The moment he had finished, before he had time to sit down, Bert flung the hot contents of his cup full in the orator's face.
Amurrica was for the moment blinded by this unexpected shot. The coffee streamed down him, into the bosom of his shirt, and all over his clothes; and the words he used were not pretty.
There was a general stampede; but before the noise began—before the men took up the shout for a fight—even before Amurrica began to swear—Bert's ear had caught a sound that was to him like the bugle to a war-horse; the short, musical sound of Millie's applauding laugh.
He turned to her.
"Good-night!" he said. "We'll soon settle the question of his sitting up to-night or getting married to-morrow; and Mayne'll be back the day after. But listen to what I say; keep out of Tante Wilma's way to-night."
She gave her usual contemptuous answer: "I'm not afraid."
"No," he said; "but I am."
It was in his heart to plead for something to hearten him for the fray, if it were only a hand-shake; but he forebore. She should not be able to say again that he claimed a price for serving her.
He strode out radiantly to the battle. He was perfectly sober, and had a white heat of passion to inspire him. Amurrica, though usually a formidable adversary, had eaten heavily, and drunk too much. When they had taken away his revolver, he was an easy prey. Bert's object was to put him out of the running for the next few days, but not to injure him seriously. He went into the thing scientifically, and it was a sorry-looking object which was finally carried off the field by its backers; while the two great Lutwyche boys, who had been eager spectators of the fray, ran back home as fast as they could, to tell their mother what had chanced.
The victor was pleased, but gory. It was imperative that he should go to his own place and change. Amurrica was settled for the present, he had warned Millie, and felt that he might now give himself an hour or two off duty without anxiety. All the way home he was wondering to himself how Amurrica had known that Mayne was going away.
Anna, who had not been bidden to the revels at Lutwyche's, was in an evil temper, and said she had provided no supper. Hadn't he had his bellyful down there, where all the swine were swilling? Bert turned upon her, with the flame in his eye, the gall on his tongue, which everybody feared. She would wish, a week hence, he told her, when she found herself bundled out to get her own living, that she had kept a civil tongue in her head. Then he went and washed himself elaborately clean, and put on a clean shirt—an English superstition which he had inherited from his mother, with other vain observances which filled Anna with contempt. He had neither eaten nor drunk since morning, and he knew that, if he was to mount guard at Lutwyche's till late at night, he must fortify himself. As he sat at table, the door open, devouring cold meat and bread, he saw something move behind the fence. He watched steadfastly until the thing rose more fully into view, revealed itself as the tow head and flushed face of one of the small Lutwyches, beckoned him furtively, and disappeared again.
Bert got up and went out. He looked down over the fence, and said "Hullo!" His heart meanwhile misgave him.
The child, grinning up at him, said she had a message from sister Millie, and she was to give it to him his very own self. The message was: "Would he meet Millie at the sign-post corner at nine o'clock that evening?" She was to take back word.
"What's she want to do there?" asked Bert suspiciously.
"She wouldn't say; but I expect she wants to run away. Mother she's promised her a hiding."
"Then you'll go to your mother with the tale."
"No fear; I'm on Millie's side."
Bert thought a while carefully.
"All right!" he said, after a minute. "Tell her I'll be there."
"Certain sure?"
"That's me." The tow head nodded and disappeared.
"I met a lady in the meads,Full beautiful, a fairy's child;Her hair was long, her foot was light,And her eyes were wild."—JOHN KEATS.
Bert stood where he was, rooted in deep thought, watching the child as she ran away. He did not believe that what she said was true. Millie might very probably plot to escape, but she would never send him word to bear her company. Besides, he knew that she did not intend to run away until she heard the result of her father's message to her English relatives. He wondered that anybody should think such a device could impose upon him. It was a hoax, and its obvious object was to get him out of the way. What devilry was Tante Wilma plotting?
He laughed a little; they thought him easily deceived.
A moment's reflection convinced him that the child's message was part of a preconceived arrangement with Amurrica. But he felt sure that, after his handling of the subject, the prospective bridegroom would be unable to take his part in anything that night. He looked at the clock, which pointed to seven, and made up his mind that he would resume his sentry duty at Lutwyche's about eight. Anticipating a long wait, he thrust a sandwich into his pocket and a flask of spirits, and sallied forth to stroll down the town, and hear what was being said of the fight and the funeral.
The main street was thronged with people. For a minute it made him a little anxious. If the town meant to take up the feud, and back Otis, things might be a trifle strained, though there were some of the men on whom he thought he could rely as backers.
But he soon saw that there was a deeper preoccupation on the faces of the burghers. The fight, which in calmer times would have filled men's mouths for a week, was forgotten. The flag floating over the Post Office showed him that the weekly mail was in; and knowing the political tension, he guessed that there was news. He dashed into the Vierkleur. It was a babel of tongues. Men were fighting for possession of the newspapers; those who had letters or journals from Pretoria were being besieged in corners. For the moment, the remembrance of Millie faded from Bert's mind, as he mingled with the throng, and gathered first of all the main fact, that the British Government had ordered the immediate despatch of troops, both from England and India, to back up the demand for the Outland Franchise. Debate was keen as to whether the British Government would really fight.
The madness of conflict rose in Bert's blood as in that of all the men there. They shouted, argued, wrangled, drank, swore. At whatever cost, Bert felt he must get at the main facts of the position, and he listened while one of the men, perched on the bar, read aloud leading articles from English and Boer journals, and the talk hummed and buzzed more busily than ever.
He was recalled from his absorption by a touch on his shoulder. Cornelis Pieters, the field-cornet, stood by, regarding him with no friendly glance.
"Lucky for you the Commandos are to be called out; nobody will have time to set the law on you," he growled. "Otis is goin' to die."
"We're all going to die—some day," said Bert placidly.
"He's goin' on ahead," said Pieters surlily.
"I'm not taking any," returned Bert, unmoved. "I had the cooking of him, and I know what I done to him. He won't be gettin' married just yet a while; but he's all right."
"If Tante Wilma takes my advice, she'll give that girl a taste of the stick," rumbled Pieters. "A taller dip 'ud make as good a wife as her, to my way o' thinkin'; an' when a man that could stomach her comes along, you must needs knock him out o' time. It wasn't your affair. There'll be a reckoning, I can tell you."
"Hope so," retorted Bert. "Couldn't live in this township, if you didn't believe the right 'ud come up some day. So long!"
"Where are you off to?"
"To see as Tante Wilma don't lay a finger on the gal."
"From what I heard, before I came away, I shouldn't be surprised if you was too late," said Pieters, grinning in his face.
* * * * * * * *
It was quite dark when he arrived at the gate of Lutwyche's.
He was panting with the speed he had used, and the sweat ran down him. He was blaming himself bitterly because in the excitement of the war news he had lost sight of his purpose; and it was more than half-past eight. To his untold joy and relief, the first thing he saw was the light glimmering through Millie's square of ground glass in the loft. His heart leapt, and the strain of his muscles relaxed. He halted outside the gate, wiped his brow, and listened with all his might. All was quiet. But there was one unusual thing. Lights were burning in thesitkamer, a most rare phenomenon in a pastoral Boer district, where everybody rises and goes to bed with the sun. This looked as though it were still planned that the sitting-up should take place that night. He carefully unfastened the hurdle gate and went into the yard. By degrees he drew nearer the house. Half-way across, a sound made itself audible—the thudding of a hammer against wood. It went on with monotonous regularity, but his fears sprang up anew at the sound. What were they doing?
He walked right up to the stoep, raised himself to a level with the window-sill, and through a gap between the edge of the blind and the window frame, could see right into thesitkamer. What were they doing?
Tante Wilma, like some unclean beast, stood balancing herself unsteadily against the table, her face purple, her eyes wild, a sjambok in her hand. The children were all clustered round the foot of the ladder leading to the loft, and the eldest boy was standing upon it, aiming clumsy, childish blows with a big hammer at the trapdoor above his head.
Ha! Then he was just in time, and only just! Lord! When the bolt gave way, they should find someone they did not look for, in the loft above!
The blood surged to Bert's head—he set his teeth. With stealthy tread he crept to the barn, found a ladder—his late vigils about the farm had taught him where most things were kept—and setting it against the low house wall, he lightly ascended to the roof.
The window was slightly open—secured by means of an iron bar with holes in it. It was not wide enough to enable him to see in. The blows continued upon the trap below, showing that the besiegers had not yet forced an entrance. The noise drowned the sound of his voice, and he ventured to call gently: "Millie! Millie!"
There was no answer. He called again, a little louder.
All was silent in the garret; he could not hear the least rustling. The idea that she was not there, after all, but hiding away somewhere in safety, made his heart dance. Suppose she really had run away, and was waiting for him at the cross-roads? It was most unlikely, but it was not impossible; one never could be sure of girls. Meantime, he must ascertain before that bolt gave. Putting in his hand, he lifted the window as high as it would go—high enough to enable him to put his head under it. The loft extended a good way, though only just in the centre, under the pitch of the roof, was it high enough to stand upright in. It was a pitiful sleeping-chamber for a girl.
The little camp bed was smooth and empty. He could not see Millie anywhere. A candle stood upon a deal chest, guttering in the draught, showing the void space and the neatness of the dreary lodging.
She was actually gone, then? He drew a deep breath....
Something had caught his eye—a red, wet mess on the bare boards, close to the trap-door. All round this was a series of smears, and another blotch, almost a pool ... and some big drops, dotted along the floor into the darkness, under the low part of the roof, where the coffins and the fruit were stored.
Bert became a tiger. One wrench of his iron wrists brought the skylight off its hinges, and without noise he swung himself down into the garret. Stooping, he assured himself that the iron bolt of the trap-door would stand a good deal more of such battering as it was now enduring before it gave way. Then he seized the candle, and crept along the trail of the blood-stains.
He soon found her; and at first he thought that she was dead. She was lying prone upon the ground, her head sunk sideways, all dabbled in blood. One arm lay so curiously twisted that he guessed it to be broken. Bending over her, he heard her breathe; and then, raising her as tenderly as he could, found with mingled fury and relief that all the bleeding came from her lacerated shoulders. She had been inhumanly thrashed. Her clothes were literally torn off her back.
With indomitable pride she had crept up here to die alone.
It did not take Bert an instant to consider what he should do. He snatched a sheet from the bed, wrapped it round and round the raw, bleeding back, then possessed himself of the dark woollen coverlet, and rolled the slight, unresisting form therein. Lifting her as easily as one might a child, he carried her to the skylight, managed, with the help of a broken chair, to get her and himself through it, and in a moment was descending the ladder, clasping all the happiness the world held for him in his arms, his whole heart one white flame of pity and indignation.
"She took me to her elfin grot,And there she gazed and sighéd deep,And there I shut her sad, wild eyes—So kissed to sleep.
"... And I awoke, and found me here,On the cold hillside."—JOHN KEATS.
Rapid transit through the night air, and the pain of her open wounds, brought back consciousness to Millie.
She was light and small, but for all that, she was some weight to carry far; and when she began to writhe and twist in his hold, Bert was obliged to call a halt. He sat down, after a few ineffectual attempts to soothe her, on a hummock of ground by the roadside, cradling her as easily as he could upon his knees.
"What's happened? What's happened?" she began to stammer, evidently not quite knowing what she said. "It's dark! it's dark! Light the candle, one of you! ... O-o-oh!"
It was a long-drawn wail of agony.
Bert was very white. His heart was hammering, but the heat and wild rage of the past half-hour had passed away, and now he was all gathered into himself like a coiled spring. Everything, he believed, hung upon his ability to make the most of this chance, this hour that he had snatched for himself. The awkward self-consciousness which held him, as a rule, tongue-tied before her, was clean gone; only the concentrated force of his will remained.
Drawing his flask from his pocket, he poured out some raw spirit shakily, his left arm supporting the girl's head in the crook of the elbow. He administered a mouthful. She gasped, and refused more; but she had swallowed it. He waited a moment, with outward composure, and then said quietly:
"Millie, d'you know me?"
She started, and began to struggle in his hold.
"It's Bert," he said steadily; and to his unfeigned and stupefying astonishment, her struggles ceased.
"I thought—'twas Otis," she whispered, so low that he could hardly hear.
"Well, it's not," he murmured, trembling; "it's me. Listen! You've been cruel knocked about—d'you hear?"
"Yes; the—old—woman—"
"I know, my girl, I know! I got up through the roof, an' fetched you away. You're safe now; there's only me. D'you understand?"
There came an almost incredible whisper: "They said you'd gone away ... to the cross-roads..."
One short laugh of triumph escaped him.
"No fear," he murmured consolingly. "I was on hand. I'm going to take you to my place, and get you fixed up, and fetch the doctor to you. But look here, Millie, it'll make folks talk. Jus' say you'll marry me, an' that'll set things right. That'll give a reason why I should be looking after you."
He paused, his ear almost at her lips, straining for her reply.
"I'm goin' to die," she whispered at last. He barely heard.
"Well, till you die, can't I look after you, Millie?"
"If you like," murmured Millie indifferently, as she lapsed again into stupor.
William the Conqueror, crowned king of England, after desperate and apparently foolhardy invasion, felt perhaps much the same emotions as coursed through Bert Mestaer, sitting there in the dark, by the wayside, the half-dead form of a half-grown girl upon his knees.
He raised his eyes to the star-gleam above them, and emotions hitherto unknown laid hands upon him, thrilling his nerve-centres with a triumph that was almost agony. A long minute elapsed before he could collect himself enough to rise and continue his journey. No amount of guardians, no letters from England, he told himself, could take her from him now.
Yesterday he had practically no hopes, only a dogged determination not to give in. To-night he was master of the world.
* * * * * * * *
Anna was not a good-tempered woman, but neither was she an inhuman one. She was very angry at being aroused by Bert out of her first sleep; but she detected something unusual in his manner.
"I got something to show you downstairs in the parlour," he said, "an' when you've seen it, I don't much fancy you'll want to go to bed again."
So she lumbered down the stairs, and into the little parlour which had been Mrs. Mestaer's pride; and on the ample sofa, among the blood-stained linen, lay what she took to be the corpse of Millie Lutwyche.
"You got to help me make her swallow some brandy," he said, "and then you got to do what you can for her while I gallop for Dr. Fraser; but don't you meddle with that arm, because it's dislocated."
"Vrouw Lutwyche's carving?" asked Anna, with venom.
"That's it," returned Bert, pouring the brandy.
"Drunken sow! I hope you see now, Hubert, where it is the drink leads to."
"I see! I'm going to swear off drink for ever now."
"She's past brandy," said Anna, hanging over the prostrate girl.
"Nonsense!" said Bert shortly; and he managed to make her swallow a table-spoonful. "Anna," he said, "you shall have a silk gown on my wedding-day."
"If you're going to marry a willow-shaving, may the day never dawn," said Anna tartly.
But she handled the misused girl tenderly enough, for hers was a maternal heart, though soured by spinsterhood; and Bert, when he saw her set about it, turned away with haste to the stable.
Before setting out on his long ride, he came back to warn Anna not to admit anybody on any pretext while he was away; and arranged that when he returned with the doctor he would give a certain number of signal taps upon the window.
Then, springing to the saddle, he dashed away through the night, his wild heart drumming to the music of the flying hoofs, and his imaginings soaring to the purple velvet dome of heaven.
"PriestsShould study passion; how else cure mankind,Who come for help in passionate extremes?"—ROBERT BROWNING (Caponsacchi).
When Carol Mayne got back to the Mission on the afternoon of the second day after this, he was told that Oom Pieters and the Boer Predikant were waiting to see him.
The news they brought fairly staggered him.
Bert Mestaer had, during the night after the funeral, forced an entrance into Lutwyche's and abducted Millie. That he had done this by force was evident from the blood-stained floor of her garret and the evidences of a struggle, the bedding being torn and scattered about. He had taken her to his own house, and kept her there, in defiance of all Christian laws, to the crying scandal of the whole community. Oom Pieters had been insulted when he went to remonstrate; and the Predikant, who, at his urgent entreaty, had gone to warn the headstrong girl of the penalties of living in sin, had been literally, not metaphorically, kicked off the premises by the lawless ravisher. Putting things together, they would have been inclined to fear that the girl had actually been made away with, but for the assurance of Anna to the contrary. They thought that heavy drinking must be the cause of Bert's outrageous behaviour, since he had picked a quarrel with Otis earlier in the evening, and so mishandled him that he had been unable to appear in public since.
Horrible as the news was, Mayne, knowing the violence of Bert's passion, his fear that Millie was to be taken away, and his intemperate habits, felt it possible that a great part of what he heard might be true. His disappointment was keen. He had looked for better things from Mestaer, whom he liked better than anyone else in Slabbert's Poort; and the behaviour now attributed to him was that of a wild beast. He hurried off without rest or refreshment to the High Farm; and all the way he was trying to piece the story together—to think how the lover who had always been so tongue-tied and shamefaced, could possibly have proceeded to such lengths; and the more he reflected, the more he felt sure that he had heard a perverted version of what had really happened.
But when he neared the white house, with its pleasant green shutters, his fears became acute; for the owner was leaning over the little garden gate, and one glance at his face showed that he was inflamed with triumph. He had evidently been gathering flowers; his hands were full of them; the fact impressed the new-comer much as though he had seen a lion sitting down to tea in a lady's drawing-room.
Bert was dressed with scrupulous care; his linen was fresh. He looked ten years older; had graduated from boy to man in two days. There was a steady blaze in his eyes; his mouth wore a defiant curve. The exaltation and triumph of his aspect affected Mayne strongly. But no look of guilt or remorse crossed his handsome face at sight of the approaching guardian.
"Hallo!" he frankly cried; "come in! Things have hummed since you went away."
Mayne stiffened in fierce wrath.
"Mestaer," he said, keeping himself calm with difficulty, "tell me that this I have heard of you is a slander—tell me that Millie Lutwyche is not here!"
Bert's eyes flamed.
"Millie Lutwyche is here," he cried, "and what's more, she'll stay here. Didn't you leave it to me to see she wasn't murdered? Well, I managed it, but only just."
Mayne came in through the gate and walked into the house.
"I've heard one side of the story," he said. "It's only fair that I should hear yours."
Bert followed him in. His style was abrupt but convincing. He told how Amurrica and Tante Wilma had tried to steal a march on Mayne, and how the Predikant had been willing to aid and abet. He told how he had foiled this plan, how he had been sent a message to decoy him out of the way, how he had gone down to the farm, but too late to prevent violence. He told how he had brought Millie home, and at once called in Dr. Fraser, who could corroborate all he said. He spoke without eagerness, and with an underlying confidence in his voice which showed how sure he felt of his position.
"If ever a man earned a woman fair, I done it," he remarked simply. "She's better to-day; but Dr. Fraser was a bit afraid of collapse at first. Anna's nursed her. I've not been near, except just to pass the time of day. I done the square thing, as I told you all along I meant to; an' we'll come to church an' get married, soon as she's up and dressed."
Mayne slowly shook his head.
"Mestaer," he said, "I have done you an injustice, I freely own it. I believe all you tell me. You have done better than I thought you would; now it remains for you to do better than you yourself believe that you can. You must let Millie go."
Bert flung himself into a chair, and pulling out a tobacco-pouch, began to fill his pipe. He gave an insolent laugh.
"We're engaged; you can't alter that."
"Under the terms of her father's will, Millie cannot marry under the age of twenty-one without my consent She is going to England."
Bert looked earnestly at him.
"Look here! I've played the game so far," he said. "Don't you push me; you'd better not. Hands off Millie; she's going to marry me."
"Perhaps she may, when she is grown up, if you have the courage and constancy to wait for her; but not now."
"Now, by ——!" His oath made Carol wince.
He sat for a minute in complete silence and close thought; then he rose.
"I should like to see Millie, if she is awake," he said, very quietly.
Bert looked at him piercingly. Had there been one shade of arrogance in his tone, or had he seemed to suggest that he doubted Bert's assent, there might have been open war. But he gave no handle; and the master of the house, after a very brief hesitation, rose and tapped at the parlour door.
Anna peeped out, and admitted them, with an anxious glance from one face to the other. Mayne walked in, and Bert followed him, with his bunch of flowers in his hand.
The waxen-white Millie lay with her flaxen hair loose upon the pillows. Her eyes were wide open, and flashed restlessly. Her whole mien otherwise was so still that one would have hardly thought her living. A look of expectancy kindled for a moment upon her face when she saw Mayne, but it soon died down.
He went over and sat down by her, with the naturalness of manner which frequent visits to sick-chambers give to the priest. Bert felt a pang of envy; he himself was so completely a fish out of water.
"I am grieved indeed to hear of the way you have been treated," said Mayne gently. "Poor girl! I wish you had gone away to Leitersdorp as I suggested."
"So do I," said Millie, under her breath.
"You thought yourself so secure," he went on regretfully, looking at her bandaged arm.
"Well, I'm paying for it," said the girl distinctly, "and got to go on doing that all the rest of my life, so I hear."
"Oh, I hope not! You will be all right in a few weeks," he assured her hopefully.
"Ah!" said she, "but he's got to be paid, you see, for what he did." She raised her uninjured arm and pointed to Bert, who turned scarlet as he stood awkwardly dandling his flowers. "Men don't help you for nothing; I've found out that much," she said, with biting intention.
"I am sure you do Mestaer injustice," said Mayne quietly. "No Englishman could possibly ask anything in return for the privilege of helping a woman."
"He says," said Millie, "that I promised to marry him the night he brought me here. I don't remember; but if I did, I got to do it, I s'pose."
"Certainly not!" was the emphatic reply. "Get rid of that idea. No man worthy of the name could hold you to a promise made under such circumstances. Besides, you are not free to marry for the next five years. Don't you want to go to England?"
The living blood flooded the white face with lovely colour; the eyes flashed fire.
"May I? Could I?" she gasped, half raising herself among her pillows, her face transformed with an energy, a desire for life, most strikingly at variance with her lethargy of a few minutes before. "Have they written? Do they want me?"
He drew a letter from his coat-pocket. "They have written, and they do want you," he said.
She sat quite up, unsupported. "Read it! Read it!"
Bert stood still as a stone, while Mayne unfolded a sheet of paper, written in a small, niggling, but cultivated hand, and read:
"FRANSDALE VICARAGE, CLEVESHIRE.
"Dear Sir,—I am in receipt of your letter, and note that my brother-in-law, Arnold Lutwyche, is dying, and leaving my niece, Melicent, only daughter of my late sister, wholly unprovided for. I also note that you consider her Boer step-mother is not a fit person to have the charge of her, and is likely to treat her ill.
"Under these circumstances, my duty seems clear, and my wife and I have no hesitation in directing you to send my niece to England by the earliest available boat, and we will give her a home for the present.
"At the same time, I must acquaint you with the fact that our means are small, and we have seven children of our own, so that Melicent will be under the necessity of making herself useful.
"Please send her by the cheapest line of boats, and notify me of her arrival. I fear that I shall not be able to come to London to meet her, but if she is fifteen or sixteen years old, she should be able to make her way to us as far as the railway will bring her—that is to say, to Birdmore Junction, where she shall be met.
"I note that my brother's estate will be sufficient to meet her travelling expenses, so conclude that no advance from me is necessary.
"With thanks to you for the trouble you take in the matter, and remembrances to Mr. Lutwyche, should this letter find him still alive.—I am, very faithfully yours,
"EDMUND CHETWYND-COOPER."
This letter had chilled Mayne by its formal coldness. No love was sent to the orphan, no message of welcome. But the frigidity of the style made apparently no difference to Millie. The great fact was there. Her way to England lay open, her destination fixed. Of all safe shelters, a remote English vicarage should have satisfied her guardian. But somehow, to Carol, the idea of Miss Lutwyche in such a situation, was not convincing. He could not see her in the part, as actors say.
No such doubts troubled her. For the very first time since Mayne had known her, her face beamed and sparkled with joy.
"I can be ready to travel soon," she cried. "In a fortnight—in ten days—ask the doctor!"
Bert made three strides across the room, hurling with violence the flowers he carried into the English grate.
"So you'll break your word," he began, and choked
Melicent turned her head towards him languidly.
"Bert Mestaer," said she, "have I ever once, since you knew me, said one word to make you think I liked you?"
He fought with himself for composure to enable him to bring out the monosyllable, "No."
"Then what d'you wanter marry me for?" she asked calmly.
"You know," he cried, terribly, wildly, in his frantic emotion. "You know I love you—you know I don't care for anything else, but just to have you! Where'd you be now, if it wasn't for me? Tell me that! I wish to God I'd never seen you! I'll—I'll kill you with my own hands before I'll let you go now! I'll do worse—I'll..."
He stopped himself suddenly, meeting the steady contempt of Mayne's eyes.
There was a moment of awful silence, broken only by two dry, tearing sobs from the furious lover; then Millie, who had turned chalk-white once more, fell back among her pillows with an impatient motion of the hand.
"Oh, get away; you make me sick," she said.
Before Bert could speak or move, Mayne went up to him, took him by the arm, and led him out of the room. Then, handing him his hat, he drew him as passively out of the house.
Neither spoke till they had walked half a mile. Mayne was half in fear that Bert, in his rage, might set upon him bodily, and congratulated himself, not for the first time in his missionary career, upon the possession of thews and sinews. But no ebullition came. Bert's face had gone grey, and he looked worn and shrunken in the strong sunlight.
At last, smitten by the despair in his altered manner, the elder man ventured to speak.
"Mestaer, you must come and put up at my place till Miss Lutwyche is well enough to travel. You did the best you could for her—you did well; but the strain is too great, and it must cease. I shall wire for one of the Sisters from Leitersdorp to come and help Anna to nurse her. As to you, you have to fight and win a man's hardest battle; and I'll give you a bit of advice—"
"Go to h— with your advice!"
"I'm not far away now, to judge by the sulphur in the atmosphere," retorted Mayne drily, and said no more.
They walked on until they came to the little Mission, and turned in to the sparsely-furnished living-room, with its crucifix and Albrecht Dürerfac-similes, and the Da Vinci Virgin on the rude mantel.
Bert walked across the room, planted both elbows on the shelf, and stared with blank eyes at the ineffable smile of the pictured face. Suddenly he wheeled round.
"Well, what's your blasted advice?" he said rudely. "A black-coated prig that doesn't know what it means to be..."
"Tempted," suggested Mayne drily. But he pushed a chair for his discourteous guest, and got down the tobacco-jar. "No man can fight the flesh and win, if he's living in idleness," he said reflectively, standing before the hearth and filling his pipe. "But there's another consideration. Do you realise that we are on the brink of war?"
"Kruger, perhaps."
"Steyn, too. You heard the news the other day? All the men ordered out on commando. What does that mean? The Orange Free State is going in against England."
"Well, they can fight their own blank battles without my help."
"That's rubbish, Mestaer. You'll have to fight on one side or the other. Now is the time to show yourself an Englishman. England wants men. They think at home that this war is to be a walk over. You and I know better. Go and enlist. There's a career for you."
"I'll be d—d if I do."
"That's a condition that seems to me far more likely to supervene if you don't," was the temperate reply.
Bert laid down his miserable head upon his arms.
"You don't see, and I can't explain," he said haltingly, "that it's not a thing—not a question of what you call the flesh. If there's such a thing as spirit anywhere in me, I've put it all in my love for her. If you take her away, I shall go to the devil."
"If I take her away! My dear chap, you cannot seriously mean to pretend that you think Millie wants to marry you?"
Sulky silence.
"I know you better than to believe you would be cad enough to marry her against her will. Were you to do so, I fail to see in what respect you would be any better than Otis."
No reply.
Mayne stood up, searching his book-shelves for the "Divina Commedia."
"Bert, did you ever hear of Dante?"
"No. Nobody as lives hereabouts, is he?"
Mayne did not smile.
"I'll tell you something of him—how all his life he lived for the memory of a dead woman—a woman of whom he knew even less than you know of Millie, and lived in hope, and cleanly, for her sake. Now, Millie is not dead. You are but a boy, and she a girl. Five or six or seven years hence, if you make a career for yourself what is to prevent you from trying again? By that time she would at least realise the enduring nature of your love; whereas now, neither you nor I nor she could say that it will last. It is just a boy's hot flame."
Bert stamped.
"You don't believe me capable of it," he stormed. "You just think that if you can get her out of my way now, that'll be the end of it all. You don't think I've the manhood or the pluck to stick to the thing through years of absence—"
He broke off, staring at the kindled face of the priest, who had risen, and stood facing him.
"That's just where you make your mistake, Bert," said his friend earnestly. "I do believe you capable of the best. Listen! When I came first to Slabbert's Poort, I found you a loafer. You were idle and good-for-nothing and intemperate. Now you have shown me what you are capable of. Your love for Millie has made you a different man. You have fought for her, saved her, respected her! ... I rather wish you had heard tell of one Caponsacchi; but never mind. It's better to do knightly deeds than to read about 'em. Anyhow, you have set your foot on the road to become a true gentleman; why turn back now? Hubert Mestaer"—his voice took on the deep note it sometimes had in the pulpit—"by the memory of your mother, I ask you, why turn back now?"
"Ankle-deep in English grass I leaped,And clapped my hands, and called all very fair."—ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
It was mid-October. St. Luke's summer brooded over the solitary acres of heather, which crowned the hills that flung encradling arms about Fransdale.
The golden bracken was turning brown, but the heather still carried its glory of purple. The woodlands were forsaking their devotion to pure green, and rioted in every hue of red and yellow, and the light air sang and hummed about the uplands of the glorious land. All the summer had been fine; the becks had sunk to musical murmurings; one might walk from Tod's Trush to the Three Howes, across country, without getting bogged.
In a stable-yard surrounded by grey stone out-buildings stood the Reverend Edmund Chetwynd-Cooper, harnessing his horse to the dog-cart. Near him a big, loose-limbed, clumsy girl, who had evidently outgrown her strength, stood listlessly watching him through half-shut eyes.
"How old is Cousin Melicent?" she asked, in a voice which always sounded fretful.
"I have told you I believe her to be about sixteen."
"Nearly as old as I am. I wonder whether we shall like her?"
"I hope you understood what I said at dinner-time. There is to be no intimacy until we have decided that Melicent is a fit companion for you. No intimacy, mind."
His voice was even and quiet, low-pitched and cultivated. He was a handsome, dark man, with regular features, and a cold, blue eye; clean shaven but for a straight line of black whisker down each cheek, which made him look vaguely out of date.
His daughter looked at him with a sidelong glance.
"All right, father," she said, in a kind of formula, adding, in an injured tone: "I should have thought you might take one of us to meet her."
"I do not know what luggage there may be."
Mr. Cooper would not have said, "I don't know," for the world; and the fact was typical of his extreme correctness.
"Where is your mother?" he asked, when the last strap was adjusted. "I promised her a lift as far as the Mill. Go, Madeline, and tell her I am ready."
The girl slouched away, with a bored expression; and the parson, having fetched the dust-rug and whip, walked the mare out of the yard and up to the door of the square, uncompromising grey stone Vicarage.
Nothing could have been finer than the prospect. The church and Vicarage stood near the head of the Dale, close to the bolder, wilder, more heathery part, and looked down on the valleyland, the trout stream and rich meadows below. The minutes ticked on, while the vicar waited. Presently Madeline emerged.
"Mother says she won't be long."
"Will you tell her please, that I positively must start in five minutes."
The girl disappeared. The five minutes elapsed; three more passed. The vicar got into the trap. Madeline once more appeared.
"Mother thinks, before she starts, she had better give Bee a dose of her tonic."
"Then tell her I am off without her. The train will not wait, even for your mother."
He was just going out of the gate, when a window-sash was raised, and a voice cried:
"Aidmund! Aidmund!"
He checked the horse.
"Well? Come if you are ready," he said, quite temperately, his voice showing no annoyance.
"Oh, no, I can't do that; but I thought it would be so capital if you could get me one or two things in Birdmore? I shan't be very long writing them down."
"You should have thought of that before."
"My darling boy, think how busy I have been all this morning, preparing—"
The rest was lost, for the vicar had driven away. His cold eyes were quite gentle, but he did draw in his breath sharply once; at the thought, perhaps, of this helpmeet of his, in this remote village, where nothing ever interrupted her simple routine of duties—incapable of being ready for a drive at three o'clock in the afternoon.
The old mare had to step out. Mrs. Cooper had succeeded in making her husband ten minutes late; and nine miles of very bad road lay between him and the Junction. The train which was to bring his niece was just coming to a standstill in the little wayside station, as the old mare, conscious of having been hustled, trotted into the station-yard.
The vicar hastened through the booking-office, out upon the asphalte platform, whereon a small, slender girl in black stood lonely beside some solid-looking packing-cases and one modest trunk. She wore her left arm in a sling. He came slowly forward, with a resolute smile of greeting on his face.
"Are you Melicent?"
She raised her eyes searchingly to his face. "Yes, I am."
"You are not at all like your mother," he said, scanning the pale face.
"No; father did not think me like her."
"You have managed your journey well?"
"Oh, yes, thank you, it was all quite easy."
"How did you manage last night in London?"
"I went home with some people who were kind to me on the voyage; Mr. and Mrs. Helston."
"I expected a taller niece," he said kindly.
"I am small for my age, I know."
His anxious gaze was fixed upon the packing-cases. There were three of them, and their bulk suggested weight.
"Do those cases belong to you?" he asked.
"Yes; my father's books and valuables. He left them all to me, and my guardian insisted that Mrs. Lutwyche should give them up."
"Well, I don't quite know how they are going to be conveyed up the Dale," he said, in perplexity.
"Oh, that's all right," said Millie, withsang-froid. "Mr. Dow is going to take them in his waggon."
"Mr. Dow!" ejaculated the vicar, in a tone compounded of equal parts of astonishment and displeasure.
A big Cleveshire Dalesman, of the more prosperous type—handsome, well-dressed, a striking figure in his riding breeches and gaiters, now approached, lifting his cap from his fair hair, his eyes twinkling with a kind of enjoyment which he peculiarly relished.
"Your niece and me has been getting acquainted," he said, in his unrenderable soft-vowelled Dale speech. "Makin' friends, as you may say." It sounded more like: "Mäakin' freänds, as you mäay säa." But the phonetic rendering of dialect is a weariness, and will not here be attempted. "Fair enjoyin' werselves we've been, ever since leavin' York Station. I'm goin' to take her goods up t' Dale for her, since I expect you've only t' old mare an't' cart with you, Mr. Cooper."
Mr. Cooper could barely acknowledge the kindness, for angry mortification. He was a Southerner, planted down among people whom he disliked, because he did not in the least understand them. His idea of the peasant's correct attitude was a servile obedience to the parson, and that kind of gratitude which is rightly said to consist of a lively sense of favours to come. The sturdy independence, and I'm-as-good-as-you indifference of the North Country, was a positive offence to him, his only armour against it being a crust of ever increasing cold dignity and aloofness, which the Dalesmen saw, and chuckled over. His wife, who had come among them, ready with the ministrations which she understood—with condescending smiles, ill-made soup, old clothes and patronage—found no market for these commodities. A premature exhibition of them had produced such a condition of feeling, that now, as she came down the road, full of amiable intentions, the village became a desert, everyone slipping within doors and disappearing, sooner than encounter her.
Moreover, the Dale was full of nonconformity; and the attitude of the vicar towards dissent was that of silent, rigid dislike—of his wife, that kind of shocked horror with which some people talk of "the heathen."
So the Chetwynd-Coopers dwelt as aliens in their Northern parish, attributing their failure solely to causes exterior to themselves, and resolutely setting the advantages of fine moorland air, and the low price of provisions, against the vague depression which their isolation naturally caused.
But, among all the thorns in the vicar's dignified flesh, Farmer Dow, of Crow Gate Farm, the leading Dissenter in the Dale, was the sharpest. Poor Millie could not have made a more unfortunate entry upon the scenes, than under his auspices. The ice in the vicar's voice, as he declined his kindness, was obvious to the bystanders. But Dow was not to be denied. He had promised Millie that her goods should be taken up, and taken up they should be, that very night. She had taught him more about South Africa in half-an-hour than the newspapers had taught him in half a year. She was coming to tea with his mother, at Crow Gate, and going to keep him posted in the war news. He owed it to her to see after her baggage, after such entertainment. He helped her into the trap with suchempressementthat the onlookers were deeply moved; and the vicar's heart was hot within him as he drove away. His niece was, as he had feared, hopelessly Colonial.
But it was not the vicar's habit to speak in anger. Experience had given him a power of self-control which would have kindled the admiration of his parishioners, had they guessed what manner of man lay hidden under the dry, precise manner.
He waited until he had himself well in hand, and then commenced conversation—not upon the burning topic.
"I am sorry to see that you have hurt your arm."
Millie, whose eyes were fixed in deep, increasing interest on the country they were passing through, looked up.
"It was the old woman," she said. "I thought Mr. Mayne might have told you. She sjambokked me pretty nearly to death, and threw me down and dislocated my arm."
The clear, soft voice, evenly cadenced, giving out this astonishing information, raised fresh tumult in the vicar's bosom.
"Do you mean your step-mother?" he asked, in horror.
"Yes. Mr. Mayne had to go to Leitersdorp to get the will proved. He was away three days, and she made up her mind to take it out on me."
"To take what out?"
"She was mad because father made him my guardian. She wanted to sell me to a Yankee; he'd given her ten pounds on account. So Mr. Mayne told her it was a case of hands off, because it was his show. So she got the children to catch and hold me, and they managed to tie me up; and she just went on until she was tired," said Millie unemotionally.
The vicar had no words. Uppermost in his mind was deep, abiding thankfulness that he had brought none of his daughters with him to meet this astounding young person. What would his wife say to this? Such people, they knew, existed in the pages of those sensational novels which cannot be too severely condemned by the well-regulated; but that his own sister's child should have been strung up and thrashed! ... The current of hot sympathy in him must have found vent in indignant words; but it was invaded by another thought. The carefully guarded propriety of his own children must suffer no contact with naked facts of life like this; and such was the feeling that spoke first.
"I must ask you not to mention this. I should say, I must order you not to tell your cousins, or Miss Lathom, their governess, how you came by your injuries. To your aunt, in private, it may be alluded to, but I cannot have so scandalous a thing generally known."
Millie looked up swiftly.
"I can keep a thing dark, if I am given the tip," she said, with amusement that sounded a little contemptuous.
He was conscious of great annoyance.
"I give no tips. I merely say that this must not be mentioned," he said frigidly. "We will refer to it later. And now to touch upon another matter. In England the—ah—fusion of classes to which you have probably been accustomed is not desirable. The vicar's niece cannot, with propriety, be on terms of equality with a farmer like Dow."
"Oh," said Millie, "why not?"
"We are socially Mr. Dow's superiors, and we must not let him forget his place, as these Dalesmen are most apt to do."
"I should have thought," said Millie reflectively, "that they would never be likely to forget their place, so long as we were sure of ours."
The vicar again felt uncomfortable. His wife and he were well-born—people of just enough consequence to be eager that nobody should forget it; undeniably belonging to the county set, but much ignored by that set, as being poor and desperately dull.
"You see, at home we shouldn't have been socially superior to Mr. Dow," said Millie.
"You have much to learn here," returned her uncle; and as he spoke, he was inly deciding that the girl was impossible.
"Girls' heads are not like jam-pots, which, if you do not fill them will remain empty; a filling there will be, of some kind."—JULIANA HORATIA EWING.
They had been crawling for some time slowly up a steep lane with hedges; now suddenly they emerged at the top, and a long sigh of wonder escaped Millie as she saw the moorland spread before her in all its untamed splendour. Great headlands, facing northwards, jutted forth into the heather, as into a purple sea; and on the brink of one of these the travellers found themselves, overlooking a vast stretch of wild country. The descent down which they must go was almost a precipice. Something in the keen racing air, the height, the freedom, the glory of it all, took Melicent by the throat England was like this—like this! Sunlight, colour, the adorable odour of peat and bracken, drawn out by the sun, the blue mysteries of distance ... it came about her like compelling arms. Solitude, silence, spacious calm—here were elements that appealed to the depth of her being. Reserved as she was, she had nearly cried aloud to her unknown uncle for sympathy in her sudden rush of feeling for the land of her forefathers. He had checked the mare to a walk, and was coaxing her downhill with caution and skill.
"Our roads are not much to boast of hereabouts," he said at last, as the cart slewed itself over a lump in the road, designed to prevent heavy rainfall from washing out the roadway on the violent slope. "But I daresay you are not much better off in Africa."
"Not much to boast of! They are glorious!" breathed Millie, insensible of jolting in her admiration. "We have nothing like this in Africa!"
"A few miles further on, I can show you a road, compared with which, this might be a billiard-table," he said cheerfully.
Millie became aware that he referred to surface and gradients, and not to landscape.
"Oh, I see," she replied lamely. "I was thinking of—of the heather."
"You will see plenty of that," was the composed answer. "It begins to grow all over the road, at no great distance from here."
Conversation did not seem easy. Millie was at no time talkative, and they fell silent, and so remained while they traversed several miles of open moor, crossed a desolate ridge, and presently found themselves dipping again into a lane with hedges, in all their autumn glory of ripe blackberries, fluffy travellers' joy, coral honeysuckle berries and wayfaring tree.
"Now we are in Fransdale," said Mr. Cooper.
They were labouring along, in narrow, sandy, toilsome windings, when the hoot of a motor, up somewhere over their heads, made Mr. Cooper start. He was leading the mare, and proceeded to drag her as far as he possibly could to the side of the lane—half-way up the hedge, in fact. The next moment the car came in sight, tearing downhill at a speed which was evidently calculated upon the certainty of clear roads. It began to bray loudly, as though, in response to the warning, the vicar could cause his dog-cart to vanish into thin air. Millie surveyed it with interest, and as it whizzed by, within an inch of their off-wheel, she caught sight of a young, handsome, bored face, and that of an older man beside it. They raised their hats as they swept by, having most narrowly missed smashing the cart to fragments: but the vicar seemed quite pleased, and not at all annoyed.
"Sir Joseph Burmester and his son—our big land-owners hereabouts," he explained.
"Oh!" said his niece; adding, after reflection: "Are they our social equals?"
For some reason, the question annoyed the vicar; he relapsed into silence.
Mrs. Cooper prided herself upon keeping all her Southern customs up here in the North. When Melicent came downstairs to tea, she saw none of that wonderful pastry without which no Cleveshire tea-table is complete. Her five girl-cousins and their governess were assembled to be introduced to their new relative. They stared at her with a passive and stony indifference. Madeline was seventeen, Gwendolen sixteen, Theodora fifteen, Barbara fourteen, and Beatrice twelve. Even Beatrice was quite as tall as Melicent; and the elder girls were vast, the two eldest nearing five-foot-ten, after the fashion of the modern girl, and not in the least as yet knowing how to manage their swelling proportions. In their outgrown, scanty frocks, and big, thick legs, they looked rather like men in a farce, dressed up to represent little girls. Two or three of them were handsome, but they all struck Millie as singularly expressionless. Their faces were like masks.
Mrs. Chetwynd-Cooper's hair was pale flaxen, and being brushed away very tightly from the face, gave the impression of her having no hair at all. The odd look of being out of date, achieved in her husband's case by side-whiskers, was bestowed upon her by long earrings. The couple looked like the Papa and Mamma of a virtuous family, in a very early Victorian story-book.
Mrs. Cooper sat down to table with a determined cheerfulness which Melicent soon learned was her characteristic. It somehow succeeded in producing deep depression in others. At least, nobody spoke; and the girl found herself with her attention fixed, with a fatal fascination, upon her aunt's smile and her aunt's earrings, and longing for something to divert her eye.
Her uncle's depression was a very real and well-defined thing that evening. There was something about his new niece which he found himself disliking with quite unchristian vehemence. He had confided to his wife that extreme care would be necessary, and that the new-comer must by no means be let loose among their own children. Mrs. Cooper could not share his depression. She had the boundless self-confidence of an entirely stupid woman. She had made her own girls models of all that girls should be. No slang was ever heard in the Vicarage; no loud voices; no unruly expression of opinion. Why should she not be equally successful with this raw material, doubtless sent by Providence to her good guidance?
Melicent sat watching her five munching cousins, and thought they were something like cows. Their eyes were vacant, their appetites steady. She was just wondering whether all talking at meals was forbidden, when Gwendolen, who sat next her, tossed back her long hair, and asked:
"How did you hurt your arm?"
Melicent's voice was soft, but singularly clear. It had a carrying quality.