Kate Courtenay rushed across the park in a passion of mortification and
childish despair, and fled as fast as her swift feet could carry her to
a favourite spot--a little dell, through which the tiniest of brooks ran
trickling, so hidden under the trees and copse that even Summer never
quite dried it up. There was a little semi-artificial waterfall, just
where the brook descended into the depths of this little dell. In Spring
it was a wilderness of primroses and violets; and so long as wild
flowers would blow, they were always to be found in this sunny nook. The
only drawback was that a footpath ran within sight of it, and that the
village had an often-contested right of way skirting the bank. Kate had
issued arbitrary orders more than once that no one was to be suffered to
pass; but the law was too strong for Kate, as it had been for her
grandfathers before her; and, on the whole, perhaps the occasional
passenger had paid for his intrusion by the additional liveliness he had
given to the landscape. It was one of Kate’s ‘tricks,’ her governess
once went so far as to say, to take her evening walk here, in order to
detect the parties of lovers with whom this footway was a favourite
resort. All this, however, was absent from Kate’s mind now. She rushed
through the trees and bushes, and threw herself on the sunny grass by
the brookside; and at fifteen passion is not silent, as it endeavours to
be at a more advanced age. Kate did not weep only, but cried, and
sobbed, and made a noise, so that some one passing by in the footway on
the other side of the bushes was arrested by the sound, and drew near.
It is hard to hear sounds of weeping in a warm Summer evening, when the
air is sweet with sounds of pleasure. There is something incongruous in
it, which wounds the listener. The passenger in this case was young and
tender-hearted, and he was so far like Kate herself, that when he heard
sounds of trouble, he felt that he had a right to interfere. He was a
clergyman’s son, and in the course of training to be a clergyman too.
His immediate destination was, as soon as he should be old enough to be
ordained, the curacy of Langton-Courtenay, of which his father was
Rector. Whether he should eventually succeed his father was of course in
the hands of Providence and Miss Courtenay; he had not taken his degree
yet, and was at least two years off the time when he could take orders;
but still the shadow of his profession was upon him, and, in right of
that, Herbert Hardwick felt that it was his business to interfere.
What he saw, when he looked through the screen of trees, was the figure
of a girl in a light Summer dress, half seated, half lying on the grass.
Her head was bent down between her hands; and even had this not been the
case, it is probable Bertie, who had scarcely seen Miss Courtenay, would
not have recognised her. Of course, had he taken time to think, he must
have known at once that nobody except Kate, or some visitor at the Hall,
was likely to be there; but he never took time to think. It was not his
way. He stepped at once over the fence, walking through the brushwood,
and strode across the brook without pause or hesitation.
‘What is the matter?’ he said, in his boyish promptitude. ‘Have you hurt
yourself?--have you lost your way?--what is wrong?’
For a moment she took no notice of him, except to turn her back more
completely on him. Herbert had sisters, and he was not so ceremonious to
young womankind generally as might otherwise have happened. He laid his
hand quite frankly on her shoulder, and knelt down beside her on the
grass. ‘No,’ he said, with a certain authority, ‘my poor child, whoever
you may be, I can’t leave you to cry your eyes out. What is the matter?
Look up and tell me. Have you lost yourself? If you will tell me where
you have come from, I will take you home. Or have you hurt yourself?
Now, pray don’t be cross, but answer, and let me know what I can do.’
Kate had almost got her weeping-fit over, and surprise had wakened a new
sentiment in her mind. Surprise and curiosity, and the liveliest desire
to know whose the voice was, and whose the hand laid so lightly, yet
with a certain authority, upon her shoulder. She made a dash with her
handkerchief across her face to clear away the tears, and then she
suddenly turned round and confronted her comforter. She looked up at him
with tears hanging on her eyelashes, and her face wet with them, yet
with all the soul of self-will which was natural to her looking out of
her eyes.
‘Do you know,’ she said hastily, ‘that you are trespassing? This is
private property, and you have no right to be here.’
The answer which Bertie Hardwick made to this was, first, an astonished
stare, and then a burst of laughter. The sudden change from sympathy and
concern to amusement was so great that it produced an explosion of
merriment which he could not restrain. He was a handsome lad of
twenty--blue-eyed, with brown hair curling closely about his head,
strongly built, and full of life, though not gigantic in his
proportions. Even now, though he had heard of the imperious little Lady
of the Manor, it did not occur to him to connect her with this stranger.
He laughed with perfect heartiness and _abandon_; she looking on quite
gravely and steadily, the while, assisting at the outburst--a fact which
did not diminish the amusing character of the scene.
‘I came to help you,’ he said. ‘I hope you will not give information.
Nobody will know I have trespassed unless you tell, and that would be
ungrateful; for I thought there was something the matter, and came to be
of use to you.’
‘There is nothing the matter,’ said Kate, very gravely, making a
photograph of him with the keen, inquisitive eyes, from which, by this
time, all tears were gone.
‘I am glad to hear it,’ he said; and then, with another laugh--‘I
suppose you are trespassing too. Can I help you over the fence?--or is
there anything that I can do?’
‘I am not trespassing--I am at home--I am Miss Courtenay,’ said Kate,
with infinite dignity, rising from the grass. She stood thus looking at
him with the air of a queen defending her realm from invasion; she felt,
to tell the truth, something like Helen Macgregor, when she starts up
suddenly, and demands of the Sassenach how they dare to come into
Macgregor’s country. But the young man was not impressed; the muscles
about his mouth quivered with suppressed laughter and the strenuous
effort to keep it down. He made her a bow--the best he could under the
circumstances--and stood with the evening sunshine shining upon his
uncovered head and crisp curls, a very pleasant object to look upon, in
an attitude of respect which was half fun and half mockery, though Kate
did not find that out.
‘Then I have been mistaken, and there is nothing for it but to
apologise, and take myself off,’ said Bertie. ‘I am very sorry, I am
sure. I thought something had gone wrong. To tell the truth I thought
you were--crying.’
‘I was crying,’ said Kate. She did not in the least want him to go. He
was company--he was novelty--he was something quite fresh, and already
had altogether driven away her passion and her tears. Her heart quite
leapt up at this agreeable diversion. ‘I was crying, and something had
gone very wrong,’ she said in a subdued tone, and with a gentle sigh.
‘I am very sorry,’ said Bertie. ‘I don’t suppose it is anything in which
I could be of use--?’
She looked at him again. ‘I think I know who you are,’ she said. ‘You
must be the second son at the Rectory--the one whom they call Bertie.
At least I don’t know who else you could be.’
‘Yes, I am the one they call Bertie,’ he said, laughing. ‘Herbert
Hardwick, at your service. And I did not mean to trespass.’
The laugh rang pleasantly through all the echoes. It was infectious.
Kate felt that, but for her dignity, she would like to laugh too. And
yet it was a serious matter; and to aid and abet a trespasser, and at
the same time ‘encourage’ the Rectory people, was, she felt, a thing
which she ought not to do. But then it had been real concern for
herself, the Lady of the Manor, which had been at the bottom of it; and
that deserved to be considered on the other side.
‘I suppose not,’ she said, seriously. ‘Indeed, I am very particular
about it. I don’t see why you should laugh. I should not think of going
to walk in your grounds without leave, and why should you in mine? But
since you are here, you must not go all that way back. If you like to
come with me, I will show you a nearer way. Don’t you think it is a very
fine park? Were you ever in one like it before?’
‘Yes,’ said Herbert, calmly, ‘a great many. Langton-Courtenay is very
nice, but it wants size. The glades are pretty, and the trees are
charming, but everything is on a small scale.’
‘On a small scale!’ Kate cried, half-choking with indignation. This
unparalleled presumption took away even her voice.
‘Yes, decidedly small. How many acres are there in it? My uncle, Sir
Herbert Eldridge, has five hundred acres in his. I am called after him,
and I have been a great deal with him, you know. That is why I think
your park so small. But it is very pretty!’ said Herbert,
condescendingly, with a sense of the humour of the situation. As for
Kate, she was crushed. She looked up at him first in a blaze of disdain,
intending to do battle for her own, but the number of acres in Sir
Herbert Eldridge’s park made an end of Kate.
‘I thought you were going to be a clergyman,’ she said.
‘So I am, I suppose; but what then?’
‘Oh! I thought--I didn’t know,’ cried Kate. ‘I supposed perhaps you were
not very well off. But if you have such a rich uncle, with such a
beautiful park----’
‘I don’t know what that has to do with it,’ said Bertie, with a
mischievous light in his eyes. ‘We are not so very poor. We have dinners
three or four times a week, and bread and cheese on the other days. A
great many people are worse off than that.’
‘If you mean to laugh at me,’ said Kate, stopping short, with an angry
gesture, ‘I think you had better turn back again. I am not a person to
be made fun of.’ And then instantly the water rushed to her eyes, for
she was as susceptible as any child is to ridicule. The young man
checked himself on the verge of laughter, and apologised.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I did not mean to make myself
disagreeable. Besides, I don’t think you are quite well. I hope you will
let me walk with you as far as the Hall.’
‘Oh! no,’ said Kate. But the suppressed tears, which had come to her
eyes out of rage and indignation, suddenly grew blinding with self-pity,
and recollection of her hard fate. ‘Oh! you can’t think how unhappy I
am,’ she said, suddenly clasping her hands together--and a big tear came
with a rush down her innocent nose, and fell, throwing up a little
shower of salt spray from the concussion, upon her ungloved hand. This
startled her, and her sense of dignity once more awoke; but she
struggled with difficulty against her desire for sympathy. ‘I ought not
to talk to a stranger,’ she said; ‘but, oh! you can’t think how
disagreeable Uncle Courtenay can make himself, though he looks so nice.
And Miss Blank does not mind if I were dead and buried! Oh!’ This
exclamation was called forth by another great blot of dew from her eyes,
which once more dashed and broke upon her hand, as a wave does on a
rock. Kate looked at it with a silent concern which absorbed her. Her
own tears! What was there in the world more touching or more sad?
‘I am so sorry,’ said Bertie Hardwick, moved by compassion. ‘Was that
what you were crying for? You should come to the Rectory, to my mother,
who always sets everybody right.’
‘Your mother would not care to see me,’ said Kate, looking at him
wistfully. ‘She does not like me--she thinks I am your enemy. People
should consider, Mr. Bertie--they should consider my position----’
‘Yes, you poor little thing,’ said Bertie, with the utmost sympathy;
‘that is quite true--you have neither father nor mother to keep you
right--people ought to make allowance for that.’
To describe Kate’s consternation at this speech would be impossible. She
a poor little thing!--she without any one to set her right! Was the boy
mad? She was so stunned for the moment that she could make no reply--so
many new emotions overwhelmed her. To make the discovery that Bertie
Hardwick was nice, that he had an uncle with a park larger than the park
at Langton-Courtenay; to learn that Langton-Courtenay was ‘small,’ and
that she herself was a poor little thing. ‘What next?’ Kate asked
herself. For all this had come to her knowledge in the course of half an
hour. If life was to bring a succession of such surprises, how strange,
how very strange it must be!
‘And I do wish you knew my mother,’ he went on innocently, not having
the least idea that Kate’s silence arose from the fact that she was
dumb with indignation; ‘she has the gift of understanding everybody.
Isn’t it a pity that you should not know us, Miss Courtenay? My little
sister Minnie is about your age, I should think.’
‘It is not my fault I don’t know you,’ burst forth Kate; ‘it is because
you have not behaved properly to me--because your father would not pay
any attention. Is it right for a clergyman to set a bad example, and
teach people to rebel? He never even took any notice of my letter,
though I am the natural head of the parish----’
‘You poor child!’ cried Bertie; and then he laughed.
Kate could not bear it--this was worse than her Uncle Courtenay. She
stood still for a moment, and looked at him with things unspeakable in
her eyes; and then she turned round, and rushed off across the green
sward to the Hall, leaving him bewildered and amazed in the middle of
the park, this time most evidently a trespasser, not even knowing his
way back. He called after her, but received no answer; he stood and
gazed round him in his consternation. Finally he laughed, though this
time it was at himself, thus left in the lurch. But Kate was not aware
of that fact. She heard the laugh, and it gave her wings; she fled to
her melancholy home, where there was nobody to comfort her, choking with
sobs and rage. Oh! how forlorn she was!--oh! how insulted, despised,
trodden upon by everybody, she who was the lawful lady of the land! He
would go and tell the Rectory girls, and together they would laugh at
her. Kate would have sent a thunderbolt on the Rectory, or fire from
Heaven, if she could.