Chapter Four.
A Cup of Tea.
“I have no ambition to see a goodlier man.”
Tempest.
“I am so very much obliged to you for seeing me. I am afraid it is very inconvenient and uncomfortable for you—in fact, as I have been telling your daughters, I am altogether ashamed of myself,” was the apology with which Captain Beverley met Mrs Western.
“But you need not be so, I assure you,” she answered, quietly, as she sat down on the sofa by the fire. “I have been a clergyman’s wife too many years not to be quite accustomed to act as my husband’s deputy when he is out of the way; and Mary—my daughter, I mean,” she added, glancing towards the girls, “tells me you wanted particularly to see Mr Western. Is it anything in which I can do instead of him, or will you leave a message? I fear he will not be home till late.”
Notwithstanding the perfect courtesy of this speech, there was something in it which made Captain Beverley regret again what he had done. He grew hot when he remembered that not two minutes ago he had been making interest with the beautiful Miss Western for a cup of tea, and now her mother made him feel that he was expected to give his message and take his departure—the sooner the better.
“How completely Cheviott has been mistaken about these people!” he thought to himself; but though Mary, who was standing nearest him, could not read this reflection, she perceived the quick change of expression in his open, good-tempered face, and she felt sorry—sorry for him, and a little tiny bit vexed with her mother.
“Mamma,” she broke in, before Mrs Western had time to say any more, “you must really have tea at once; it will be getting cold. Shall I pour it out, Lilias, or will you?”
“I will, thank you,” said Lilias, not quite sure if she appreciated her sister’s tactics, but seating herself before the tea-table as she spoke. “Mother, dear, stay where you are, do,” seeing that Mrs Western was getting up from her seat.
“I was only looking to see if there were cups enough, my dear. Captain Beverley, you will have a cup of tea?” said Mrs Western, her natural instinct of hospitality asserting itself in defiance of her dislike to strangers.
“Thank you,” he replied, gratefully; “I really cannot resist the chance of a cup of good tea. My old woman has been giving me such a horrible decoction. What do people do to tea to make it taste so fearful, I wonder?” he continued, seriously. “It seems the simplest thing in the world just to pour hot water over a spoonful or two, and let it stand for a few minutes.”
The girls laughed, and Mrs Western smiled.
“It is evident you are a bachelor, Captain Beverley,” she said. “There is nothing that depend more on how it is made than tea. For instance, hot water is not necessarily boiling water as it should be, and the ‘standing a few minutes’ should not mean brewing by the fire for half an hour or more.”
“I see,” said Captain Beverley. “I wonder if it would be any use trying to teach old Mrs Bowker how to make tea properly.”
“Mrs Bowker!” repeated Mrs Western in surprise.
Lilias laughed again at the bewilderment in her mother’s face.
“How prettily she laughs,” thought Captain Beverley, “I wish Laurence could see her. He declares not one woman in a hundred can laugh becomingly.”
“Captain Beverley is staying at old Mrs Bowker’s, mamma,” she exclaimed—“at least, at John Birley’s farm.”
“Or, to be perfectly correct,” said Captain Beverley, “old Mrs Bowker is staying with me, though I am quite sure she does not see the arrangement in that light at all. I was just telling Miss Western,” he continued, turning to the mother, “that Hathercourt Edge—that is to say, the old farm-house and, what is of more importance, a considerable amount of land—has just become my property; the last owner, John Birley, left it to me as the oldest lineal descendant of the name—of the Beverleys of Hathercourt. He had no near relations, and had always been proud of his own descent from the Beverleys; he came straight down from a John Beverley who owned all the land about here early in the seventeenth century, I believe, but whose eldest son sold a lot of it, so that in process of time they came to be only farmers.”
“That John Beverley must have been ‘Mawde’s’ husband, Lilias,” said Mary.
Captain Beverley looked up with interest.
“Do you mean the ‘Mawde’ about whom there is a tablet in the church here?” he said.
“Yes,” replied Mary. “Mawde Mayne, who married John Beverley of Hathercourt.”
“Ah! yes, that’s the same Mawde,” said Captain Beverley. “She is our common ancestress—poor old John Birley’s and mine, I mean. I come from another of her sons, who left these parts and married an heiress, I believe, but his descendants have had nothing to do with this place from that time to this. Isn’t it strange that Hathercourt, a part of it at least, should come back to me after all these generations?”
“It is very nice, I think,” said Mary. “I should be so proud of it, if I were you.”
Her eyes sparkled, and her face brightened up eagerly. For the first time it struck Captain Beverley that there was something very “taking” about the second Miss Western. But his glance did not rest on her; it travelled on to where Lilias sat behind the tea-tray, with a half-unconscious appeal to her for sympathy in what he was telling. Lilias, looking up, smiled.
“Yes,” she said, softly, “it is very strange.”
“Then,” began Mrs Western, with some little hesitation, “are you, may I ask, Captain Beverley, going to live altogether at Hathercourt Edge? You can hardly do so, though, in the house as it is at present. It is barely habitable, is it?”
“Very barely,” replied the young man. “You never saw such a place. But I must not grumble; poor old John kept the land up to the mark, though he spent nothing on the house. I don’t mean to settle here,” (Mrs Western breathed a sigh of relief), “I have another place which is let just now, but will soon be free again, and my cousin advises me to live there and farm it myself. All I mean to do here is to build a good farm-house, and establish some trusty man as bailiff, and then I can easily run down now and then—I am often at Romary—and see how things are going on. And this brings me to what I wanted to see Mr Western about. I want to ask his opinion of a young man here who has been recommended to me for my situation.”
“Mr Western will be very glad to tell you all he can, I am sure,” said the Rector’s wife. “I dare say he will be able to walk over to Hathercourt Edge to-morrow to see you, for about such a matter it would be better for you to speak to himself.”
“Thank you,” said Captain Beverley. “But I couldn’t think of giving Mr Western so much trouble. I can easily come over again, and if he is out it doesn’t matter—it is only a pleasant walk—and—and if I am not a great trouble, I shall be only too grateful to have some one to speak to, for I am dreadfully tired of the old farmhouse, and I must be here alone another fortnight. By then my cousins will be back at Romary, and I can take up my quarters there. You know Romary, of course?”
“No,” said Lilias, to whom the question seemed to be addressed, her colour rising a little; “at least, I have only been there once.”
“It is some miles from here, and we have no carriage,” said Mrs Western, simply. “Old Mrs Romary called on me when we first came here, but I never saw any more of them. We know very few of our neighbours, Captain Beverley, for we are not rich, and we live very quietly.” Mary looked up at her mother admiringly. Lilias glanced at Captain Beverley. His colour, too, had deepened a little.
“Then I must thank you all the more for being so kind to me,” he said, impulsively. “And, Mrs Western, if, as I shall really be your very nearest neighbour, you will let me be to some extent an exception to the rule, I shall thank you still more,” he added, with a sort of boyish heartiness which it was difficult to resist.
He had got up to go, and stood looking down at his hostess as he spoke with such a kindly expression in his honest blue eyes, and—he was so undeniably handsome and gentlemanlike that Mrs Western’s cold manner thawed.
“The thanks will, I think, be due from us to you if you come to see us now and then when you are in the neighbourhood; that is to say, at Hathercourt Edge. Romary is too far off for us to consider its inhabitants neighbours,” she replied. “And I don’t quite understand, but Romary is not your home, is it?”
“Oh dear, no,” he replied, evidently a little surprised at the question. “Romary belongs now to my cousin, Mr Cheviott. It has been his ever since his uncle’s death, but he has only lately come to live there. He was my guardian, and the best and wisest friend I have ever known, though not more than ten years older than myself,” he added, warmly.
“And that young lady—we thought her so pretty,” said Lilias—“she is Miss Cheviott, then, I suppose?”
“Yes, she is his sister. I am glad you think her pretty. She is a dear little thing,” he replied, looking pleased and gratified. “But I am really detaining you too long. Will you be so kind as to tell Mr Western that I shall hope to see him in a day or two? Good-bye, and thank you very much,” he said, as he shook hands with Mrs Western and her daughters, Lilias last.
“For a cup of tea?” she said, laughing.
“Yes, Miss Western, for a cup of tea,” he repeated.
“I like him,” said Mary, when the door had closed on their visitor; “he is honest, and unaffected, and kindly.”
“He is very boyish,” said Lilias; “somehow he seems more boyish than when I saw him two years ago.”
“When you saw him two years ago?” repeated Mrs Western. “I did not know you had ever seen him before.”
“Yes, mamma. I met him at my second Brocklehurst ball. Mary remembers my mentioning him,” replied Lilias, meekly enough. “I did not know where he had come from, or whom he was staying with, or anything about him, and indeed I had forgotten all about him till the other day when he came to church.”
“He is a pleasant-looking young man,” said Mrs Western.
“Pleasant-looking, mother?” exclaimed Mary. “I call him very handsome.”
Lilias smiled, but her mother looked grave.
“Well, well,” she said, “I dare say he is handsome; but in my opinion, my dears, there is great truth in the old saying, ‘handsome is that handsome does,’ and we do not know anything at all about this Captain Beverley’s doings, remember.”
“At least we know nothing ‘unhandsome’ about them,” said Mary, who seemed in an unusually argumentative mood.
“Oh dear, no. I have no reason to say anything against him. I know nothing whatever about him,” said Mrs Western, calmly; “but I do not like making acquaintance too quickly with young men. One cannot be too careful. And you know, my dears, I have always said if ever you do marry I hope and trust it will be some one quite in your own sphere.”
“Mamma!” exclaimed Lilias, growing scarlet, and with a touch of indignation in her tone, “why should you allude to such a thing? Just because a gentleman happens to have called to see papa on business—as if we could not have spoken two words to him without thinking if we should like to marry him.”
“You need not fire up so, Lilias,” replied her mother. “You very often speak about marrying, or not marrying, and I have heard you maintain it was gross affectation of girls to pretend they never thought about their future lives.”
“Yes,” said Lilias, “I know I have said so, and I think so, but still there is a difference between that and—Well, never mind. But, mother,” she went on, with returning playfulness, “I must warn you of one thing. If by ‘our own sphere’ you mean curates, then the sooner, as far as I am concerned, I can get out of my own sphere the better.”
Mrs Western did not laugh.
“Lilias,” she began, gravely, but the rest of her remonstrance was lost, for at that moment the drawing-room door opened softly, and a pair of bright eyes, surmounted by a shag of fair hair, peeped in, cautiously at first, then, their owner gathering courage, the door opened more widely, and a tall thin girl, in a brown stuff skirt and scarlet flannel bodice, made her appearance.
“Josey, what do you want? Don’t you know it is very rude to come peeping in like that? How did you know we were alone?” said Mary, somewhat peremptorily.
“Then he’s gone?—I thought he was,” answered Josephine, composedly. “All right, Alexa, you can come in,” she turned to call to some one behind her, and, thus encouraged, a fourth Miss Western—the third as to age, in point of fact—followed Josephine into the room.
“Is mamma better? I have really done my best, Mary, to keep them all quiet,” she began, plaintively, “but George and Josey do so squabble. They wanted to find out who was calling, and I could hardly prevent them coming to peep in at the door. Yes, Josey, you needn’t make faces at me like that. It’s quite true—you know it is.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” said Josey, “but there are more ways than one of telling the truth. Somebody else was just as inquisitive as ‘George and Josey,’ but she was far too lady-like to do such a thing as peep. She would let other people peep for her—that is her way of doing things she shouldn’t,” the last words uttered with withering contempt.
Alexa was a pretty, frightened-looking little creature of sixteen. She had soft, wistful-looking dark eyes, which filled with tears on the smallest provocation.
“Mamma,” she exclaimed, “it isn’t true! I only said I would like—”
“I do not want to hear any more about it, Alexa,” interrupted Mrs Western with decision. “I do think you and Josephine might have some little consideration for me to-day, instead of quarrelling in this way.”
The culprits looked ashamed of themselves; but in two minutes Josephine’s irrepressible spirits had risen again.
“You might tell me if it really was Captain Beverley,” she said to her elder sisters. “What did he come for?—why did he stay such a time?”
“Don’t answer her, Mary,” said Lilias, hastily. “Josephine, I can’t understand how you can be so unladylike.”
“Come up-stairs with me, Josey,” whispered Mary, who saw the storm-clouds gathering again on her young sister’s handsome face. “Do remember that mamma is tired and dull to-night, and we should all try to comfort her. I will read aloud to you all for half an hour, if you like, and leave mother and Lilias in peace.”
But Lilias’s spirits seemed to have received a check. She remained unusually quiet and depressed all the evening, and Mary felt puzzled.
“She cannot really have taken to heart what mother said,” she thought to herself. “Mamma has often said things of that sort without Lilias minding.”
And when bed-time came and she was alone with her sister, she set to work to find out what was wrong.
“What has made you so dull this evening, Lilias?” she asked, gently.
“Nothing, or rather, perhaps, I should say everything,” replied Lilias. “Mary,” she went on; she was sitting in front of the looking-glass, her beautiful fair hair loosened and falling about her shoulders, and as she spoke she put her hands up to her face, and leaning with her elbows on the table gazed into the mirror before her—“Mary, don’t think me conceited for what I am going to say—I wouldn’t say it to any one but you. Do you know, I think I wish I wasn’t pretty.”
“Why?” said Mary, without, however, testifying any great astonishment.
“If I could tell you exactly why, I should understand myself better than I do,” she replied. “I fancy somehow being pretty has helped to put me out of conceit of my life; and after all, what a poor, stupid thing it is! A very few years more, I shall be quite passée—indeed, I see signs of it coming already. I want to be good and sensible, and sober, and contented like you, Mary, and I can’t manage it. Oh, it does makes me so angry when mamma talks that way—about our own sphere and all that!”
“You shouldn’t be angry at it, it does not really make any difference,” said Mary, philosophically; “poor mamma thinks it is for our good.”
“But it isn’t only that; it is everything. Mary, people talk great nonsense about poverty not necessarily lowering one; it does lower us—that I think is the reason why I dislike mamma’s saying those things so. There is truth in them. We are rapidly becoming unfit for anything but a low sphere, and it is all poverty. Did you ever see anything more disgraceful than the younger girls’ manners sometimes?—Alexa’s silly babyishness, and Josephine’s vulgar noisiness? They should both be sent to a good school, or have a proper governess.”
“Yes,” said Mary, looking distressed, “I know they should.”
“I can’t bear shamming and keeping up appearances,” continued Lilias, “it is not that I want, that would be worse than anything, but I do feel so depressed about things sometimes, Mary. It is a sore feeling to be, in one sense, ashamed of one’s home. I hope Captain Beverley will not come again.”
“He is almost sure to do so,” said Mary. “I wish you would not feel things quite as you do, Lilias; I can sympathise with you to a certain extent, but, after all, there is nothing to be really ashamed of. And if Captain Beverley, or any one, judges us by these trifling outside things, then I don’t think their regard is worth considering.”
“But it is just by these things that people are judged, and that is where the real sting of poverty like ours lies,” persisted Lilias.
And Mary, who sympathised with her more than she thought it wise to own to, allowed that there was a great deal of truth in what she said. “But must it not be harder on papa and mamma than on us?” she suggested.
“I don’t know,” said Lilias, “not in the same way I fancy. Papa feels it more than mamma, I sometimes think, only he is naturally so easy-going. And poor mamma, even if she does feel it, she would not show it. She is so unselfish; and how hard she works for us all! I don’t think she could work so hard if she felt as depressed as I do sometimes—especially about the younger ones.”
“But you do work hard also, Lilias,” said Mary, “and you are nearly always cheerful. You are unselfish too. Oh! Lilias, I should so like to see you very, very happy!”
Chapter Five.
In the Balner Woods.
“And so at length with the fading year;
There comes a tender time once more,
And the year clings more fondly to life and light,
Now that its labour is over and done.
And the woods grow glorious with purple and red,
As bright as the flowers of spring.”
Songs of Two Worlds.
The next morning was dull and rainy. It was dull enough at Hathercourt Rectory, but far worse at Hathercourt Edge, and even Arthur Beverley’s unfailing good spirits felt the influence of the outside dreariness.
“I wish I hadn’t gone over to the Rectory yesterday,” he said to himself, “it would have been something to do to-day. I can’t go again till to-morrow, at soonest, and it is so horribly dull here. I wonder what those girls do with themselves on such a day as this. Their life must be very monotonous, though they look happy enough. I can’t understand why Laurence doesn’t like them. I wonder if that old fool is going to give me any breakfast?” He turned from the window to look at the table; it was covered with a very crumpled and coarse cloth, the forks and spoons, etc, were of the homeliest description, there was nothing in the shape of eatables but the half of a stale loaf, and an uninviting-looking lump of evidently salt butter, on a cracked plate. Captain Beverley eyed it all rather disconsolately. Then he went to the door—he had to stoop to avoid knocking his head on the lintel—and called down the narrow, red-tiled passage leading to the kitchen.
“Mrs Bowker, I say. Aren’t you going to give me any breakfast this morning?”
No Mrs Bowker appeared in answer to his summons, but out of the depths of the kitchen a voice replied:
“I’m a-bringin’ it, sir.”
“And what is it? Bacon?”
“No, sir—heggs,” was the reply.
“Heggs,” he repeated, as he turned back again into the parlour, “of course. I might have known, by this time, if it wasn’t bacon it would be ‘heggs.’ I declare, if I were that Mrs Western, and she I, I wouldn’t be so inhospitable. She might have asked me to go to breakfast, or luncheon, or something. I am sure those nice girls would if they could. Ah! well, here comes the heggs, and letters, too!—What’s going to happen, Mrs Bowker? The postman’s not above half an hour late this morning!”
“May be he walks fast to get out of the wet,” Mrs Bowker suggested, composedly, as she left the room.
There were three letters, two manifestly uninteresting, and Captain Beverley tossed them aside. The third had the postmark “Paris.” It was from Mr Cheviott, and his cousin opened and read it eagerly. It was rather a long letter, once or twice he smiled, and once, when he came to a passage close to the end, a slight frown contracted his good-humoured face.
“Laurence takes up such unreasonable prejudices,” he said to himself, with some irritation. “What can he know about it?”
This was the passage that annoyed him: “I hardly think the man you mention would be experienced enough for your situation—in any case I would not, if I were you, consult the Hathercourt clergyman about him, for by all accounts he is far from a practical person as to such matters, and I rather fancy there is nothing superior about the Rectory family. They are desperately poor for one thing, but, of course, you will not need to make friends with them; it is not as if Hathercourt were to be your head-quarters.”
Captain Beverley ate his breakfast and pondered over his letter. Then he got up and went to the window, and looked out at the rain.
“It is very annoying of Cheviott to have taken up this prejudice against Owen,” he thought. “I believe he is the very man for me, and, at any rate, it is necessary to hear all I can about him. And as for what Cheviott says about the Westerns I think nothing of it whatever, and he himself would be the first to own he had been mistaken if he saw the sort of people they really are. I can understand their not being popular well enough; they are proud and won’t stand being patronised.”
His meditations ended in his deciding to walk over again to Hathercourt that very afternoon—it would not do to put off hearing about Owen and settling the matter, and this he could easily explain to Mr Western, as an excuse for troubling him about it. And, having arrived at this decision, things in general began to look considerably less gloomy—he got out the plans for the new farmhouse, and examined them critically, rolling them neatly up again, when the idea struck him that it would be well to take them with him to the Rectory, in the afternoon.
“Mr Western may like to see them,” he thought, “and, as he is the clergyman of the parish, it will gratify him to be consulted.”
Then he answered Mr Cheviott’s letter, saying nothing about his visit to Hathercourt, and merely mentioning that he was making further inquiries about the man Owen, ending with a description of Mrs Bowker for Alys’s benefit, and a hearty wish that they were all back at Romary.
This important task accomplished, he looked at his watch and saw that it was eleven o’clock, so he sauntered out for a stroll round the farm and a talk with his head man. The rain was ceasing, and there was no sort of reason why he should not walk over to the Rectory in the afternoon; besides, to-morrow would be Saturday, a day on which clergymen, proverbially, dislike to be interrupted. So, having dispatched a couple of rather tough mutton chops, which was all Mrs Bowker condescended to allow him in the way of luncheon, by half-past two o’clock Captain Beverley found himself more than ready for his second expedition to Hathercourt. It was really too early to call, however, but the day had grown pleasant out of doors, and inside the old farm-house he felt it impossible to kill any more time. A “happy thought” occurred to him—why not go round by the Balner woods? It was a long walk and he might probably lose his way, but if he did he could but try to find it again—anything was better than hanging about Hathercourt Edge doing nothing.
It was November now, but who that has really lived in the country—lived in it “all the year round,” and learned every change in the seasons, every look of the sky, all the subtle combinations of air, and light, and colour, and scent, which give to outdoor life its indescribable variety and unflagging interest, who of such initiated ones does not know how marvellously delicious November can sometimes be? How tender the clear, thin, yellow tone of the struggling sunbeams, the half frosty streaks of red on the pale blue-green sky, the haze of approaching winter over all! How soft, and subdued, and tired the world seems—all the bustle over, ready to fall asleep, but first to whisper gently good night! And to feel November to perfection, for, after all, this shy autumnal charm is not so much a matter of sight, as of every sense combined, sound and scent and sight together, lapsing into one vague consciousness of harmony and repose—the place of places is a wood. A wood where the light, faint at the best, comes quivering and brokenly through the not yet altogether unclothed branches, where the fragrance of the rich leafy soil mingles with that of the breezes from the not far distant sea, where the dear rabbits scud about in the most unexpected places, and the squirrels are up aloft making arrangements for the winter—oh! a wood in late autumn has a strange glamour of its own, that comes over me, in spirit, even as I write of it, far, far away from country sights and sounds, further away still from the long-ago days of youth and leisure, and friends to wander with, in the Novembers that then were never gloomy.
Arthur Beverley was by no means sentimental—he whistled cheerily as he went along, and thought more of the probable amount of shooting in the Balner woods than of the beauty around him, yet he was not insensible to it.
“How jolly it seems after the rain,” he said to himself. “After all, there’s nowhere like England, fogs and all—it’s fresh, and wholesome, and invigorating, even in murky weather, like what we’ve had lately,” and he stood still and looked round him approvingly.
Suddenly a sound, a faint sound only, caught his ear. He listened. It came again. This time he distinguished it to be that of cheerful voices approaching him, then a merry laugh, a little exclamation, and the laugh again. Arthur Beverley’s face lighted up with interest; he felt sure he knew that laugh. He hastened on and, after a few moments’ quick walking, a little turn in the path brought him in sight of a group of figures just in front of him; they were the Western girls, the Western girls in great force, for, besides the two he knew already, there were the younger ones, Alexa and Josephine, and little Francie. And the laugh had been Lilias’s—he was not mistaken.
She was standing with her back towards him, and so was Mary, but the tiny girl beside them drew their attention to his approach.
“A gentleman, sister,” she exclaimed, pulling Miss Western’s skirt. And Lilias, turning round, met his hearty look of pleasure.
“I thought it was you,” he said, as he shook hands, “I heard you laugh.”
“How do you know it was my laugh?” said Lilias, smiling.
“I recognised it,” he said, quietly.
And Mary glanced up at him brightly. “Yes,” she said, “it was Lilias. She was laughing at Alexa, who screamed because a rabbit ran across the path. That’s not like a country girl, is it, Captain Beverley?”
“Alexa screams if a butterfly settles on her,” said Josephine, disdainfully, trying to balance herself on the hooked handle of her umbrella, which she was holding upside-down for the purpose.
Captain Beverley looked at her and at Alexa with good-humoured curiosity. Alexa looked pretty and frightened, but Josey, her long thin legs emerging from a shabby waterproof, her “touzled” fair hair tumbling out from under a still shabbier hat, was rather a remarkable object.
“These are your younger sisters, I suppose?” he said, turning to Lilias.
“Yes,” she answered, rather shortly; “we all came out for a ramble as soon as the rain cleared off. It is so miserable to be shut up in the house all day.”
“Just what I have been feeling,” he replied. “Not that I mind the rain, but still one can’t exactly set off for a walk in it unless one has something to do or somewhere to go. It is very lucky for me that I met you; I was just making up my mind to losing my way.”
“I dare say we can direct you,” said Lilias, “but we are not going your way. We are going home; it must be about half-past three now, and we have been out ever since dinner-time. Mary, don’t you think we should be going home?—it is a good walk from here, you know. You can direct Captain Beverley to Hathercourt Edge better than I, I think.”
“But I don’t want to be directed to Hathercourt Edge,” said Captain Beverley, with a very slight touch of annoyance in his tone. “I have just come from there. Of course, if you won’t let me walk with you, I must submit; but I was bound for Hathercourt Rectory. I am very anxious to see Mr Western, and thought I might again take my chance of finding him at home. That is to say, if he will not think me very troublesome.”
“Of course he will not,” answered Mary, heartily; “he was very sorry to have missed you yesterday, and I know he will be at home all this afternoon. Which way shall we go back, Lilias—by the Southmore road, or all the way through the wood?”
“By the wood decidedly, I should say,” answered Captain Beverley. “Miss Western,” he went on, quickly, “you have got such a bramble on your skirt—there, now, I have got him—step forward, please—yes, that’s it.”
By this manoeuvre he had managed to get Lilias and himself a little in front of the others, and he maintained his ground by walking on beside her. Francie was at her other side, so the arrangement into threes seemed to come about quite naturally, Mary following with Alexa and Josephine. By degrees Lilias lost the slight constraint which her manner had shown at first, and became her usual happy, winning self. The sound of her voice, and now and then of her laugh, was enough to make Mary happy too, and well content to keep behind at a reasonable distance, so that Lilias should not be annoyed by the exhibition before a stranger of Alexa’s foolish shyness or Josey’s uncalled-for remarks.
The sun came out more brightly, and gleamed and quivered down the wood alleys before them. What did they talk of, those two, as they walked on quietly, little Francie beside them, trotting along, lost in her own pretty baby dreams of fairies and brownies and the like, with which her small head was filled, all unconscious of the old, old drama beginning once more to be re-enacted in the old, old way that is ever new? What did they talk of? Could they have told, or did it matter? All about everythings and nothings, no doubt, so called “small talk,” which yet seemed full of interest, nothing very wise or weighty—so much, at least, is certain—but certain too that the walk through the Balner woods that sweet November afternoon was neither wearisome nor long to Lilias Western and the new owner of the old Edge farm.
The sunshine had tempted Mr Western out too. He was walking about the garden when his five daughters, escorted by Captain Beverley, reached the Rectory. A momentary expression of surprise crossed his face as he came forward to meet them, at first sight of the stranger, but it was succeeded by a look of gratification and pleasure, which quickly set the young man’s mind quite at rest, and left him no doubt of being welcome.
“I was quite intending to walk over to Hathercourt Edge to see you, to thank you for the friendly visit yesterday, which I was sorry to have missed,” said the Rector, with a slight touch of old-fashioned formality, not unbecoming to his tall, thin, refined-looking figure and gentle face, as he shook hands with Captain Beverley, “and now I see I must thank you also for taking care of my girls.”
“We don’t need to be taken care of that way, papa,” said Josephine, “we were only in the Balner woods, and Captain Beverley was coming here, anyhow.”
“He only tookened care of Lily and me,” said Francie, importantly, but the observation was a happy one. It was impossible not to laugh at it, and Josey’s abruptness passed unrebuked.
“I certainly deserve no thanks,” said Captain Beverley. “My visit yesterday was a selfish one, and as for to-day—why, all my thanks are due to you, Francie! I should have been lost in the woods, and perhaps eaten up by Red Riding-hood’s wolf if I had not met you, and been shown the way here.”
“But that wolf was killed long ago, Lily says,” said Francie, staring up with great bewilderment in her blue eyes. “It couldn’t have eatened you up when it was killed itself.”
“Indeed. I am very glad to hear it,” replied Captain Beverley, gravely, “then I needn’t be afraid of coming through the Balner woods; it is a good thing to know that. It is a much pleasanter walk than by the road,” he went on, turning again to Mr Western. “I really was on my way here when I met your daughters. I am afraid you will think me very troublesome.”
His manner was certainly boyish, but not in the least awkward. That Mr Western was “taken” with him was quickly evident.
“Indeed, no,” he said, heartily. “Living here so completely out of the world, as you see, it is very seldom that we have the pleasure of showing even the little hospitality we have in our power. But, such as it is, I hope you will accept it. Lilias, Mary,” he continued, turning to his daughters, the younger ones having by this time disappeared, “tell your mother that Captain Beverley is here.”
“I will,” said Mary, hastening away with a great excitement in her thoughts, “I do believe papa is going to ask him to stay to tea. What will mamma say?” and not knowing whether she was pleased or distressed, she hurried in to break the momentous tidings to her mother, and to consult the cook.
Lilias was following her, but her father called her back. “You need not both go, my dears,” he said with sudden remembrance of unwritten letters awaiting him in his study, which must be seen to before four o’clock post-time. “Perhaps Captain Beverley would like to have a look at the church again, if you will take him to see it. I will follow you in a few minutes, but I have a letter or two I must finish, which I was forgetting.”
“Pray don’t let me interrupt you,” exclaimed Captain Beverley, with anxiety almost disproportionate to the occasion. “I should very much like to look at the church, for there are some tablets there I want to examine. And if Miss Western will explain them a little, I shall be very much obliged.”
Lilias hesitated. “Mary understands them better than I do,” she began, but her father interrupted her.
“I will send her after you, if you go on, and I will finish my letters as quickly as I can, and then, Captain Beverley, I shall be at your service. Mrs Western tells me you want to hear about Joseph Owen. You will stay and—I can’t say dine with us—we are very uncivilised, you see; we have a mongrel meal at six!”
He spoke with a slight nervousness, which made Lilias’s cheek grow hot. “Poor dear father!” she ejaculated, mentally. But the guest seemed blissfully unconscious of his host’s hesitation.
“You are very kind indeed,” he said, eagerly. “I should very much like to stay, if I shall not be a trouble. It is so wretchedly dull and uncomfortable at the Edge, I don’t think I could have stood it much longer, unless—if you had not taken pity on me,” he added, laughingly, as Lilias led the way across the grass to the old church.
Mary joined them there in a few minutes, and while Captain Beverley was examining the old coat-of-arms on the tablet in memory of his ancestress, she found time to whisper to her sister,—
“Mamma knows that papa has asked him to stay to tea. I don’t think she minds much.”
“But what will there be for tea?” said Lilias, in consternation.
“Oh! that will be all right,” replied Mary, reassuringly.
And, somewhat to Lilias’s surprise, her mother showed herself far more amiably disposed for Captain Beverley, on further acquaintance, than might have been anticipated.
“Though, indeed,” said Mary, when, at night, they were talking over in their own room the pleasant evening they had had, “it would be difficult not to feel amiably disposed to him! He is so unaffected and hearty, and yet not by any means a goose. He liked talking to papa about sensible things, I could see.”
“He talked sensibly to me, too,” said Lilias, dryly, “though, of course, I cannot answer for what he may have said to you.”
“Lilias!” exclaimed Mary, “don’t be so silly. You know—”
“What do I know?”
“That I am not the sort of girl likely to have anything but sensible things said to me, especially when you are there.”
Lilias laughed merrily. “Really, Mary, you are very complimentary. You trust to me to absorb all the nonsense, and leave the sense for you! I think I shall keep out of the way, if Captain Beverley comes here again.”
“Then he wouldn’t come any more,” said Mary. “Lily, I’m sleepy, say good-night, please.”
“Good-night, though I am not sleepy at all,” said Lilias, cheerfully.
What had become of all her low spirits? thought Mary, with a little bewilderment Lilias was not usually so changeable. The evening had certainly been a very pleasant one; even the younger girls had somehow shown to advantage; and Captain Beverley had not merely ignored, he had seemed perfectly unconscious of the homeliness of their way of living—the crowded tea-table, the little countrified waiting-maid, the absence of the hundred and one small luxuries which to him could not but be matters of course. And his unconsciousness had reached favourably on his entertainers; Mr Western lost his nervousness, Mrs Western her gentle coldness, and every one seemed at ease and happy. Any stranger glancing in would have thought them all old friends, instead of new acquaintances, of the handsome young man who was the life and soul of the party.
“Mary,” said Lilias again, just as Mary was falling asleep, “Captain Beverley will be at the Brocklehurst ball this year. He is to be staying at Romary.”
“I thought you said you were never going again,” said Mary, who had her wits about her, sleepy though she was.
“But you would hot like to go without me, I know,” replied Lilias, meekly. “Oh, Mary, I do wish we could have new dresses for once!”
Mary did not consider this observation worth waking up to answer. But her dreams were a strange medley—Captain Beverley dancing at a ball with his great grandmother Mawde, dressed all in scarlet, as if she were Red Riding-hood, but with a face like Lilias’s. And what Lilias’s dreams were, who can say?
But the Brocklehurst ball was three weeks off as yet, and there was no lack of opportunities of discussing it with Captain Beverley.
Surely November this year must have been an exceptionally fine one, for there seemed few days on which Arthur Beverley did not find his way through the woods, or by the road, to the Rectory, with some excuse in the shape of further plans to be shown to Mr Western, or a book to lend to the girls or their mother, or without any, save the sight of his own bright face, and an eager proposal that they should all set off on a long ramble somewhere or other, instead of wasting one of the few fine days of late autumn, moping in the house. And by degrees it came to be a matter of course that, if the owner of Hathercourt Edge chose to drop in at any or every meal, he should be welcome, and that if he stayed away he should be missed, and Mrs Western’s fears and vague apprehensions gradually softened, now that this terrible wolf had actually taken up his quarters in the midst of her flock without, so far, any of them being the worse!
“He seems like a sort of elder brother among them all,” she said to her husband. “I wish Basil had been at home—contact with such a man would have done him good.”
Mr Western agreed with her, for he, too, had greatly “taken” to the young stranger. It was pleasant to him to find that he had not altogether fallen out of the ways of his class, that cares, and small means, and living out of the world had not crusted over his former self past recognition. Arthur Beverley had not been at college, but he, as well as his host, had been an Eton boy, and poor George, to whom the name of Eton was that of a forbidden Paradise, listened with delight to the many reminiscences in common of his father and his guest, notwithstanding the quarter of a century which divided their experiences. So everybody in his or her own way felt pleased with Captain Beverley, and his coming seemed to have brought new life and sunshine into the Rectory. Lilias alone spoke little of him, and Mary sometimes lay awake at night “thinking.”
Chapter Six.
Marrying or Giving in Marriage.
“If there’s no meaning in it,” said the king, “that saves a world of trouble, as we needn’t try to find any. And yet I don’t know.”
Alice in Wonderland.
November was not bright everywhere, however. In Paris everything, out of doors, that is to say, was looking extremely dull, and Alys Cheviott many times, during the four weeks her brother had arranged to stay there, wished herself at home again at Romary. For Paris, though people who have only visited it in spring or summer (when the sunshine, and the heat, and the crowds, and the holiday aspect of everything are almost overwhelming) can hardly perhaps realise the fact, can be exceedingly dull, and hotel life at all times requires bright weather, and plenty of outside interests, to make it endurable. Alys did not care particularly about balls or parties; she was too young to have acquired much taste for such amusements, though young enough to enjoy heartily the two or three receptions at which Mr Cheviott had allowed her to “assist.” But it was the day-time she found so long and dreary. She wanted to go out, to shop and to look about her, and to take long walks in the Bois de Boulogne in the morning, and drives with her brother in the afternoon, and every day the weather put all expeditions of the kind out of the question. It rained incessantly, or, at least, as she complained piteously, “when it didn’t rain it did worse—it looked so black and gloomy that no one had the heart to do anything.” Alys had been in Paris several times before, she had seen all the orthodox lions, and had not, therefore, the interest and excitement of the perfect novelty of her surroundings to support her, and as day after day passed, with no improvement to speak of, she began sorely to regret having teased her brother into allowing her to accompany him on this visit, in this case necessitated by the business arrangements of a friend.
“I’ll never come with you again, Laurence, anywhere, when it has anything to do with business,” she declared.
“Who is ‘it’?” inquired Mr Cheviott, calmly.
“Laurence, you are not to tease me. I am too worried to stand it, I am, really,” she replied.
”‘It’ again! Alys, you are growing incorrigible. I really think my best plan would be to send you to a good school for a year or two—the sort of place where ‘young ladies of neglected education’ are taken in hand.”
He spoke so seriously that for a quarter of a second Alys wondered if he could be in earnest. She turned sharply round from the window against which she had been pressing her pretty face in a sort of affectation of babyish discontent, staring out at the leaden sky, and the wet street, and the dreary-looking gardens in the distance.
“Laurence!” she exclaimed. But Laurence’s next remark undeceived her.
“You should not flatten your face against the window-pane. You will spoil the shape of your nose, and you have made it look so red,” he observed, gravely. “Would you care to live, Alys, do you think, if you had a red nose?”
Alys gently stroked the ill-treated member as she answered, thoughtfully:
“I hardly think I should. Laurence, do you know there have been times when I have been afraid they might run in the family.”
“What?” asked Laurence, philosophically.
“Red noses,” answered Alys, calmly. “Aunt Winstanley has one, you know. She says its neuralgia, but I feel sure it is indigestion.”
Laurence looked up at her with a smile, which broke into a laugh as he observed the preternatural gravity of her expression.
“Come and sit down and have some breakfast, you absurd child,” he said. He was already seated at the table.
Alys walked slowly across the room, and took her place opposite him. She looked blooming enough notwithstanding all the trials she had had to endure. As the Western girls had pronounced her, such she was, very, very pretty—as pretty a girl as one could wish to see. Her soft dark hair grew low, but not too low, on the white, well-shaped forehead; her features were all good, and gave promise of maturing into even greater beauty than that of eighteen; her blue eyes could look up tenderly as well as brightly from under their long black eyelashes, for their colour was not of the cold steel-like shade that is often the peculiarity of blue eyes in such juxtaposition. But the tenderness was more a matter of the future than the present, for hitherto there had been little in her life to call forth the deeper tones of her character; she was happy, trustful and winning, full of life and vigour; incapable of a mean thought or action herself, incapable of suspecting such in others.
Mr Cheviott looked at her critically as she sat opposite him.
“Alys,” he said at last, “I am afraid I have not brought you up well.”
“What makes you think so all of a sudden, Laurence?”
“I am afraid you are spoiled. You are such a baby.”
Alys’s eyes flashed a little.
“Are you in earnest, Laurence?”
“A little, not quite.”
“I think you have got into the habit of thinking other people babies, and it’s a very bad habit. You like them to do just exactly what you tell them, and yet you laugh at them for being babies. You think Arthur is a baby too.”
“There are babies and babies,” Mr Cheviott replied. “Some do credit to those who bring them up, and some don’t.”
“Well, he does, whether I do or not,” said Alys, “he is as kind, and good, and nice, and sensible as he can be. And do you know what I think, Laurence? If there are different kinds of babies, there are different ways of being spoiled, and I sometimes think you are spoiled! I do,” she continued, shaking her head solemnly. “Arthur spoils you, and aunt of course does. I believe I am the only person that does not.”
“And how do you manage to steer clear of so fatal an error?”
“You are not nice, indeed you are extremely disagreeable when you speak like that,” said Alys, “but still I think I will tell you. I don’t spoil you because I don’t think you quite perfect as everybody else does,” and she glanced up at him defiantly.
Mr Cheviott laughed. He was just going to answer, when there came an interruption in the shape of his manservant.
“Letters!” exclaimed Alys, “I do hope there are some for me; they will give me something to do. Are there any for me, Laurence?”
“Yes, two, and only one for me.”
“From aunt and from Arthur,” said Alys. “I will read aunt’s first, there is never anything in hers. She just tells me over again what I told her, and makes little comments upon it. Yes, ‘so sorry, dearest Alys, that the weather in Paris has so spoiled the pleasure of your visit, and that during the last week you have scarcely been able to get out, except in a close carriage, for a miserable attempt at shopping. And so you enjoyed Madame de Briancourt’s ball on the whole, very much, and your pink and white grenadine looked lovely, and Clotilde did your hair the new way.’ Did you ever hear anything so absurd, Laurence? It is like reading all I have written over again in a looking-glass, only then the letters would be all the wrong way, wouldn’t they?”
But Mr Cheviott did not answer, and Alys, looking up, saw that he had not heard her; he was busily reading his own letter, and its contents did not seem to be satisfactory, for a frown had gathered on his brow, and, as he turned the first page, a half-smothered exclamation of annoyance escaped him.
“What is the matter, Laurence?” said Alys. “You don’t seem any better pleased with your letter than I am with mine?”
“How do you mean? What does he say to you?” inquired her brother, quickly.
“Who? Oh, Arthur, you mean. I haven’t opened his yet. I was saying how stupid aunt’s letters are. So yours is from Arthur, too, is it?” said Alys, pricking up her ears, “what’s the matter? Is he going to be married? I do wish he were.”
“Alys!” exclaimed Mr Cheviott, with real annoyance in his tone, “do be careful what you say. You are too old to talk so foolishly. It is unbecoming and unladylike.”
“Why? What do you mean?” said Alys, opening wide her blue eyes in astonishment. “Why shouldn’t I talk of Arthur’s being married? I have noticed before that you seem quite indignant at the thought of such a thing, and I don’t think you have any right to dictate to him. It’s just what I was saying, he has spoiled you by giving in so, and the more inches he gives you the more ells you want to take.”
“I have spoiled you, Alys, by allowing you to speak to me as you do. It is most unjustifiable; and the way you express yourself is worse than unladylike, it is vulgar and coarse.”
He got up and left the room. Never in all her life had Alys been so reproved before, and by him of all people, her dear, dear, Laurence—her father and mother and brother in one, as she often called him. She could not bear it; she threw aside the unlucky letters which in some way or other she felt to have been the cause of her distress, and burst into tears. She cried away quietly for some time, till it occurred to her to wonder more definitely in what way she had really displeased her brother, and the more she thought it over the more convinced she became that Arthur’s letter had been the primary cause of his annoyance, and her own remarks nothing worse than ill-timed and unwise.
“For I very often say much more impertinent things, and he only laughs,” she reflected.
There was some comfort in this. She dried her eyes and resolved to try to make peace on the first opportunity. “Laurence is very seldom angry or unreasonable,” she thought; “but, of course, as I was saying just now, he is not perfect. But I am sure he does not really think me ‘coarse and unladylike.’ What horrible words!” And the tears came back again.
Just then her glance fell on Captain Beverley’s unopened letter. “I wonder if I shall find out, from what he says to me, how he has managed to vex Laurence so,” she thought to herself, tearing open the letter, and quickly running through its contents. It was a pleasant, cousinly letter, amusing and hearty, but with nothing that would, to Alys, have distinguished it from others she had, from time to time, received from Arthur, had not her eyes been sharpened by her brother’s strange annoyance. Instinctively she hit upon the cause of offence; two or three times in the course of the letter allusion was made to the Western family, to their “kindness and hospitality,” their general “likeableness,” and a far less quick-witted person than Miss Cheviott would have been at no loss to discern Captain Beverley’s growing intimacy with the Rectory household, and to suspect the existence of some special attraction, though possibly as yet unsuspected by the young man himself.
“I am sure it is about the Westerns that Laurence is annoyed,” said Alys to herself. “I have noticed that he does not like them, and he is afraid of Arthur falling in love with one of them. But why shouldn’t he? I can’t understand Laurence sometimes. I am sure if ever he marries it will be to please himself, and nobody else. What is the good of a man’s being rich if he can’t do that? And Arthur is rich enough! Yes, the more I think of it the more sure I am that it was something about the Westerns that made Laurence angry.”
She was not long left in doubt. The door opened and Mr Cheviott made his appearance again. He looked grave and preoccupied, but as calm as usual. When, however, his glance fell on Alys’s flushed cheeks and tearful eyes, his expression grew troubled. He came behind her chair and putting his hand on her head, turned her face gently towards him.
“Do you think me very harsh, Alys?” he said, kindly. “I did not mean to be so, but I was annoyed, and, besides that, I cannot bear that habit of joking about marrying, and so on, especially the sort of way girls do so nowadays. It is very offensive.”
“But I wasn’t joking, Laurence. I had no thought of it,” replied Alys. “I will never speak about anything of the kind at all, if you dislike it; but truly you misunderstood me. I don’t think what I said would have annoyed you if you had not been vexed about something else.”
“Perhaps not,” said Mr Cheviott, kindly. “Well, dear, I am sorry for making you cry, but you will forgive me, won’t you?”
Alys smiled up through the remains of her tears.
“Of course,” she replied. “You know you could make me think it all my own fault, if you liked, Laurence. And I understand what you mean about disliking joking about marrying, and so on, but indeed I was quite in earnest. I should very much like Arthur to marry, and I cannot imagine why you should so dislike the idea of it.”
She glanced at her brother questioningly as she spoke—her curiosity strengthening as her courage revived—but his expression baffled her.
“Why do you so much wish Arthur to marry?” he inquired. “You have never seemed to dislike him, Alys.”
“Dislike him!” she repeated, innocently. “Dislike Arthur! Of course not. I like him more than I can tell; indeed, I think I love him next best to you of everybody in the world. How could I dislike him? And if I did, how could that possibly have anything to do with my wishing him to marry? Why, I want you to marry, but I have given it up in despair.”
Mr Cheviott looked slightly self-conscious at his sister’s cross-questioning, but turned it off as lightly as he could.
“You might want to get rid of him,” he said, carelessly. “Of course, if he were married, we should not see so much of him. Why do you want him to marry?”
“Just because it would be nice, that is to say, if his wife were nice, and I don’t think Arthur would marry any one that wasn’t,” said Alys. “She would be in a sort of way like a sister to me, you know, Laurence.”
“Those dreams are seldom realised,” observed Mr Cheviott, cynically. “As nature did not give you a sister, I would advise you to be content with what she did give you, even though it is only a very cross old brother. But what has put all this of Arthur’s marrying into your head just now, Alys? Has he been taking you into his confidence about any nonsense—falling in love, or that kind of thing, I mean?” And he eyed Arthur’s letter suspiciously.
“Oh! dear no. Read his letter for yourself, and you will see there is nothing of the kind,” replied Alys. But she watched her brother’s face rather curiously, as she added, “He seems to like the family at Hathercourt Rectory very much—those pretty girls, you know, that we saw that Sunday. He says they have been very civil to him.”
“Very probably,” said Mr Cheviott, dryly, as he took up the letter. “Pretty girls, do you call them, Alys? One was handsome, but the other wasn’t.”
“I liked them both,” persisted Alys. “One was beautiful, and the other had a sort of noble, good look in her face, better than beauty.”
“What a physiognomist you are becoming, child!” said her brother, from the depths of Arthur’s letter. He read it quickly, and threw it aside; then he went to the window, and stood looking out for a minute or two without speaking. “Alys,” he said at last, so suddenly that Alys started, “you said just now that it was very dull here; so it is, I dare say, for no doubt the weather is horrible. You would not mind, I suppose, if I arranged to go home rather sooner than I intended?”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t mind at all,” replied Alys, looking surprised; “but, Laurence, I thought you couldn’t possibly get your business finished sooner than you said.”
“I think I might manage it,” he said. “Indeed, I fancy I am needed on the other side of the water quite as much as here. I may have to come back again before long, but that’s easily done. I’m going out now, Alys, but I shall be in by one, and if it’s at all fine this afternoon, we might pay the calls we owe, especially if we are leaving sooner. I can tell you certainly what I fix by luncheon-time.”
“Very well,” replied Alys. “I shall not be sorry to go home, and for one thing, Laurence, I should like to be at home in time for the Brocklehurst ball.”
“What a reason!” exclaimed Laurence, as he left the room. “Now that you have reminded me of it, it is almost enough to tempt me to stay away to escape it.”
At luncheon-time he returned, telling her that he had fixed to leave in two days.
“And just out of contradiction,” said Alys, “I believe it is going to be bright and fine;” for a gleam of positive sunshine, as she spoke, made its way into the room.
“All the better for our calls,” said Laurence.
The gleam strengthened into steady brightness, and when Alys found herself, wrapped in the most becoming of attires, velvet and furs, seated beside her brother in a very luxurious carriage, behind two very respectable horses, the young lady began to feel that it might have been very possible to enjoy herself, if only the fine weather had been quicker of coming. It was a little—just the very least little bit in the world—provoking that now, just as it had come, Laurence should make up his mind that they must go.
She looked at him doubtfully as the thought crossed her mind. The sunshine did not seem to have any exhilarating effect upon him; he looked dull and more careworn than since they had been in Paris.
“Laurence,” she said, hesitatingly, “I suppose you have quite made up your mind to leave on Friday?”
“Quite,” he said, gently. “Are you beginning to regret it?”
“A little; it is nice when it is fine, isn’t it? Paris forgets the rain so quickly.”
“Paris forgets all disagreeable experiences far too quickly.”
Alys gave a little shiver.
“Oh, please don’t put revolutions, and barricades, and guillotines in my head, Laurence,” she said, beseechingly. “Even the names of the streets are associated with them, if one begins thinking of such things. One must do at Rome as the Romans do, so let me be thoughtless in Paris.”
“Still, on the whole, you prefer England. You would not like to marry a Frenchman, would you, Alys?”
“Of course not,” replied Alys, “and of all things I would not like to be married in the French way, hardly knowing anything about the man I was to marry. Ermengarde de Tarannes, Laurence, that pretty girl whom we saw at the Embassy, is to be married to a Marquis something or other, Mrs Brabazon told me, whom she has really only seen three times, for he is now in Italy, and will only return the week before the marriage. Fancy how horrible!”
Mr Cheviott smiled.
“You are a regular little John Bull, child,” he said; “still I understand your feeling. There is something to be said, however, in favour of the French way of arranging such things, where the parents or guardians of a girl are sensible people, that is to say. Perhaps a union of both ways would be perfection.”
“How do you mean?” asked Alys.
“Supposing a case where a girl had known a man nearly all her life, and had got to care for him unconsciously almost, and that at the same time he was the very man of all others whom, for every reason, her parents, or whoever stood in their place, wished her to marry, would not such a case be pretty near perfection?”
“Rather too perfect,” said Alys. “The chances are that the hero would spoil it all by not wanting to marry her.”
Mr Cheviott looked annoyed.
“Don’t be flippant, Alys,” he said; “of course that part of it I was taking for granted.”
“I didn’t mean to be flippant,” said Alys, penitently; “I never want to vex you, Laurence. I’d do anything to please you. I’m not sure that I would not even marry to please you, if you want to try an experiment of the French way.”
She looked up in her brother’s face with a smile, and he could not help returning it.
“If you promise never to marry to displease me, I shall be satisfied,” he answered. “But, after all, it’s a difficult question. I have known some English marriages turn out quite—ah, surely more miserable than ever a French one could.”
“But what has put marrying so much into your head to-day? This morning you were distressing yourself about Arthur’s prospects, and now you are worrying yourself about mine?”
“Not worrying myself. It is only natural I should think about your future sometimes. And if your memory is not very capricious, Alys, I think it will tell you that it was yourself, not I, who first began talking about marriage this morning, when Arthur’s letters came. Do you remember?”
“Yes; but still—”
“Here we are at Madame de Briancourt’s,” interrupted Mr Cheviott.
“Madame” was at home, and the brother and sister made their way across the spacious entrance, along a corridor, then through a suite of rooms, hardly so beautiful by daylight as when Alys had last seen them on the evening of a grand reception, to a small boudoir at the very end of all. As she passed along, Alys’s thoughts continued in the same direction.
“But still,” she repeated to herself, “I don’t understand Laurence. I am sure he has got something in his head—about Arthur—or about me; still perhaps it is not that: he may have been annoyed about something quite different, and Arthur’s letter may not have anything to do with our going away in such a hurry. Anyway, I can leave it to Laurence; I am not going to bother my head about it, for there may be nothing in it, after all.”
And, two minutes afterwards, her head was full of other things, for there was what, to Alys’s eyes, looked quite a crowd of gayly dressed ladies and gentlemen when the door at the end of the long suite was thrown open, and the brother and sister found themselves, for the moment, the observed of all observers.