"Uncle Edmund says I am not to tell you," she replied.
Mr. Cooper was all the more angry, because he felt sure that his niece could and would have skated ably over this thin ice had he not repudiated all wish to "keep things dark." She had done exactly what he told her to do, and he wanted to box her ears.
"Give us news of your Cochin China hen, Gwendolen," he broke in. "Has she been laying away again?"
"Yes, in the hedge," said his daughter, giving her reply in lifeless tone and fewest words; and silence fell again.
"Oh, by the way, I have a pleasant surprise for Melicent," said Mrs. Cooper suddenly, her countenance wreathed in smiles. She always spoke as though coaxing a very young child, who needed encouragement and reassurance; and her niece resented it as actively as did the villagers. "What do you think arrived for you this morning, Melicent? Theo, darling, if you look on mother's desk, you will find a letter for Cousin Melicent. I suppose the mail travels faster than the boat you came in, Melicent."
Theo brought a letter and handed it to her cousin, who took it with composure.
"I wonder whom that comes from?" said Mrs. Cooper archly.
"It's from Hubert Mestaer."
"And who is that?" pursued the lady, delighted that everybody's attention was so skilfully diverted from the broken arm.
"He is one of the men who wanted to marry me," said Millie clearly.
In the deadly pause that followed, she caught a glance, hastily passing under lowered lids, between Miss Lathom and her two elder pupils.
But the valiant Mrs. Cooper was equal even to this occasion.
"When dear Melicent has been with us a little longer, she will know that we do not talk of such things," she cooed, blushing as coyly as the heroine in a novel by Charles Reade.
The blush was not to be seen reflected on the stolid countenances of her daughters. They chewed on.
"What things?" asked Millie, bewildered.
"Our offers of—marriage," said her aunt, bringing out the bold word with a gulp. "You are a little young, darling, to be thinking of marriage for a great many years, are you not?"
"Yes; that is what I told them," replied Millie simply, fixing surprised eyes upon the lady's embarrassment.
The vicar cleared his throat.
"Perhaps you had better give that letter to your aunt, Melicent, and let her judge whether it is a fit one for you to receive."
Melicent removed her look of surprise from one end of the table to another.
"I think it would be playing it very low down on Bert to let anybody see his letter," she said, with decision.
"My girls show me all their letters," said her aunt, still smiling and coaxing.
"I beg your pardon if it sounds rude," replied her niece, "but I shall not show you mine."
The vicar rose from table with decision.
"We will discuss this at another time," he said. "Melicent will, of course, conform to the rules of the house while she is with us. For what we have received, etc. A word, Miss Lathom, please." Then, as the girls filed past, he said low in the governess's ear: "On no account is she to be left alone with her cousins for a moment."
The girls filed soberly out, led the way upstairs, through a swing-door, along a passage, into a shabby old room with deep window-seats, an aged rocking-horse, shelves of story books and disabled toys, an ink-stained, battered table, a high fire-guard, and all the usual accessories of the nursery turned schoolroom.
They fastened the swing-door behind them as they went through, carefully closing the door of the school-room also; and then all, as it were, exhaling a gasp of relief, turned to their cousin again with transfigured faces.
"Now we can talk! Now we can be ourselves! Now we can have some fun!" they cried, surrounding her.
The masks were dropped, the real girls appeared, tossing back their hair, stretching their limbs, assuming every possible attitude of comfort and inelegance. They all talked at once, crowding round; and the transition was so abrupt and so complete as to bewilder her.
"One moment," said Gwendolen, who was the handsomest, and seemed to take the lead, rather than the petulant and anæmic-looking Madeline. "Be cautious, girls! we may very likely be raided this evening; she's sure to poke her nose in after Melicent. Put out the things. Did you hoist the weight, Babs?"
"Yes, I did," said Barbara.
"That's all right. If you hear the weight fall in the passage, that's mother," said Madeline, explaining to Melicent: "You see, it gives us a minute to reform in."
They all went to a cupboard, pulled out work, thimbles, and so on, arranged them on the table, chairs in place; then threw themselves on the floor, in the various attitudes which their weak, overgrown spines demanded, with pillows wedged under them.
"Now for peace and happiness," said Gwen. "Oh, it was grand to hear you stand up to them, my dear! But it's no good, you know; you will have to knuckle under. They've got nothing else to do but bully us; and after all, it's not much they can do, you know. It's as easy as possible to circumvent them."
"Oh, hold your tongue, Gwen! don't chatter so," said Madeline crossly. "Give Melicent a chance. Go on, Melicent, tell us all about it. How was your arm hurt?"
Melicent looked surprised. "I told you I promised Uncle Edmund not to say," she replied.
"Oh, gammon! we absolve you from that," laughed Theo, slipping a warm arm about her cousin's neck.
"But I can't absolve myself, you see," said Millie soberly.
"Do you mean to say you won't tell us?"
"I never break my word."
Gwendolen laughed.
"We're five against one, and the youngest is as big as you," she said, half in fun, half menacing.
Millie smiled her own little smile of disdain.
"I'm more than a match for the lot of you," she said coolly. "I shall say just what I think to you, as I did to Aunt Minna. And it's this. I hate underhand ways."
Miss Lathom, who was seemingly poring over the correction of some exercises, grew uncomfortably red.
"We're not underhand," said Gwen hotly. "'Tommy'"—indicating her preceptress with a wave of the hand—"knows all about our goings on."
"Tommy" looked up nervously.
"When you have lived here a little while, Miss Lutwyche," she said, "you will see that the poor girls must have some indulgences. Their mother expects impossibilities."
"Well, why do they stand it?" asked Millie.
"We don't stand it," returned Maddie. "But you had better all shut up, girls; perhaps Melicent's a tell-tale."
"If you had any sense, you'd see that I've just proved that I'm not," remarked Melicent.
"How have you proved it?"
"If I keep my word to Uncle Edmund, of course I shall keep my word to you. I promise not to tell tales; and, when I promise, you can go away and bet on it."
The universal squeal of merriment at her funny phrase restored harmony.
"Of course," said Gwen, "I see that it's best to be straightforward; but we're not allowed to be. We simply have to make our own pleasures, unknown to them. We should never read a book, nor get a letter, nor meet a soul, nor do anything but get up, have meals, do lessons, go to bed. Mother won't let us read a book she hasn't read first; and as she never opens a book herself from year's end to year's end, there is an end of that. We mustn't have a letter unless she sees it; so of course we have to have our letters sent, addressed to Tommy, to Bensdale Post Office; and then there's the adventure of walking over to fetch them. You mayn't go out without saying where you've been, nor spend a halfpenny without telling her what you bought. She must really expect us to cheat, you know; and so we do."
"Maddie's going on for eighteen, and Gwen only a year younger," chimed in Theo, "and they're not supposed even to know what a young man is, let alone think about one. Gwen's awfully gone on Freshfield, who is Sir Joseph Burmester's agent. Well, if it was guessed, I don't know what would happen, for you see Freshfield is not our social equal—"
"My dears," broke in Miss Lathom, who was on thorns, "I think all this is very imprudent. Let your cousin wait a while, and see how she likes her aunt's system."
"I shall dislike it very much," said Melicent; "but I shall say so. Why don't you speak out?"
"Because we're dead sick of rows," said Maddie sulkily. "There were nothing but rows till Tommy came. No governess would stay; they simply couldn't stand mother. Then at last Tommy turned up, and we saw what a decent old sort she was, so we thought out our plans, and now we do get our fun somehow, and as long as we hold our tongues at meals, it's all right."
"Well, I'm very sorry for you," said Millie, "but I think it would be much simpler to say what you mean. The strongest always wins. If you stuck together, they would have to give in."
The girls laughed sardonically. "You don't know mother," they said.
"Well, we shall soon see," said Barbie, who was the silent one of the five. "Let Millie try her way, and see what happens."
Millie laughed. "I certainly shan't try yours," she said.
"But you won't side against us with mother?" suddenly said Gwen.
"Rather not. That isn't my way."
"Are you never afraid of anybody?" asked Theo earnestly.
"Of course not; what can people do?" contemptuously asked the girl who had been sjambokked.
Theo cuddled up against this new champion as if the sense of strength were pleasant to her.
"Show us your love-letter, won't you, darling?" she said persuasively.
"Certainly not," replied Millie at once.
"Then I won't show you my notes from Freshfield," said Gwen.
"Of course not. It's mean to show men's letters."
"We shouldn't do such a thing, except just among ourselves," replied Maddie indignantly; "and we hoped you'd be one of us, though goodness knows there's more than enough of us already."
"Look here," said Gwen eagerly, "we know you must be the real kind of natural girl—not the sort like mother believes in, Ethel May in the Daisy Chain, you know—we know you are not that sort, or you would not be having lovers to write to you all the way from Africa. You do like pretty clothes, and dancing, and young men—"
"No, I don't," said Millie, in her decided way. "I've had enough of young men to last me a good while. I want to see no more young men for years to come. I only want one thing really badly"—she looked almost pleadingly at Tommy's red, snub-nosed countenance, as if her sole hope lay there—"I want to learn!" cried out the girl who was to corrupt the Vicarage household.
"To learn!" The words were echoed in six different tones.
"Notlessons?" asked Babs incredulously.
"Everything," replied Millie, resting her pointed chin on her small hand. "I want to know things, and understand them, and find out how to earn my living; to do something ... or make something ... I don't know what, as yet. I want to get a grip on the world, and watch for my place there, and take it!"
There was complete silence for quite a long time. At last—
"You talk as if you were a boy," said Gwen. "What can girls do?"
"Everybody can do what they must do," quietly replied Millie. "I've got to earn my living, and so have you, I suppose."
"Earn our living! Mother would have a fit!" cried Maddie.
"But Uncle Edmund said in his letter that he was poor," said Millie, puzzled. "What should you do if he died?"
"Get married, if we could," laughed Theo. "Willie and Georgie say we're such frights, we never shall. But we think Gwen is good-looking, and you see she's got a lover already; and she says when she's married she'll see after all of us—take us out of this hateful old Dale, and go to live at Brighton or London or some place where we could make friends. Nobody will make friends here, because mother's such an old stick-in-the-mud—"
The filial sentiment died away, for there was the sound of a soft thud.
"The weight, girls! Mother!" whispered Bee; and in a moment, with a dexterity born of long practice, the whole flock of lounging girls had arisen, slipped into place, and were busily stitching when Mrs. Cooper, with her smile, her long neck, and her earrings, peeped archly round the door.
"Making friends?" said she, beaming.
"Yes, Mrs. Cooper," said Tommy, looking up.
The governess was feeling decidedly uncomfortable. She had repeatedly warned her pupils, during the preceding days, to hold aloof at first from the new-comer, until they had decided whether she could be taken into confidence. But Millie's love-letter, and still more, her calm refusal to show it, had sent the barriers down with a rush, and the girls had not been able to think of prudence with such a keen new interest in their blank lives. Tommy's heart was full of apprehension. She was afraid of this girl who wanted to learn. She knew that she had nothing to teach her.
Melicent had not moved a muscle when the general rush was made. She sat still in the window-seat, upright and solitary.
"Dear Melicent must join our happy little sewing circle," said Mrs. Cooper, beaming round. "No idle hands at the Vicarage, as you see, darling."
"I cannot use my arm very well yet," said Melicent.
"Oh, we give you one evening's grace," responded the lady playfully. "Have you been taught to work?"
"No."
"Oh, how sad! Why, Miss Lathom, we have a task before us! Can you not use a needle at all?"
"Oh, yes. I can make and mend my clothes, and so on. But I had to teach myself."
There was a silence. "You don't mean that you made the suit you have on?"
"Yes."
"Oh," said Mrs. Cooper. The wind was taken out of her sails. "Why, you are quite agenius! We shall have to takelessons. But now, I came to ask you to come with me, and I will show you your room, and we will have a little talk."
Millie rose obediently, and followed her aunt from the room; as they went, the masks dropped, the girls lifted their heads and looked at each other with intense interest.
"She's going to make her show the letter."
"She was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them."—JANE AUSTEN.
The first idea suggested by Mrs. Cooper to the mind of the beholder was almost inevitably the above. How could any man ever have liked her well enough to marry her?
Mr. Chetwynd-Cooper was among those unfortunates who are sent into the world without a sense of humour. He thus fell a victim to the same error of judgment which poor well-meaning King George the Third had committed before him: that of mistaking a dull, pretentious prig for a really good woman. Perhaps no queen in history, of whatever moral character, ever made a greater fiasco as the bringer-up of a large family than did Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. But in this respect Mrs. Cooper vied with her, and for the same reason. Each was so secure in her own belief in herself as possessed of all the domestic virtues, that to her the possibility of making a mistake never presented itself.
Such women are beyond the reach of argument. Mrs. Cooper had decided, quite early in life—on what grounds is not known—that to be such a woman as she was, ought to be the goal of all female endeavour. Hence, nothing could shake the complacency of her own content. She never tired of the pose of the perfect wife and mother, the parochial guardian angel; and this, although her nursery had been the epitome of untidiness and mismanagement, and her husband was obliged to keep her accounts, and in other ways to step into the breach continually to supply her glaring deficiencies. Neither was she discomposed by the fact that all her own children had found her out at an early age. If her husband ever broke through his habitual reserve, and remonstrated with her, she met him with the patient smile of the saint who is misunderstood.
Very soon after marriage he had found out the iron hand beneath her velvet glove. He had discovered that his own influence was nil, that argument could not move her, that opposition merely stiffened her smiling obstinacy. He had sunk into that life which is the most terrible form of solitude: complete isolation from those nearest to him. The worst of it was that, though he had no effect upon his wife, she had a gradual and insidious effect upon him. Continual contact with a dwarfed intelligence was causing inevitable deterioration, of which he was not aware.
Had the dalesmen known his daily martyrdom, he might have gained them; but his pride and his loyalty pushed him back behind barred doors. And what nobody yet had ever divined, this new niece of his knew before she had been twenty-four hours under his roof.
It made him hate her. The first time her grave, tranquil eyes rested upon her aunt, he felt that she understood and despised her. Then that same limpid gaze—direct, keen, pure—travelled to him, the man who was the life-companion of such a woman. He could feel her thought probing him, wondering at him, pitying him. He had not at first thought her like his sister, the dead Melicent to whom he had been sincerely attached. But when he encountered that wonderful glance, he saw the likeness so strongly that he afterwards never forgot it—was never able to look at the younger Melicent without thinking of her more beautiful, radiant mother, who had followed the man she loved into the wilderness.
But the very likeness embittered him. He had always nursed a grudge against his wilful sister—a half-contemptuous grudge, as against one who had stepped outside the pale of conventions held so sacred by his own wife. Was her young daughter to come from the wilds to sit in judgment upon this exemplary pair, who found the straitest paths of domestic dulness wide enough for them to walk in? He almost wished that Melicent would do something that should justify him in his dislike of her.
He was brooding over it alone in his study, where he wrote with much care his cold, dry, unreal sermons, when his wife's head appeared round the door, with her usual coy smile.
"Quiteunsuccessful, my darling boy," she said. "She defies me openly; and yet I flatter myself I wasmostdiplomatic."
Like many essentially cold-hearted people, Mrs. Cooper was prodigal of endearing epithets. Her husband, on principle, never used any.
"A direct command would, I imagine, have met the case better than diplomacy," he said, in his cold, collected tones. "What did she say? Was she rude?"
"Well, not exactly. She said it would be a breach of confidence to show her letter, but that she would see that the young man wrote no more. She also said that she insists upon her right to correspond with her guardian without the letters being overlooked. Rather ashockingway to talk to me, wasn't it? But we must be very forgiving at first, I see that, and make very bigallowancesfor the poor darling! The guardian himself seems to be quite young, and unmarried. Why did not poor Arnold appoint you guardian? As it is, she evidently thinks we have no authority."
He sat, with a mind oddly divided between dislike for the girl who defied him, and a sneaking satisfaction that Minna had been routed for once—by his sister's child!
"However," said his wife, secure as ever in her own infallibility, "we shall manage her all right in the end. The example of our girls will beinvaluable. It is best to put the matter aside for the present, and let her settle down."
"Will she settle down, do you think?" asked the vicar.
There was a tolerant, complacent smile. "My darling boy, I have trained five, and why not a sixth?"
The vicar did not contradict her; he merely asked:
"Did she tell you what her letter contained?"
"She said she had not opened it yet, which I fear must have been a—a—tarradidle"—Mrs. Cooper went, through certain evolutions of lips and eyes, intended as a mute apology for her use of a word so shocking—"but she said she felt sure it was only to say that, if she is not happy here, the writer had a home waiting for her."
"Preposterous nonsense! She is a child, and the man probably a savage," said the vicar, with some bitterness. "Picture Maddie or Gwen receiving a note of the kind!"
But when Millie did open Bert's letter, the contents were of a wholly different nature from what she had expected.
It merely contained a brief announcement of the fact that he had enlisted in that regiment of scouts which later was known to fame as Lacy's Lions.
In the schoolroom, the knowledge that Melicent had stood firm communicated an electrical excitement to the atmosphere. The idea of possible revolt opened prospects of which nobody had as yet dared to think. Unconsciously to themselves, her cousins already regarded her as a strike-leader—a Moses who should lead them out of the house of bondage.
And yet no creature could have been less anxious for revolt than this girl. Her one desire was to fall upon knowledge and devour it. She was ready to become the slave of anyone who would teach her.
But one day in the schoolroom was enough to quench hope from that quarter. The education bestowed on her by her father had been partial; but what she knew, she knew thoroughly. Her Latin and arithmetic and Euclid were all good; her knowledge of geography and English history made Tommy feel quite faint. Of French and German she was wholly ignorant, and could not pick out the notes on the piano.
But in all respects she knew enough to know that Tommy knew nothing. All the morning the governess was experiencing the annoyance which Mr. Cooper had known, feeling the clear eyes upon her full of judgment.
The leading point in the education of Mr. Cooper's girls was that they should have no judgment. They were always to be content to accept what they were told. When they came in contact with actual life, their only standard would be that such and such a thing was according to, or differed from, what they were used to.
"I am a great believer in the power of habit," the vicar was wont to say. Poor soul! Habit had moulded him with a vengeance; he might be excused for thinking highly of its powers over the human intelligence.
Melicent was a problem to her cousins. They were fascinated by her, as the weak must always be by the strong; but they resented her aloofness. And they were simply bewildered by her tastes.
Tommy was—sub rosâ, of course—reading aloud to them a thrilling serial from theDaily Looking-glass. It was called "Phyllis and the Duke," and was a story of the pure love of that gallant nobleman, the Duke of Mendip, for his sister's governess, the lovely Phyllis de Forester; of the machinations of his envious cousin, Captain the Honourable Percy Blagdon; and of how Phyllis turned out to be the unacknowledged daughter of an Earl, and the true owner of the Honourable Percy's estates. They had reached a thrilling chapter, in which the trembling young governess went to interview a clairvoyante, in a mystic kind of house in St. John's Wood, to ascertain what had become of her chivalrous lover. Tommy was uneasy when the story took this turn. She did not like the sound of a mysterious house in St. John's Wood, and began to reflect, with resentment, that nowadays you could not trust even thefeuilletonof a halfpenny journal to be wholly inoffensive. But the writer was perfectly equal to the occasion, and knew his public to a nicety—or might we say, to a nastiness? The clairvoyante turned out to be Phyllis's deeply injured mamma, a young lady who would on no account have gone without the indispensable marriage ceremony; and the gentleman who exploited her, and "ran" the mysterious house, was her own brother, Phyllis's uncle, who long had sought his beloved niece in vain.
"I can't think why you don't like it," sighed Gwen, whose eyes were kindled, her cheeks aglow.
"It is so unreal and so silly," said her cousin calmly. "People don't go on like that. I like a story that makes you forget that it's not true."
"Such as what?" they asked her.
After reflection—"Such as 'Silas Marner,'" she said.
They had never heard of "Silas Marner."
The glorious autumn weather continued, and two or three days after Millie's arrival they took her for a long walk, out of the Dale, along Radlem Rigg, to look at the curious old prehistoric relic locally known as Tod's Trush.
The loveliness of her surroundings was again borne in upon Millie. The same up-soaring of spirit which she had experienced when her uncle drove her from the station once more exhilarated her. She could not analyse what it was that she found so different here from the land of her birth. She came from a country of clear air and vast spaces, of solitude and immeasurable distance. These dales were small in comparison with the endless rippling veldt she knew. But here there confronted her an element which she was quick to feel, though as yet too young to define—the element of mystery.
Strange it is that a few atmospheric effects should have power to lift the soul into new realms, into the brooding heart of a tender, tinted secret, which haunts the uplands and the valleys of Cleveshire, making a promised land of every peak that emerges, suggestive, from its golden, shimmering veil. The primal truth which underlay the power of the Veiled Isis was here; but in the North the magic is stronger, because to its mystery it adds the crowning note of austerity.
There is a loneliness which is the result, not of distance, but of inaccessibility. The dwellers in two valleys, perhaps five miles apart, divided by a high mountain, a dangerous pass, are separated far more thoroughly than those who dwell with fifty miles of plain between them, which the train will traverse in an hour. These dales give the impression of something remote, inviolable—something stern and shy, yet with a heart of glowing colour, of infinite tenderness, for those who can understand.
The Trush itself, when they reached it, was an old barrow, or tumulus, the earth covering of which had been entirely removed centuries ago. It was a square kist of stones, the top of which had fallen in. The coffin, or coffins, which it must once have contained, had vanished so long ago that a persistent local tradition maintained that there had never been any; but that the little house had been the abode of a being of supernatural origin, called Tod, concerning whom antiquarians cudgelled their brains in vain. Two upright slabs still stood like the jambs of a tiny doorway, with a lintel across; the whole surrounded by a circular wreath of large stones, which probably defined the original size of the mound.
To Melicent, who had never seen anything of the kind before, the vacant and lonely sepulchre was fraught with great pathos. Her thoughts took wing, and wandered to the times when human hands had erected this monument, and wondered whether it then stood in such unbroken solitude as it did now.
They had brought cakes with them, and a bottle of milk, and they all sat down among the heather and harebells, and refreshed themselves, while Tommy read a fresh instalment of "Phyllis and the Duke."
"Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."—FLETCHER.
Nothing compelled Melicent to listen, so she sat on Tod's Trush, just over his pathetic little doorway, her arms round her knees, her eyes fixed, full of the forward-reaching, time-devouring dreams of youth, upon the lovely lines of the land, ridge beyond ridge, dying into grape-bloom haze upon the faint horizon.
She was not unhappy. Her isolation hardly distressed her; she was accustomed to being an alien among unsympathetic people. She was, however, considering what she should do. She actively disliked her aunt, was repelled by her uncle, mentally herded her cousins and their governess together as so many silly triflers, not particularly honest. But all this she could bear, if only she might learn to fit herself for her future; and this, it appeared, was impossible.
If only it had not been so! For here she felt that she could live and work. Soul and body were being laved in pure air—renewed and vivified. The terrible sense of antagonism to all her surroundings which she had always felt in Africa was gone. There she had been craving, craving all the time for she knew not what; her cry had been that of Paracelsus—"I go to find my soul!" It seemed to her that she had found it, or would find it, in the stern keeping of this rugged land, where the only thing that was out of harmony was the attitude of her own kindred.
Just opposite to her, among the broken ground which rose from the main valley, forming a ridge parallel to that on which she sat, was a little house, embowered in fruit trees.
An ampylopsis creeper on the grey stone wall gave a touch of vivid scarlet; a great purple Jackmanii clematis smothered the porch.
"There," thought Melicent, "I could wish to be. There I could live and learn things, and the days would never seem too long."
She studied the little remote place, trying to see whether any road led to it, and admiring the way in which it stood, as if lifting its face to the kisses of the southern and western sun.
Lost in reverie, she had not heard the approach of anyone, and was surprised when a dog jumped through the heather near her, on the side of the Trush farthest from where her cousins were seated. A whirring of strong brown wings arose from their covert, and a grouse family shot up, with indignant "Cock-cocks," wheeling in the blue air. Three guns cracked, and in a moment the five Vicarage girls were on their feet.
As three sportsmen appeared, Gwen made one bound to where Millie sat, her face aflame.
"It's Freshfield," she gasped in her ear, "and young Mr. Burmester, and somebody I don't know. Oh, I wish he was alone! He won't dare to speak to us. Look at his nice curly dark hair! Isn't he scrumptious?"
The young agent, with an expression of acute discomfort, had raised his hat to the phalanx of great girls. Mr. Burmester was looking bewildered at the sudden appearance of what looked like a boarding-school out for a walk emerging from the heather. He also pulled off his cap, and said, in the deprecating tones of a very young man:
"Oh, I say! I'm afraid we startled you." With which he made as though to pass on.
Millie had not moved from her seat on the Trush; it was not her way to be startled. She had taken off her hat, and sat there bare-headed in the sunset, her heart full of quiet, like Wordsworth's nun—too steeped in Nature's calm to notice this intrusion.
The third member of the shooting party had paused to examine the lock of his gun. He was a short, rather thick-set man, with very blue, clear eyes, which redeemed his face from the common-place—which saw beauty in all Nature, and seemed to exact truth from men. When he raised these eyes from the gun, he saw Millie seated there on the Trush, and he gave a glad laugh, not at all surprised, but full of satisfaction.
"Hallo, Melicent! There you are!" he cried out heartily.
Melicent bounded up, looked around, pushed away Gwen, who stood before her, and leaping into the heather, flew to her friend. She gave a little cry of gladness.
"Mr. Helston! How did you get here? Is Mrs. Helston here too?"
"She's not actually here in sight, but she's not far off," he replied, putting his arm round her. "You'll see her very soon. You must present me to your cousins. Lance, I've found a friend."
Lancelot Burmester, in secret terror of what he called "flappers," came up awkwardly. He was a clever-looking fellow, fair, with an incisive profile, a pale face and pince-nez. He advanced from one side, as Tommy, anxious and heated, hurried up on the other.
"Miss Lutwyche and I are old friends," said Mr. Helston pleasantly. "We made the voyage from Africa together. Have I the pleasure of speaking to Mrs. Cooper?"
Tommy, blushing, disclaimed the honour, explained her identity, and shook hands with young Burmester. Freshfield, meanwhile, slipped round to Gwen behind the backs of the party.
"I know something of Mayne, Miss Lutwyche's guardian," said Mr. Helston in explanation; "and at his request my wife and I undertook the serious task of keeping this young person in order for the voyage." He did not add that he had himself paid the difference between first and second-class fare for her. "After her being so cruelly mishandled," he said, "you may imagine she needed care. She was not really fit to travel, but she was so eager to be off." He smiled down at her. "I think she looks a little different," he concluded quite fondly, "from what she did when we first took her in hand."
"But you have not said yet how you got here?" urged Millie, who was holding, in both hers, the hand that hung over her shoulder.
"Why, the very day you left us I ran up against Burmester in Pall Mall, and he said, 'Come down for a week's shooting,' and when we realised that Ilberston is, as it were, next door to Fransdale, you may imagine that we were doubly minded to come. Well, here we are! And how do you like England?"
"If by England you mean Fransdale," said Millie, "I like it in a way that can't be put in words."
"Oh, yes, it can be put in words; the thing's been done. You should read the works of one William Wordsworth," struck in Lance Burmester.
Millie raised her eyes to his face> and apparently liked what she found there.
"Should I? I will," she said thoughtfully.
"What have you done to your arm?" asked the young man kindly.
"My dear chap," said Harry Helston, "what this scrap of a child has been through would have broken the spirit of anybody else. Her brute of a Boer stepmother—"
Millie turned to him quickly.
"Please, Mr. Helston, my uncle does not wish it known," she said, with sedate dignity.
"What? Oh, very well, pussie!" replied her friend, gazing round at the eager faces of the governess and the girls; "I'll say no more, then. Mustn't get you into trouble. What are you up to with my gun? Want to shoot a bird—eh?"
"Oh, do let me," she begged; "I've not had a chance for so long! My arm is well enough for me to be able to take a sight. Do let me try!"
"Come this way. Freshfield says there are any amount of birds just over this ridge," said Burmester eagerly. "I should like to see you shoot."
Melicent possessed herself of the gun, and went forward, laughing and sparkling. The others followed as if spellbound. Nobody had an eye for Freshfield and Gwen, who came slowly behind, making the most of their moment. Very soon, up went the whir of brown wings again. Millie stopped, took aim with what seemed to be great deliberation; there was a breathless pause; a bird fell; everyone was laughing and congratulating the sportswoman. Lance Burmester presented her with her prize, and added another to make a brace. She was urged to come on, and repeat her exploit, but Tommy was growing nervous, and interfered.
"The vicar might not like it—they must be getting home."
Melicent went, quite happily, having received the assurance that her friends were at hand, and would look her up before long. She was unprepared for the torrent of reproaches and abuse which streamed forth upon her head as soon as they were out of sight of the shooting party.
"You mean little cat!" "You're a regular sneak!" "We know now, it's you yourself that want to keep it dark!" "Why couldn't you hold your tongue!" "Father saidyouwere not to mention it, he never said a word about other people."
Their meaning began to dawn upon her at last.
"You mean my not allowing Mr. Helston to tell how I broke my arm? Well, of all the people I ever met, you have the most low-down notions of honour!" she cried indignantly. "You are just like my half-brothers and sisters! I always thought English people were straight, that it was only Boers that were such skunks!"
Tommy interfered, and reproved Millie for using bad language; and a more congenial topic was soon found, in the delights of having met and spoken to, not only Freshfield, but Mr. Burmester himself.
"Maddie wants him for her young man," explained Theo; "only we didn't see how the thing was to be begun, because, you see, we never get any chance to speak to him. Father and mother did go to dine with Sir Joseph once, but mother doesn't like Lady Burmester. She is dreadfully High Church, she thinks everybody ought to go to the Communion service every Sunday, and we only have it once a month, so on the other Sundays Lady Burmester drives all the way to Ilberston. Mother thinks it so impertinent of Lady Burmester to think she can possibly know better than a clergyman's wife. She said she wouldn't go there again; but I don't think they've been asked. You know really, mother doesn't know anything at all about it. I asked her why it was wrong to have that service every week, because we are supposed to believe in the Catholic Church, and all other Catholics seem to; so she said it was most improper for a young girl to argue about such things, as her father was sure to know best I said: 'If he knows, won't he explain to me?' and she said: 'You must wait till you are a great deal older.'"
"To-morrow is the first Sunday in the month," chimed in Maddie, "so they will all be there. What did you think of Lancelot Burmester's looks? Do tell us all about the Helstons. You were lucky to make friends with them, I daresay they will ask you to stay. Mother doesn't like us to go and stay away, for fear of our hearing naughty words. She doesn't think anybody is so well brought up as we are! If she could only hear some of the stories Willie and Georgie bring home from school!"
They all laughed at this.
"The real reason is, we have no clothes to go in, and she can't afford to buy us any," grumbled Theo, who was perhaps the handsomest of the girls, and the cleverest too.
"I daresay you could make your own if you tried," said Melicent. "I'd help. I think you ought to make your own clothes."
In the interest suddenly created by this new idea, nobody noticed that during the whole of the walk home Gwen, the talkative, never said a word.
* * * * * * * *
"George, what an epidemic of girls!" groaned Lance, as soon as Tommy and her brood were out of sight. "Those poor Coopers! As if their own great, ugly five were not enough, but they must take on another to make the half-dozen!"
"It is an act of true kindness," replied Helston. "For a man with five daughters of his own to make room for another, shows him to be extremely conscientious."
"The little cousin," critically said Lance, "has something fetching about her. Nothing to look at, but one is conscious of a personality."
"I never look at her," said Millie's friend, "but those lines occur to my mind—
"The good stars met in your horoscopeMade you of spirit, fire and dew."
"I don't know about the dew; she's a skinny little wisp," was the uncivil comment.
"Wait till she grows up," said Millie's champion. "You would wonder there was anything left of her if you knew what she has come through. But I gave her my word, so I mustn't tell you; and after all," he added, musing, "I don't wonder that the vicar doesn't want the tale to get about; it's not a pretty story, and I daresay would do the child no good in a narrow-minded, provincial circle."
"I can't think how she will get on with those Coopers," remarked Burmester. "Did you ever see such raw material? And you heard what my mater said at lunch? They are such hide-bound, pragmatical—no doing anything with them. The vicar quietly goes his way, listening to nobody's wishes—thinks himself infallible. The pater has given him up as a bad job; says you might as well have a cabbage at the Vicarage! Hall, of Ilberston, is such a good chap! He might give this Southerner many a hint. But the Coopers won't have a word to say to him, because he has a weekly Eucharist, and makes the schoolchildren attend."
Helston listened with sinkings of the heart. This did not sound like a household in which Melicent would be happy. But report is often one-sided. He determined to judge for himself.
"I could not hideMy quickening inner life from those at watch.They saw a light at a window now and then,They had not set there: who had set it there?My father's sister started when she caughtMy soul agaze in my eyes. She could not sayI had no business with a sort of soul,But plainly she objected."—ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
The following day Sir Joseph and Lady Burmester, with their guests, duly attended the ugly little church in Fransdale.
There had been a church there since the dawnings of English history. But, as the Reformed Church lost her grip upon the strong, narrow minds of the Dalesmen, it had been allowed to fall in ruins. Then had come the disastrous "churchwarden" restoration, which had abolished all landmarks. A stumpy little box-like structure now stood among the ancient graves, in a velvet-smooth meadow overshadowed by the frowning hills which closed round the head of the Dale.
Mrs. Cooper had been duly informed by Tommy of the meeting with the gentlemen from the Grange, and of the fact that one of them seemed to be a great friend of Melicent's. There was no valid reason why this news should displease her; but it did. She was vexed that her insignificant niece should have so many friends. The passion of jealousy was smouldering deep down in her heart, among other dormant forces of which she was unaware. Like many parents, while constantly assuring herself and her children that looks were nothing, she nevertheless expected the girls to be admired and sought out. When first she saw Millie, she had experienced relief at the thought that such a thin, pale shrimp of a girl could never prove a rival to her own. That she should be thrust forth to the notice of the Burmesters, so early in her sojourn at Fransdale, was most displeasing; she told herself that it must give the poor child a totally false idea of her own importance.
However, forewarned is forearmed. She was ready after service with the sweetest smiles of the amiable aunt, to be presented to the Helstons, and thank them suitably for their care of "poor darling Melicent."
Mrs. Helston was a picturesque woman, a brunette, with hair prematurely grey, which set off the tints of her bright complexion. She wore a wide hat with strings, and her smile captivated the hearts of the five staring Miss Coopers.
Lady Burmester was not a tactful person. She did not like the Coopers, whom she thought pompous and prosy. She proceeded to ask Mrs. Cooper to come to lunch the following day, and to bring her niece with her. She did not include any of the vicar's daughters in her invitation.
Mrs. Cooper smiled, and gushed, and seemed so delighted with the invitation, that her ladyship was conscious of a slight shock when she found that she was refusing it. It was early days yet, and would be unsettling for dear Melicent, who must get a little more used to English ways before she could bring her out. She knew dear Lady Burmester would understand. She suggested instead, that the two ladies from the Grange should come to tea at the Vicarage one afternoon; suppose they were to say Wednesday?
In a bewildered way Lady Burmester submitted to this unlooked-for dictation, and, taken by surprise, obediently said Wednesday; but as they were driving home, she suddenly turned to her friend and asked:
"Why wouldn't that perverse woman lunch with me, I wonder?"
Brenda Helston laughed her good, sincere laugh.
"My dear! You invited her niece, not her daughter!"
"O-o-oh! So that was where the shoe pinched," said her ladyship, surprised.
"You should always make allowances for human nature," commented Brenda. "It would not be human for a woman with all those daughters not to be touchy at seeing them passed over. We must propitiate her on Wednesday. I want to get Melicent to myself—to find out what she is thinking and feeling. I shall not be able to say half that I wish to, at the Vicarage."
"I daresay that supplies a second reason for her aunt's refusal!" said her friend, amused. "You and Mr. Helston have a very high opinion of that funny little white-faced girl, have you not?"
"Very!" said Brenda emphatically. "I never saw any creature so famished for the little tendernesses of life, so responsive to kindness, so eager to improve herself. Had you seen her when she first came on board—sullen,farouche, always on the defensive ... and how she melted and sweetened, and blossomed forth! Harry and I positively love her. We always, as you know, longed for a daughter. We have written to Carol Mayne, telling him that we will give her a home if she is not happy with her own people. He was doubtful; he thought the uncle's letter cold-blooded. But really, as I asked him, how could you expect enthusiasm on the part of a man with all those daughters, at the prospect of having another thrust upon him? I told Carol at the time, I liked the writer for being guarded; he could not know what she was."
"Does he strike you," asked Lady Burmester, "as being the kind of man to find out?"
Mrs. Helston hesitated.
"I fear not; he struck me as a dense kind of man. I heard Harry ask him, after service, whether this church were on the site of the old one—whether any of the old material had been built in; and he replied that he did not know, and had never inquired. I am afraid that will settle him, in Harry's estimation!" They both laughed gaily. "Harry looked," said his wife, "much as he might have done, had the vicar said that he did not know who his mother was, and had never inquired."
"There is a difference between him and Mr. Hall," observed Lady Burmester.
"Yes; was he not interesting yesterday? I shall not soon forget that wonderful church on the verge of the precipice. One feels that one knows the true meaning of sermons in stones when you have heard him talk of Ilberston. He knows every stone in his church, and every heart in his parish."
* * * * * * * *
It was on Monday that Alfred Dow, riding down the Dale, came, as he passed the inn, upon Millie as she stood in the road with her cousins, waiting for Tommy, who had gone into the Post Office.
He promptly dismounted, and Melicent, her face brightening, proceeded to shake hands cordially, the girls looking on, divided between horror and interest. This was in the sight of the sun; for the inn, and the cluster of cottages known as Church Houses, composed the only nucleus the village could be said to possess; and everyone was looking on.
Upon this scene the vicar came, emerging from a vexatious interview with a stiff-necked churchwarden; and he was not pleased.
His manner, as he greeted his nonconforming parishioner, was congealed. His voice, with its inward stillness, frightened his daughters.
"Now, Mr. Cooper, I want you to let all your young ladies come up to tea with my mother at Crow Gate." He called it, in local speech, Crow Yat. "Let 'em come an' see t' ponies an' t' foal an' t' calves, an' taste mother's damson gin, for we've a drop left yet. Let this lady bring 'em, if she'll be so kind. Let's see"—he raised his cap and scratched his curly poll. "To-day's Monday. Suppose we said Thursday. An' we'll hear more o' they Boers," he added mischieviously, to Millie.
"If Mrs. Dow is kind enough to second your invitation, perhaps she would write direct to Mrs. Cooper," said the vicar, still more gelid. "I cannot say what her plans are for this week."
Dow turned slightly away, looked down at Millie, and deliberately shut one eye. Yet she could see that he was angry too.
"Oh—well; mother's not a grand letter-writer," he said cheerfully, "but I'll tell her your wishes. Good day, passon!"
"Good day, Mr. Dow!"
The vicar walked back with Miss Lathom and the six girls.
"You will, please," said he to the governess, "when you have occasion to enter a shop, take Melicent with you. I thought I had told you that she is never to be left with her cousins. She is wholly untrustworthy. After ten years in this parish I have more or less succeeded in showing these people that their free and easy ways are not for me; and now I am to come and find my niece and daughters unchaperoned in the public street, laughing and joking with a dissenting farmer! I will not have it!"
Tommy was abject. She trembled before him; but when he sent for Millie into the study, it was a different thing. He asked her what excuse she had for her behaviour. She asked in wonder:
"What behaviour?"
He explained the enormity of her conduct, adding that he was under the impression that he had told her, on the day of her arrival, that in England, social distinctions must be observed.
"Do you mean that you may not even speak to anyone who is not your social equal?"
"Certainly I mean it! When Mr. Dow greeted you to-day, you should have merely bowed, and turned to speak to one of your cousins; then he would have been obliged to pass on."
"In Africa," said his niece, "we should think that contemptible."
"As you know, that is just the point. We are not in Africa, but in England, where a social code exists."
"And as long as I am with you, must I behave so—pretending not to see people who have been kind to me?"
"As long as you live with me, you will do as I tell you."
"Whether I think it right or not?"
"Certainly; you have no right to set your judgment against mine."
"Thank you for explaining that to me. I am afraid I shall not be able to stay with you," she said simply.
"That is a foolish, as well as a rude speech, Melicent."
"I beg your pardon; I am sorry I am foolish, and I did not mean to be rude. Is that all you wanted to say to me?"
"Nonsensical impertinence!" said the vicar. "Where could you go, I wonder, if I declined to keep you?"
"To Mr. and Mrs. Helston," she replied unhesitatingly. "They have told Mr. Mayne that they would like to have me."
"Well, upon my word!" The vicar was well-nigh jolted out of his composure. He pulled himself together only by a strong effort. "Leave the room," he said. "Apologise, and leave the room."
"What am I to apologise for?"
"For gross impertinence."
After a minute's pause.
"I have not been impertinent," she said, "and I shall not apologise. I think you in the wrong."
She walked out of the room, leaving an angry man behind her.
* * * * * * * *
The vicar's quiet insolence had aroused Alfred Dow, as it roused all his parishioners, to a feeling of active hostility. He felt a desire to get the better of him, if he could.
He sent a man next day with a note from Mrs. Dow to Mrs. Cooper—a note which the old lady had written with many protests, telling her son he was "nobbut a giddy fool" to be asking such a thing of her. Why should she make her best cheese-cakes for "them loompin' lasses o' passon's?"—when madam treated all dissenters as the dirt beneath her feet?
Mrs. Cooper was very undecided as to what answer she should return, when the unwelcome note arrived. On the one hand, she detested the Dows, and did not like to be indebted to them. They had never invited her girls before; she felt that this invitation was really on Melicent's account. Furthermore, Melicent was in disgrace, and did not deserve a treat. On the other hand, she knew that her five, who were never asked out, longed to go. It would be a sign to the whole village of a splendid condescension, did she allow it. Also, the fact of their being engaged to go to Crow Yat, would furnish an excuse, should Lady Burmester arrive on Wednesday, as seemed likely, with more invitations to Melicent. The vicar was for refusing; but he was disregarded. Melicent must be taught the difference between condescending to drink tea with one's inferiors and addressing them, when you met them, as equals.
The girls were wild with delight when they heard they were to go. They all walked to Bensdale Post Office that afternoon, and Gwen posted a letter.
Lady Burmester and Mrs. Helston duly came to tea at the Vicarage on Wednesday, and were received by Mrs. Cooper in the gaunt drawing-room—where she gave them what the girls were wont to call "pretence tea," as opposed to a solid, dining-room table arrangement—in elegant seclusion.
Her flow of amiable small-talk was so unceasing, that they had been there some twenty minutes before Lady Burmester, warned by recent error, could get in a request to see "your girls and Miss Lutwyche."
It was another quarter of an hour before Maddie, Gwen and Melicent appeared. Mrs. Cooper presented her girls to her ladyship, with the air of one showing off a promising baby; and Mrs. Helston drew Melicent to the window, to try and get a word unheard.
"Melicent, I have news for you," she said—"news which I think you will be glad to hear. We are not leaving Fransdale when we leave the Grange. Sir Joseph has let to us, furnished, for a month, the sweetest cottage you ever saw."
Melicent's eyes glowed
"Then I can come and see you," she began; but, checking herself, sighed. "That is, if Aunt Minna lets me. But she is so curious. She treats me like a prisoner. I am never allowed to go out alone. Are all English girls like that? Do you know, it does irritate me so."
"A lovely view from this window, isn't it?" said the suave voice of Aunt Minna, just behind. "Melicent, darling, go and fetch that curious photo of Slabbert's Poort to show Lady Burmester."
Melicent, with one glance at her friend, went off as desired. Mrs. Cooper beamed upon her visitor, and spoke confidentially.
"I am very hopeful of Melicent—very," she affirmed, as though someone had just expressed a contrary opinion. "Her faults may be turned into virtues, I feel sure. Her obstinacy will develop into firmness, when she has learned to obey."
Mindful of her desire to conciliate, Mrs. Helston smiled, as she said:
"I feel sure you realise how hard it must be for a girl who has been the mainstay of a delicate father for years, to bear restraint."
"We know, don't we," cooed Mrs. Cooper, with her little eyes almost shut, "that obedience is the foundation-stone of all training."
"Melicent's training seems to me to have risen far above the foundations of character," said Mrs. Helston, unable to help speaking with some warmth.
"Have you girls of your own, Mrs. Helston?" with an intonation of condescending pity. Then, playfully: "Ah, well; it makes all the difference, you know."
Melicent reappeared at this moment, and Mrs. Helston telegraphed to Lady Burmester: "Hopeless! Let's go."
Her ladyship rose and discharged the arrow in her quiver.
"I come with an invitation from Sir Joseph, which I must deliver," she said. "We are all going to Clairvaulx Priory Ruins on Monday, as Mr. and Mrs. Helston leave us the following day. Sir Joseph hopes to see yourself, the vicar, your three elder girls and Miss Lutwyche. We will send the waggonette and pair for you at half-past ten, unless it is wet."
Mrs. Cooper began to reply, with beaming smiles.
"What an enchanting idea! What a pity that Monday should be the beginning of the week, when it was specially important that nothing should interfere with lessons! Had it been another day, later on—a picnic was the most delightful of expeditions. But her girls were at an age when she must be very firm, and she was afraid—"
But at this point the vicar walked in, and on the invitation being conveyed to him, accepted it at once and unreservedly, for them all. He accompanied the ladies to their carriage, saw them drive away, and returned to the drawing-room where his wife awaited him by the tea-table.
"Really, Aidmund," she began; but he cut in.
"It is most short-sighted policy on your part, Minna, to affront Lady Burmester."
"But, my darling boy, the discipline of the schoolroom—"
"I believe to be excellent, but it must give way sometimes," replied her darling boy. "It is of primary importance that we should be on good terms with the Grange. You had your way about the Dow invitation. Let me have mine about this."
"Well, at any rate," said his wife, after a pause, "I have taught her ladyship not to invite my niece and exclude my daughters! A little firmness, dear Aidmund, as I often tell you, works wonders!"
"And how came Miss Matilda not to marry him?" asked I.
"Oh, I don't know. She was willing enough, I think; but you know, Cousin Thomas would not have been enough of a gentleman for the rector and Miss Jenkyns."
"Well! But they were not to marry him," said I impatiently.
"No; but they did not like Miss Matty to marry below her rank. You know, she was the rector's daughter, and somehow they are related to Sir Peter Arley; Miss Jenkyns thought a deal of that."
"Poor Miss Mattie!" said I.
—CRANFORD (Mrs. Gaskell).
The plentiful experiments, by various nations of late, in the difficult science of government by a democracy, have left some of us strongly of opinion that the ideal form of rule would be the despotism of the angel.
Failing the angel, however, one is reluctantly forced to the conclusion that despotism of any other kind is the very ... well, exactly the other thing.
The despotism of Mrs. Cooper was growing hard for Melicent to bear.
It was curious to watch the infatuated complacency with which she daily presided over that tableful of turbulent young lives, of whose springs of action she knew, and wished to know, nothing.
What she exacted was submission: nothing more. She did not desire to convince her children's understandings; only to hinder them from giving expression to their thoughts. As they sat in empty silence around her, while she prattled of trivialities, she congratulated herself on their docility. Like the Roman conquerors of old—"she made a solitude, and called it peace."
Miss Lathom had had the wit to see, within a week of her first arrival, the kind of service which was required of her. It was not asked that she should approve Mrs. Cooper's judgment; merely that she should not question it. So long as she kept the girls at lessons for the required number of hours, it did not matter how little they learned.
She had adapted herself to circumstances in order to find amodus vivendi; for she was poor and ignorant, and would have found it difficult to obtain another post. But sometimes she was frightened, of late, at the heat of the fires which she had kindled.
The animal side of these big, country-bred, well-fed girls was strongly developed, and cried for a vent. Their starved minds gave them no contrast, no resources. They were without the influences of dancing, drilling, tennis, cycling—without the stimulus of sheer hard brain-work, the thrilling interests of school-life and girl-friendships. There was nothing to stem the flood of their growing consciousness of sex. Gwen especially, vigorous and full-blooded, had arrived at a dangerous crisis.
Meanwhile, Melicent was beginning to find life empty and depressing.
From the moment of the arrival of Mrs. Dow's invitation, her cousins discussed Lance Burmester, Alfred Dow, and young Freshfield, from morning to night, except for those monosyllabic portions of time which they spent under their parents' eye. They talked of the way these young men walked, the colour of their eyes, the shape of their collars, the sound of their voices, their little manners and expressions. They meant no harm. They only needed an outlet for that natural craving for romance, which their mother thought proper to ignore.
Melicent laboured hard to find a field for her own superfluous energy. On the first morning after her arrival, she had risen early, made her bed, aired her room, borrowed the housemaid's brush, swept and dusted.
Her aunt did not, for two or three days, discover what she was doing. But when she did, she was scandalised. What would the servants think? Millie showed herself inclined to esteem but lightly the possible amazement of the two clumsy girls who formed the Vicarage staff. But her domestic efforts were straitly forbidden.
On the following morning, awake as usual, and roaming into the schoolroom while the household slumbered, she marked her uncle in the kitchen garden at work, patient and lonely, filling up the hours that must elapse before he could get his breakfast. She went and offered her vacant moments. He replied that her aunt would not like it. She was urgent, and he, wavering, presently allowed her to help him dig potatoes. They did not talk, but she worked with nimble capacity; and when she appeared again next morning, he surprised in himself a sneaking feeling of gladness.
But that day, Mrs. Cooper discovered the new pursuit; and it was stopped.
Millie, however, was not to be defeated. She next turned her attention to her cousin's dress; and, finding some stuff which had been lying in the house for months, cut out and made up blouses for Maddie and Gwen. This last matutinal pursuit found more favour; and henceforth the girl's fingers were fully occupied, though her mind continued to crave.
It was in wild spirits that the party started for Crow Yat, which was a fine old house, standing much lower down the Dale, and for a wonder, built of red brick, and not grey stone. It had been the shooting-lodge and toy of a baronet of George II.'s time, who had tired of it, and sold it to Alfred Dow's ancestor.
There was a drawing-room with four fine doorways, the pediments enriched with Adam's mouldings; and here the stiff-necked, proud old dame received the Vicarage troop with evident desire to show that she considered herself fully as good as they, if not better.
Alfred, a really first-rate specimen of his class, in that riding dress which is the natural garb of the well-to-do Dalesman—who does not drive on his unspeakable roads unless obliged—atoned for his mother's lack of cordiality by the sincerity of his welcome.
He led them through the garden, gathering late roses and dahlias with a lavish hand; then in among the deep lush orchard grass, filling their hands with delicious apples. He sent a boy up the meadow to gather mushrooms for them to take home; but on Melicent's vehemently expressed wish, laughingly allowed them to do it for themselves.
Then, at the clanging of a great bell, they came back to the house, where, in the elegant, panelled dining-parlour, sat Mrs. Dow, presiding over a real Cleveshire tea—jam tarts, cheese-cakes, currant sandwiches, cartwheels, turnovers—pastry in all its forms; ham that must be tasted to be thoroughly appreciated, cut in wafer slices; heather honey in the comb; peaches, great, luscious, Victoria plums, black Hamburg grapes, the despair of Sir Joseph's head gardener, who every year saw "they Dows" take the prize over his head at the annual show.
Had Melicent been a little older, she would have been amused at the keenness of the old lady's scrutiny—her suspicious glances from one to the other in search of charms which should explain her son's sudden interest in the Vicarage lasses, an idea fully as repugnant to her as it could have been to the outraged Mrs. Cooper.
To look at the fine young man, with his good physique, excellent morals and clean ancestry, was to make one wonder what better fate would be likely to await one of these ordinary, ill-educated girls, samples of thousands of their kind scattered over the land. And, had the vicar's niece read "Cranford," she might have thought of the silent tragedy of Thomas Holbrook and little Miss Matty.
It was a satisfaction to Mrs. Dow that Alfred took more notice of Melicent than of any of the Miss Coopers. She took her for about the same age as the vicar's youngest; such a child could not be dangerous.
All tea-time young Dow was trying to draw her out, a task which was never easy; but every time he coaxed her out of a statement about Boers and their ways, he roared with appreciation of her crisp, incisive style.
Tea was half over when a horse was heard to clatter into the stable-yard. Melicent, who happened to be seated exactly opposite Gwen, saw her face suddenly suffused with an overwhelming, unbecoming blush. A minute later, a shadow darkened the window, and a voice called in greeting. It was Freshfield.
Of course he was invited in to tea, and he expressed himself greatly surprised at the company he found. Gwen had managed to seat herself near one end of the table, an empty chair beside her; to which the agent gravitated naturally.
The conversation flagged, somehow. The rules under which they lived made the girls tongue-tied when in company. Madeline, at nearly eighteen, had no glimmering of the necessity that is laid upon the well-bred to set others at their ease. They were all gauche and heavy, and ate largely.
Tea over, a move was made to the fold-yard to see the beasts; and this done, someone suggested hide-and-seek. Miss Lathom demurred at this; she was uneasy at Freshfield's coming, though she had been privy to his being apprised of their whereabouts. She said with some decision that she was quite sure the vicar would not like it.