How time has slipped over since we were last here, in the midst of the
Welsh mountains! It is more than a year, but still wonderfully little
has gone on in that interval. The larch-trees at Dalradern have added
some palms to their stature, but the venerable oaks and elms disdain to
show by change the influence of so brief a period, and, in the same
way, it is in Kate alone--that plant of rapid growth--that we have much
alteration to mark.
What a change has been wrought in her! It is not merely that she has
grown into a tall and graceful girl, but that one by one the little
traits of her peasant origin have faded away, and she looks, and seems,
and carries herself with all the air of a high-born beauty. In her lofty
brow, her calm features, her manner, in which a quiet dignity
blends with a girlish grace, and, above all, in her voice singularly
sweet-toned as it was, might be read every sign of that station men
distinctively call the “best.”
Masters and professors of every kind had surrounded her, but she had a
sort of indolent activity in her disposition, which tended little to the
work of learning, while her quickness enabled her to pick up smatterings
of many things. But, as she said herself, Sir Within was her best
teacher. The old minister’s tact, his social readiness, his instinctive
seizure of the nice points of every situation,--these were the gifts
that had a special attraction for her; and while she was envying him
the charm of a manner that could captivate all, from the highest to the
humblest, she had actually acquired the gift and made it her own.
To recognise in her the traits on which he most prided himself, to see
in that lovely girl his pupil in the arts of society, to mark in her a
copyist of himself in the little tricks of manner and effect, was
the greatest of all flatteries; and he never wearied of watching her
repeating himself before him in a form so captivating and so graceful.
Although he had lost--and it was a loss he deplored--the friendly
intercourse with the Vyners, and although the neighbourhood more
strictly than ever quarantined him now, no representations nor
remonstrances could prevail upon him to send Kate to a school, or to
place her under other protection than his own. Innumerable were the
governesses who had come down to take charge of her; none, however,
remained long. Some alleged it was the solitude that oppressed them;
others averred that their pupil would submit to no discipline but such
as she liked, and that not alone the studies she would pursue, but even
the hours she would devote to them, should be at her own choosing.
And one or two took higher ground, and declared that the establishment
which contained an old bachelor and a very beautiful ward, was not in a
position to confront the criticisms of the world.
To such as have not known, or met with the class Sir Within pertained
to, it will perhaps seem incredible that the old rake actually felt
flattered by this attack on his reputation. All that he had ever known
of life was passed amongst people of admirable manners and very lax
morals. They were the best bred, the best informed, the best dressed,
and the pleasantest in the universe. Nowhere was life so easy and
agreeable as in their company; every one was kind, considerate, and
obliging; not a hard word was ever dropped. Who could be uncharitable
where all was tolerated? Who could be severe where everything was
pardoned?
It was by a very easy induction that he was led to believe that a
certain laxity on the score of morals was an essential element of
good breeding, and that nothing was so low in tone as that “eternal
scrutiny,” as he called it, into one’s neighbours’ habits, which would
make of a gentleman very little other than a detective.
When he heard, therefore, that a certain Mademoiselle La Grange had
taken her departure on these exceptional grounds, he actually chuckled
with delighted vanity.
“So ‘Ma Mie’”--this was his pet name for Kate--“they tell me that
Mademoiselle has gone off this morning,” said he, “no longer able to
tolerate a house where there is no mistress.”
“The note she left behind her went fully into the matter,” said Kate.
“It was not alone that you were unmarried, but that you were a very
well-known monster of vice.”
“Vrai! vrai!” cried he, with ecstasy; “monstre épouvantable!”
“And, to confirm it, she added, that no one came here; that the
neighbours avoided the house, as the abode of a plague; and even
sight-seers would not gratify the craving of their curiosity at the cost
of their propriety.”
“Did she say all that?”
“Yes; she said it very neatly, too; as prettily and as tersely as such
impertinence can be put in nice French.”
“And this is the ninth departure, is it not, Ma Mie, on these high
grounds of morality?”
“No, Sir; only the fifth. Two alleged loneliness, one accused the damp,
and one protested against _my_ temper!”
“What had you done, then?”
“Everything that was cross and ill natured. It was the unlucky week that
Cid Hamet staked himself.”
“I remember; there were two days you would not come down to dinner on
pretence of headache, and you told me afterwards it was all ill humour.”
“Because I always tell you everything,” said she, with a smile so
captivatingly beautiful, that it lit up her fave as the sun lights up a
landscape.
“I am sorry, too,” said he, after a short silence, “that Mademoiselle
should have gone away at this moment, for I am expecting visitors.”
“Visitors, Sir?”
“Yes, child; two distant, very distant relatives of mine are coming
to-day; less, indeed, to see me than the place I live in. They are my
heirs, Ma Mie; and the world says, no sort of people are less palatable
to the man in possession, and, I take it, the world is right in the
matter. When one thinks how he dislikes the man who keeps the newspaper
too long at the club, it may be imagined how he is hated who keeps
another out of an estate; and the sense of being so hated engenders
something that is not friendship!”
“I think I can understand that feeling!” said she, thoughtfully.
“Every one knows,” continued he, “that when he is gone, the objects
which he has loved and cherished--I mean the material objects, for I am
talking as an old bachelor--will survive to give pleasure to others; but
somehow he fancies--at least, _I_ fancy--that the new incumbent will
not know the full luxury of the shade under that sycamore where we sat
yesterday to watch the fish in the pond; that he’ll never appreciate
that Claude as I do, when I let a fresh blaze of sunlight on the
opposite wall, and see it in a soft reflected light; and as to the
delight of riding through these old wooded alleys as I feel it, he’ll
not have you for a companion--eh, ma belle et bonne?”
She turned away her head. Was it shame, or sorrow, or both? Who knows?
“What are your friends like?” asked she, suddenly.
“They are very like each other, and not like anything or any one else I
ever met. They are, first of all, descendants of an old Huguenot family
of excellent blood. Their ancestors settled here, and, like most others,
they prospered. One became a Peer, but died without an heir, and the
title became extinct. The present head of the house is this person I
expect here to-day, with his son. He is a banker, as his son is. They
are very rich, and very eager to be richer. Report says that they are
not very generous or free-handed. My own experience can neither refute
nor confirm the rumour. Their London house was very handsome when I saw
it, and when I dined there everything bespoke the habits of wealth; but
they had a sort of air of business in their reception, a look of doing
something that was to redound to the bank, that I didn’t like. The
company, too, was of that mixed character that showed they were less
familiars than clients.”
“How intensely acute to detect all this at once!”
“I am nothing, Ma Mie, positively nothing, if I am not ‘fin.’ It is the
spirit of my old calling that survives in me. Nay, I even thought, in
the distributions of the host’s attentions to his friends, I could name
the men who stood with a goodly balance to their account, and point out
those who were being, what is called, accommodated.”
“Oh, this is too much!” said she, laughing; but there was nothing in her
tone or look that implied a shade of incredulity.
“Well, you are to see them both to-day; they will be here to dinner.” He
said this with a half-suppressed sigh, for the visit promised him very
little that was agreeable.
He was essentially a man of conventionalities, and there were some
difficulties in the present case that embarrassed him. First, he should
be unable to have any dinner company to meet his visitors. He had long
ceased to have intercourse with his country neighbours, and, of course,
none would think of “calling” on his friends. This was provoking enough,
but a greater trouble remained behind it. Kate’s presence! How was he
to account for that? Who was she? Why was she there? Who, and what, and
where were her friends? Would not the Ladarelles at once connect the
estrangement in which he lived from all society with the fact of
this girl being beneath his roof? Would they not at once jump to the
conclusion, It is this scandal has deterred all from visiting him?
Now, it is just possible that something in this allegation against his
morality might have tickled the morbid vanity of the old rake, who loved
to think that youth and vice were convertible terms, and he even smirked
as he imagined himself called on for his defence. Still, in his element
of gentleman, there survived the shame of the part that would be
assigned to Kate by such an imputation, and it is but justice to him
to say that he felt this acutely. Had there been time for such an
arrangement, he would have procured a governess, and sent her away
to some sea-side spot. As it was, he thought of taking the Vyners’s
Cottage, and placing her there under the charge of Mrs. Simcox. This
would have been easy, as the Cottage had been advertised to let for some
time back; but, as ill luck would, have, it, some one had just arrived
there, whether as friend or tenant, none knew.
It was true, he might keep her unseen for, the few days the visit would
last. The Castle was ample enough to secure a retreat which should be
inviolable; but there were difficulties, too, about; this, not easily to
be met.
He could not implicitly rely on the discretion of servants, especially
of servants who found themselves in, the presence of the coming heir, of
him who should be “king hereafter;” and again, he was not quite sure how
she herself would meet a proposition that assigned her so equivocal a
position. She was very proud, and on one or two occasions he had seen
her display a spirit that no old gentleman of his stamp would possibly
expose himself to from a young girl, if he could help it. There was,
then, nothing left but to present her as his ward, a word so wide
in acceptance, that he trusted it might defy scrutiny, and with this
resolve, though not without misgivings, he went about giving his orders,
and directing the arrangements to receive his guests.
Even this office had its shade of sadness, pleasant as it is at ordinary
times to prepare for those who come to enliven solitude or break a
monotony, which even of itself savours of gloom; the task is not so
agreeable if undertaken for those who come to inspect what will be their
own hereafter; what, even as they survey, they seem half inclined to
grasp; what, while they look at, they speculate on the changes they will
effect in, thinking of that day when he, who now does the honours, shall
have left the stage, and they themselves become the actors.
Kate, however, accompanied him everywhere, aiding by her counsels and
assisting by her suggestions, and serving in this way to dispel much
of that depression which the task imposed. It was, as they both were
returning from one of the gardens, that a keeper came forward with a
dead pheasant in his hand.
[Illustration: 295]
“A hen! Michael, a hen!” cried Sir Within, with displeasure.
“Yes, Sir, and a very fine one. It was the gentleman who has just come
to Dinasllyn shot her this morning. I met him coming up here to excuse
himself to you, and say how sorry he was. He gave me this card, and
hoped you’d not be displeased at it.”
“What’s the name? I have not got my glass, Kate.”
“Mr. George Grenfell, Sir, Dover-street.”
“Grenfell, Grenfell--never heard of any Grenfells but Cox and Grenfell,
the Piccadilly people, eh?”
Kate gave no answer, but still held the card, with her eyes fixed upon
it.
“Sad thing to shoot a hen--very sad thing--and a remarkably fine bird;
quite young, quite young,” muttered Sir Within to himself. “Could
scarcely be the game sauce Grenfell, I think, eh, Kate? This apology
smacks of the gentleman. What was he like, Michael?”
“A fine-looking man, Sir, standing as tall as me; and about thirty-six
or thirty-eight, perhaps. He had a nice spaniel with him, Sir, one of
the Woburn breed; I know ‘em well.”
“I’m sorry he shot that hen. Ain’t you, Kate?”
But Kate was deep in thought, and did not hear him.