Hathercourt

“Did you ever know such ill-mannered, rude – ” she was beginning, but Mary interrupted her.

“They are just boys,” she said, philosophically. “But, Lilias, you have put yourself quite into a fever. Let me go and speak to these ladies – yes, do, I would rather – it is better for me than for you.”

“But why?” said Lilias, doubtfully, though visibly relaxing her speed.

Mary laughed.

“I can’t say exactly, but somehow it’s not dignified for you to go hurrying back in that sort of way, and for me – well, I don’t think it matters.”

Lilias still hesitated.

“It isn’t that,” she said; “I wouldn’t have you do anything I would not do myself, only – Mary, you will laugh at me – I do feel so shabbily dressed.”

Mary did not laugh. She looked at her sister with real sympathy and concern. There are some of the trials of poverty whose stings are even more acutely felt at three-and-twenty than at seventeen, and Mary pitied Lilias where she might have laughed at Alexa.

“Let me speak to them, then,” she repeated. “Do, Lilias; I will hurry on, and you may follow slowly and see how I comport myself,” and Lilias made no further objection.

“How Lilias under-estimates herself,” she thought. “Who, with eyes in their heads, would think of her dress when they see her face?”

She was close to the little group of strangers by this time. They were standing just outside the porch, “staring about them,” George had said – rather, it seemed to Mary, examining with some interest the outside appearance of the ancient church. Three of them did not see her approach, the two ladies and the handsome, fair-haired man were at a little distance and looking the other way; only the elder of the two gentlemen was standing so as to face her, and he appeared sublimely unconscious of her errand having anything to do with himself or his friends. He moved aside a little as she drew near, evidently with the idea that she was going into the church again. Mary’s heart beat a little faster; this was by no means what she had bargained for, but there was no retreat possible now. There was Lilias slowly advancing in the background, her grey alpaca skirt trailing behind her on the grass with all the elegance of silk or cashmere – somehow Lilias never looked shabbily dressed! – her very observant blue eyes doubtless taking in the situation fully. Mary felt that the credit of the family was in her hands; she must prove herself equal to the occasion.

“I – I beg your pardon – excuse me,” she began, but the gentleman did not seem to understand that she was speaking to him; half mechanically he raised his hat, under the impression that the young woman, or lady, he had scarcely observed which, was about to pass by him into the porch, when again she spoke, and this time more distinctly. “Excuse me,” she said again; “mamma – my mother, I mean – thinks perhaps the ladies will be tired. Do you think they would like to come over to the Rectory and rest a little?”

Chapter Two

Who – Whence and Why?

Joan. – ”… she with the green kirtle too. Ah, but they are bravely clad!”

Isabel. – “And see, sister, he in the crimson doublet. Save me, but they are a pretty pair!”

Dame Winnifrith. – “Fie on ye, damsels! Call ye that a saying of your prayers? Fie on ye!”

Old Play.

She had stopped just in front of him. This time her voice could not fail to attract his attention, and with a slight start – for his thoughts had been busied with matters far away from the present – he turned a little and looked at her. This was what he saw: a girl with a face still slightly tanned by last summer’s sun – or was the brown tinge, growing rosier on the cheeks, her normal complexion? afterwards he thought of it, and could not decide – very bright, very wavy chestnut-coloured hair, ruffled a little about the temples, and growing low on the forehead; pleasant, hearty eyes, looking up at him with something of embarrassment, but more of amusement, eyes of no particular colour, but good, nice eyes all the same – a girl whom it is difficult to describe, but whose face, nevertheless, once learned, could not easily be forgotten. There was something about it which softened the seriousness of the man looking at her; his own face relaxed, and when he spoke it was with a smile, which, beginning in the grave, dark eyes before it journeyed down to the mouth, so transformed the whole face that Mary mentally improved upon her former dictum; there was certainly something not “rather” only, but “very nice” about the elder of the strangers “when he smiled.” Mary had yet to learn the rarity of these pleasant gleams of sunshine.

“I beg your pardon,” he said – for notwithstanding that Mary’s alpaca was several degrees shabbier than her sister’s and that her little white bonnet was of the plainest “home-make,” he felt not an instant’s doubt as to her being that which even in the narrowest conventional sense is termed “a lady” – “I am so sorry. I had no idea you were speaking to me. I shall tell my aunt and sister what you say; it is very kind of your – I beg your pardon again. I did not quite catch what you said.”

He had been on the point of turning to speak to his companions, but stopped for a moment, looking at Mary inquiringly as he did so.

“My message was from my mother, Mrs Western – I should have explained,” Mary replied. “I am – my father is the clergyman; we live at the Rectory opposite.”

She bent her head in the direction of her home. The stranger’s brow cleared.

“Of course,” he said, “I understand. Thank you very much. – Alys,” he called, hastening a step or two in the direction of the two ladies – “Alys, tell your aunt that this young lady has come to ask if you would like to wait at the Rectory till the carriage comes.”

The girl caught the sound of her own name in a moment; she had quick ears.

“How kind of you – how very kind of you!” she exclaimed, running up to where Mary still stood. “Laurence, please ask aunt to say yes. I would like to go across to the Rectory.” She was close beside the gentleman now. “Laurence,” she continued, giving him a little pull to make him listen to what she went on to say in a whisper, “I want to see those girls, the clergyman’s daughters; I noticed them coming out of church. One is so pretty. Ah, yes, there she is!” as she descried Lilias standing a little way off. “Is that your sister?” she went on, turning again to Mary. “Do you think she would mind if I went to speak to her? I do so want to see her quite close – she is so very, very pretty.”

The gentleman looked annoyed.

“Alys,” he was beginning, “you really should – ” But at this juncture up came the fair-haired man and the elderly lady, and from another direction Lilias, her curiosity overpowering her misgivings, moved slowly towards the group. Mary’s position was growing a little uncomfortable; she was glad to take refuge by her sister’s side. Again Mrs Western’s message of hospitality was repeated, this time to the elderly lady, whose name Mary thus discovered to be Winstanley; she, too, was profuse in her expression of thanks.

“So very kind of you,” she said to Lilias, who, feeling extremely conscious of her grey alpaca, replied by a bow of extra dignity.

“I really do not know what we had best do,” continued Miss Winstanley; “the carriage should have been back by this time.”

“If you and Alys like to wait at the Rectory, Cheviott and I can walk on to see if it is coming,” said the fair-haired young man, speaking for the first time.

At the sound of his voice Lilias looked up, and an expression of surprise crossed her face.

“Captain Beverley!” she exclaimed, impulsively, instantly, however, appearing to regret the avowal of recognition, for she grew scarlet and glanced at Mary in real distress. “I am sure he will not know me again,” she was thinking. “What a horrid, stupid thing of me to have done! – a man I only met once in my life, and that at a ball nearly two years ago! What will he think of me?”

Mary felt perplexed. She could not understand her sister’s embarrassment, and was therefore unable to help her. But the awkwardness lasted for a moment only. With a flush of evident gratification, Captain Beverley stepped forward.

“Miss West!” he said, eagerly. “I was almost sure it was you, but I scarcely hoped you would remember me. I had no idea you lived at Hathercourt. Is it your home?”

“Yes,” replied Lilias, though still with a shade of constraint in her manner, “my father – our father,” turning to Mary with a pretty sisterly air, “Mr Western, is the rector.”

“Dear me, how curious I did not know it,” said Captain Beverley. “Cheviott,” he continued, turning to his companion, “you remember our meeting Miss West – Western, I mean – at the ball at Brocklehurst the year before last?”

Mr Cheviott bowed, somewhat stiffly, it seemed to Mary.

“I fear you are mistaken, Arthur,” he said, “I do not think I ever had the honour of being introduced to Miss Western.”

“Arthur” looked annoyed, and as if he hardly knew what to do; Lilias’s face flushed again, and Miss Winstanley began talking to Mr Cheviott in a hurried, fussy manner, with so palpably evident an anxiety to set every one at ease that she only succeeded in making them all more uncomfortable. Mary, animated by a sudden consciousness of antagonism to Mr Cheviott, came quietly to the rescue.

“I think, Lilias,” she said to her sister, speaking distinctly, so that they all heard her, “I think mamma will be wondering why we are so long. If these ladies, Miss Winstanley and Miss – ”

“Cheviott,” put in Captain Beverley, hastily.

“Miss Cheviott, do not think it worth while to rest at the Rectory, perhaps we had better not interrupt them any longer. Of course,” she went on, turning to Miss Winstanley with a smile that showed she meant what she said, “if your carriage does not come soon, and we can do anything to help you, we shall be very glad. One of the boys can go to the village to see about it, if you like; we have no carriage, otherwise I am sure – ”

“Thank you, thank you,” interrupted Miss Winstanley, nervously glancing at her silent nephew, and, without his permission, not daring to commit herself to anything but generalities, “you are, really, so very kind, but I think the carriage is sure to come soon. Don’t you think so, Laurence?”

“It’s here now,” exclaimed Alys Cheviott, in a disappointed tone; “and Laurence,” she added, in a lower tone, but not low enough to prevent Mary’s hearing the words, “you are very, very cross.”

Mary was quite inclined to agree with her, but, looking up at the moment, she caught a smile on Mr Cheviott’s face as he made some little answer to his sister, a smile which so altered his expression that she felt puzzled. “I don’t like him,” she said to herself, “he is haughty and disagreeable, but still I fancy he could be nice if he liked.”

Another minute or two and the strangers were driven away – with smiles and thanks from pretty Alys and her aunt, and bows of equal deference, but differing in cordiality, from the two gentlemen. Lilias and Mary walked slowly homewards across the grass, Lilias unusually silent.

“Well, Lilias,” said the younger sister, after waiting a little to see if Lilias was not going to speak, “well, we have had quite an adventure for once.”

“Yes,” said Lilias, absently, “quite an adventure. But, oh, Mary,” she went on, with a sudden change of voice, “don’t speak of it; I am so disgusted with myself.”

“What for?” said Mary. “I didn’t understand. Was it about recognising that gentleman, Captain Beverley, you called him, I think? And some one called him Arthur – how curious!” she added to herself.

“Yes,” said Lilias, “it is about that. I met him two years ago, and danced with him twice, I think. I thought he was very nice-looking and danced well, but, of course, that was all I thought about him. I think I must have told you about him at the time; it was the year you did not go to the ball – Brooke was ill, don’t you remember, with the measles, and you were nursing him because you had had it – but I had nearly forgotten him, and then seeing him so unexpectedly again his name came into my head and I said it! It must have looked as if I had never seen a gentleman before to have remembered him so distinctly – oh, I am so ashamed of myself!”

“I don’t think you need to be. I think it was perfectly natural,” said Mary.

“Oh, yes, in one way, I know it was. I am not really ashamed of myself, I did nothing wrong. It is what those people must have thought of me,” said Lilias.

“I wish you would not care what people think of you,” answered Mary. “What does it matter? We shall probably never see any of them again. How pretty the girl was! By-the-bye, Captain Beverley’s name is Arthur, he may be a descendant of ‘Mawde’ in the tablet, Lilias. Her name was Beverley, and her father’s ‘Arthur.’ Very likely one of her sons would be called after her father. I wonder if that has anything to do with their coming here,” she went on, growing more interested in Captain Beverley than she had hitherto appeared.

“How do you mean?” asked Lilias.

“Why, supposing he is a great grandson, a great, great, great grandson – oh, more than that – there has been time for six or seven generations – supposing he is a descendant of Mawde’s, he may have something to do with this neighbourhood, and that may have brought him here.”

“We should have heard of him before this,” objected Lilias. “Papa knows every land-owner of any consequence in the country by name, and I never heard of any one called Beverley.”

“Here is papa,” said Mary, looking back just as Mr Western emerged from the church, where he had been detained later than usual by some little official discussion, “let us wait for him and ask him. Papa,” she continued, as her father came up to them, “do you know that one of those gentlemen who came to church is called Beverley?”

“And Mary is making up quite a romance about his being descended from the old woman on the tablet,” said Lilias, laughing, but yet not without interest. “There are no people of the name hereabouts now?”

“Beverley,” repeated Mr Western, “how do you know that is his name?”

The girls explained.

“No, there are no gentle-people of that name hereabouts nowadays,” said Mr Western. “The old Hathercourt Beverleys have quite died out, except, by-the-bye, – I was told the other day that old John Birley, who died at Hathercourt Edge last year, was a lineal descendant of theirs.”

“That rough old farmer!” exclaimed Mary, her thoughts flying back to “Mawde.”

“Yes, you remember him? It was Greville, I think, that was telling me about it. The name ‘Birley’ he said was only a corruption of Beverley. The old man was very proud of his descent. He left the farm and what money he had saved to a Mr Beverley, whom he believed to be of the same family – no one in this neighbourhood. By-the-bye, that may be the young man you are telling me about, Mary, which was he – the fair or the dark one?”

“The fair one,” replied Mary, “the other was a Mr Cheviott.”

“Cheviott – ah, indeed,” said Mr Western, with a tone of faintly discernible satisfaction. “I fancy that must be Mr Cheviott of Romary. You remember Romary, girls, that beautiful old place near Withenden. We went there picnicking once, several years ago.”

“Yes, I remember,” said Lilias, “but I thought the people living there were called Romary, not Cheviott.”

“Well, this Mr Cheviott was a nephew or grandson – all the male Romarys had died out, I suppose,” said Mr Western.

They were at the Rectory door by this time. An unmistakable odour of roast mutton greeted them as it opened.

“It must be dinner-time,” said Lilias, going in. “Dear me,” she added to herself, as she slowly made her way up-stairs to the plainly furnished but neat little bedroom that she shared with her sister, “dear me, how nice it would be to be rich, and have nice pretty luncheons instead of these terrible early dinners, so hot and fussy, and all the children crowding round the table! Dear me – ”

But she took off her bonnet and shawl and went down with a cheerful face to help in the distribution of the roast mutton, bright and merry and very fair to look upon, as was her wont.

Mary had waited a moment at the hall door with her father. They stood looking out at the autumn landscape; there came a sudden gleam of sunshine through the trees, lighting up the grass with a yellow radiance, and lingering gently on the many-coloured stones of the venerable church.

“It’s a nice old place, after all, child, is it not?” said Mr Western.

“Yes, indeed, father,” replied the girl.

“I, for my part, am very content to think that I shall spend my life here, and rest peacefully over there in the shadow of my old church, when the time comes,” continued the Rector; “but for you young people I suppose it’s different somehow,” and he sighed a little.

“How do you mean, father dear?” said Mary, softly, and she came closer to him and slid her hand into his arm. “What makes you speak that way to-day?”

“I don’t exactly know, my dear,” he replied. “Possibly the sight of those strangers in church set me considering things. I should like you girls to have a few more – well, advantages I suppose they are in a sense, after all – I should like to see Lilias and you as nicely dressed as that pretty girl this morning, eh, Mary?”

“Dear father?” said Mary, affectionately. “But we’re very happy, papa. I am, at least, and Lilias tries to be anyway. But I dare say it’s harder for her than for me – she might get so very much admiration, and all that sort of thing, you know.”

Mr Western smiled – there were people in the world, he thought to himself, who would see something to admire in the eager face beside him too; but he said nothing, and just then the dinner-bell rang, and a hurry of approaching footsteps told that to some at least of the Rectory party it was not an unwelcome sound. Mary fled up-stairs, her father followed the hungry flock into the dining-room. And the Sunday meal that day was considerably enlivened by discussions about the mysterious strangers. Who were they? – whence had they come, and wherefore? – and, “Will they come again next Sunday?” said little Frances, a question which her eldest sister very summarily answered in the negative.

“They have given you all something to talk about, children, anyway,” said Mrs Western.

“Yes,” said Basil, who, on the strength of having left school three months ago, considered himself a man of the world, “it’s ridiculous how people get excited about nothing at all, when they live such shut-up lives. I bet you the whole neighbourhood’s full of it. All the old women will be discussing these unfortunate people over their tea-tables at this very moment.”

“Not over their tea, Basil,” said little Brooke. “They don’t have tea till four o’clock.”

Chapter Three

The Colour of the Spectacles

“Mais, il faut bien le reconnaître, tout est relatif en ce monde, et les choses nous affectent toujours dans la mesure de l’éducation que nous avons reçue et du milieu social où nous avons été élevés.”

Enault.

Mrs Western’s views of life differed considerably from those of her husband – she had quite another stand-point. She was not ambitious, nothing in her experience had ever tended to make her so, and though by nature she was far less “easy-going” than the Rector, yet her thoughts concerning the future of her children were not by any means so harassing and dissatisfied as his. Had she seen anything to worry about, she would have worried about it, but she did not see that there was. Her boys and girls were infinitely better off, better cared for, better educated than she had been, and happier far than she ever remembered herself before her marriage, and she saw no reason why, if they turned out good and sensible, as they mostly promised to do, they should not all get on fairly well in life, without feeling that their start in the great race had been weighted with undue disadvantages.

Yet the Rector’s wife was not a peculiarly reasonable woman; circumstances mainly had made her appear so, or rather, perhaps, had never called forth the latent unreasonableness which we are told, by authority we dare not question, is a part of every feminine character. When she married Mr Western, she was only a governess in a family where she was not unkindly treated, but where no special thought was bestowed upon her. She was not discontented, however; for the kindness she received she was sincerely grateful, and considered herself, on the whole, a fortunate girl. She was not remarkably pretty, but pleasing and gentle, and with a certain sedateness of air and manner not without a charm of its own. People spoke of her, when they did speak of her, which was not often, as “a very sensible girl;” in point of fact, she was more than sensible; she had both intellect and originality, neither of which was ever fully developed – in one sense, indeed, hardly developed at all. For her youth had been a depressing one; from her earliest years she had been familiar with poverty and privation, and she only was not altogether crushed by them because personally she had had experience of nothing else.

Her father had been one of the several younger sons of a rich and well-born man. But neither the riches nor the good birth had helped him on in life. He quarrelled with his parents by refusing to enter the profession designed for him; he made bad worse by a hasty and imprudent marriage; he hopelessly widened the breach by choosing to resent on his own people his young wife’s speedy death, and declining to accept any help in the bringing up of his motherless little daughter. And then his old parents died, and the brothers and sisters, married and scattered, and absorbed in their individual interests, learned to forget, or to remember but with a sore reproach worse than forgetting, this hot-headed, ungrateful “Basil,” who had not condoned by success in his self-sought career the follies of his youth. And before many more years had passed, poor Basil Brooke died himself, nursed, and comforted, and sorrowed for by but one little solitary being, his thirteen-years-old Margaret, for whom at the last he had managed to scrape, together a tiny sum that left her not absolutely destitute, but was enough to pay for her schooling till, at eighteen, she went out into the world on her own small account as one of the vast army of half-educated girls who call themselves governesses.

But if Margaret Brooke’s pupils obtained no very great amount of so-called “book-learning” from their young teacher, at least they learned no harm, and indirectly no small amount of good. For she herself was good – good, and true, and healthy-minded, perfectly free from self-consciousness, or morbid repining after what had not fallen to her lot. Once in her governess life she came across some members of her dead father’s family. Being really gentlefolks, though self-absorbed and narrow-minded, it did not occur to them to ignore their poor relations. They even went out of their way to show her some little kindness, which the girl accepted pleasantly and without bitterness; for, young as she was at the time of her father’s death, she had yet been able to discern that the family estrangement had been mainly, if not altogether, of his own causing. So the rich Brookes spoke favourably of poor Margaret, and though it was taken for granted among them that the fact of her existence was a mistake, she was, on the whole, regarded with approval as doing her part towards making the best of an unfortunate business. And when, two or three years later, Margaret, to her own inexpressible astonishment, found herself actually fallen in love with by the most charming and unexceptionable of young curates, a curate too with every prospect of before long becoming a rector, and when this prospect was ere long fulfilled, and Margaret, in consequence, became Mrs Western, her Brooke cousins approved of her still more highly, to the extent even of sending her a tea-pot, cream-jug, and sugar-basin of the best electro-plate as a wedding present.

But all that was now nearly a quarter of a century ago – the generation of Brookes who had seen Margaret in her youth, who had some of them been contemporaries of her father, had mostly died out – they were not a long-lived race – and the old relationship had grown to seem more of a legend than a fact. A legend, however, which, little as the young Westerns knew of the far-off cousins who now represented their mother’s people, was not likely to be allowed by them to sink into oblivion. They were too well-bred and right-minded to be ashamed of their mother’s position when their father wooed and won her, but, nevertheless, half unconsciously to themselves, perhaps, the knowledge of this fact made it all the more agreeable to be able to say to each other, with dignity and satisfaction, “Though mamma was poor when she was a girl, her family was quite as good, if not, indeed, better than papa’s.”