Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: _THE TWO MAIDEN AUNTS._]
TWO MAIDEN AUNTS
BY
MARY H. DEBENHAM
AUTHOR OF 'MISTRESS PHIL' 'A LITTLE CANDLE ETC.
_WITH TWO FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS_
_BY GERTRUDE D. HAMMOND_
LONDON
NATIONAL SOCIETY'S REPOSITORY
BROAD SANCTUARY, WESTMINSTER
NEW YORK: THOMAS WHITTAKER, 2 & 3 BIBLE HOUSE
[All rights reserved]
1895
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
THE MAVIS AND THE MERLIN. Price 2s.
MY GOD-DAUGHTER. Price 2s.
MOOR AND MOSS. Price 2s. 6d.
FOR KING AND HOME. Price 2s. 6d.
MISTRESS PHIL. Price 2s.
A LITTLE CANDLE. Price 3s. 6d.
FAIRMEADOWS FARM. Price 2s.
ST. HELEN'S WELL. Price 2s.
NATIONAL SOCIETY'S DEPOSITORY,
SANCTUARY, WESTMINSTER. S.W.
[Illustration: Contents headpiece]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE AUNTS
II. THE NEPHEW
III. THE FIRST DAY
IV. A HEART OF OAK
V. THE WRONG END
VI. CHRISTMAS AT OAKFIELD
VII. HERO AND HEROINES
VIII. IN THE CHANNEL
IX. IN PORT
[Illustration: Contents tailpiece]
[Illustration: Illustrations headpiece]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE TWO MAIDEN AUNTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (_Frontispiece_)
'WHAT USEFUL THINGS SHALL I DO,' HE ASKED (missing from book)
[Illustration: Illustrations tailpiece]
[Illustration: Chapter I headpiece]
TWO MAIDEN AUNTS
CHAPTER I
THE AUNTS
'Child, be mother to this child.'--E. B. BROWNING.
It was seven o'clock on an autumn morning nearly a hundred years ago.
A misty October morning, when the meadows looked grey with the heavy
dew, and the sky was only just beginning to show pale blue through the
haze which veiled it.
There was a certain little hamlet, just a few cottages clustered
together beside a country road, where the world seemed hardly yet
awake. The road ran across a wide common, where the cows and horses
and geese wandered about pretty much as they chose, and the
blackberries grew as they grow only on waste ground. The blackberry
season was pretty nearly over, and the damp had taken the taste out of
those which the village children had left, but the dewy nights were
still warm enough to bring up the mushrooms like fairy tables in all
directions, and there was at least one gatherer from the village who
had been astir an hour ago, for the common was a well-known mushroom
ground, and early birds had the best chance. He was coming back now
with a goodly basketful, shaking showers of dew off the grass at every
step and leaving a track of footmarks behind him. Through the mist he
looked a sort of giant, but he was only a tall, sturdy lad of
seventeen, in a fustian jacket and the wide hat which countrymen used
to wear in the days of our grandfathers. He turned off the common
before he reached the village and went down a little lane, at the end
of which stood a small gabled house, in a garden where the autumn
flowers hung their heads under the heavy dew. There was a paddock
behind the house where a cow was feeding, and a gate led through a yard
to the back door, and thither the boy was turning when he noticed a
little girl in homespun frock and sun-bonnet leaning over the garden
gate, looking up rather wistfully at the shuttered windows of the
house. She gave a great start as the boy came behind her and laid his
hand suddenly on her shoulder.
'Now then, Nance,' he said severely, 'what are you about, disturbing
the place at this time in the morning?'
The little girl shook his hand off with an impatient shrug.
'What be you about, Pete, starting me like that? I'm not doing nothing
nor disturbing nobody. I can look at the cottage, I suppose, without
you to call me up for it?'
'Mother'll be fine and angry when she hears what you've been at,' said
the boy, 'peeping and prying on the young ladies, and them in trouble.'
Nancy put up her pretty lip with the injured look of a spoilt child.
'I'm not peeping nor prying nor hurting nobody, and, if I am, what are
you doing, I should like to know?' Then, as she noticed his basket,
she clapped her hands with a little triumphant laugh.
'I know what 'tis you're after,' she cried; 'you've been off and got
them mushrooms, and you've brought them for the young ladies so as you
can see Penny or maybe Miss Betty herself, and hear whether it's really
true. And haven't I got some eggs, my own hen's eggs, here for them,
and only just waiting till they open the shutters to take them in?'
'Well, why don't you go round to the back door, as is the proper place
for you,' said the stern elder brother, 'instead of staring at
gentlefolks' houses like a great gawky?'
'Well, come to that, I know which is the biggest gawky of us two,' said
pert little Nance; 'and, if you must know, I was just waiting for the
chance of Miss Betty coming down, seeing Penny might be in one of her
tantrums and not tell me a word.' Then, as the front door of the house
suddenly opened, she exclaimed, joyously,
'Look, if she isn't there,' and was darting in at the gate, when her
brother caught her and held her back. 'Come away, will you, ye
interfering little hussy!' he was beginning hastily, when the girl who
had opened the door caught sight of the two and came down the garden
path towards them. Spoilt Nancy shook herself free, and with a
triumphant glance at her big brother she ran to meet the young lady,
and Peter could do nothing but follow her; and, indeed, if the truth
must be told, he was not at all sorry to do it, and, perhaps, just a
little grateful to naughty Nancy for showing the way.
The early riser from the cottage was a girl of thirteen, a very pretty
little girl, with a fair, fresh face, sunshiny hazel eyes, and hair of
that golden brown colour which the bracken wears in autumn. She seemed
to have dressed in rather a hurry, for her long black frock was not
quite perfectly fastened, the muslin scarf round her shoulders was just
a little crooked, and the black ribbon which tied the bright hair had
not managed to catch it all, so that a few curly locks came tumbling
out at the side. She had shut the house door very quietly, and she
held up her finger for a sign of silence as she came down the path; and
Nancy, who had started off running to meet her, stopped as if a sudden
feeling of shyness had come over her, a feeling, it must be owned,
which didn't often trouble Nancy, certainly not towards Miss Betty
Wyndham, whom she had known ever since she could remember. But then
she had never seen Miss Betty look quite like this before, in her black
frock and with such a grave look in her merry eyes, a look that was
rather sad, and yet, perhaps, more serious than sad, and that somehow
made Nancy stop and curtsey and Peter pull off his hat with that sort
of shy respect which the most careless among us must pay to a fresh
sorrow or loss. But, in spite of her grave look, Miss Betty seemed
very pleased to see them.
'Good morning, Pete; good morning, Nancy,' she said. 'How kind of you
to come so early! Did you guess I should be down?'
'I thought maybe you would, miss,' said Nancy, 'only the shutters being
up I thought you must be asleep still.'
'I dressed in the dark,' said Miss Betty, giving her scarf a little tug
which didn't straighten it much, 'because I didn't want to wake Angel.
Poor Angel, she was so late coming to bed last night; I'd been asleep
ever so long and woken up again while she was talking to Penny.'
And then she stopped and looked from one to the other with a
questioning look in her eyes.
'You know, don't you?' she said at last; 'you've heard about the sad
thing that's happened?'
For once in a way Nancy left her brother to answer.
'We haven't heard nothing for certain, Miss Betty,' he said, 'only
people talked, and we knew Penny had gone to fetch you home; but father
said we weren't to say nothing till we knew for certain.'
'It's quite true,' said Miss Betty gravely,' quite dreadfully true,
Pete. Our brother, Mr. Bernard, has been killed in the West Indies,
and we are very poor now; we have left school and come home to live.'
I fear that the last piece of news so much did away with the sadness of
the first that Nancy's face broadened into a delighted smile, and she
only just cut short an exclamation of joy. Luckily Miss Betty was not
looking at her, and she saw Peter's frown and felt a little ashamed of
herself.
'I want to tell you everything,' Miss Betty went on; 'it was very nice
of your father not to want people to talk, but now we should like every
one to know because we are very proud of my brother, and we want our
friends to be. Will you come into the arbour and I'll tell you?' and
she led the way across the garden while Peter and Nancy followed
willingly enough. The arbour was that sort of bower which we see in
old-fashioned pictures and sing about in old songs. There had been
roses climbing over it all the summer, and a few blossoms hung there
still, pale and fragrant, among a tangle of clematis and everlasting
peas. On the little grass plot just outside the arbour there was a
stone figure, not like the nymphs and Cupids and water-carriers which
we find in trim old-fashioned gardens and stately pleasure grounds, but
the chipped worn figure of a lady, lying with folded hands and a quaint
head-dress and straight falling hair. No one quite knew where that
statue came from, except that it must have lain once upon a tomb in
some church or monastery chapel, and in evil days, when men had
forgotten their reverence for holy ground and the quiet dead, the tomb
must have been destroyed, and the figure defaced and thrown out as
rubbish. Then some one later on had brought her to the cottage and set
her up as an ornament to the garden, leaning against a tree, and
looking very strange and uncomfortable. When Betty and her sister were
little children they were half afraid of the tall grim figure, which
looked queer and uncanny among the bushes in the twilight, but as they
grew older and knew more about her, they lost their fear of her and
began to be sorry for her, and they got Peter and some of the village
boys to move her out of her unnatural position and lay her down on the
grass as she had once lain on her tomb in the church, and planted
flowers beside her. And the great purple convolvulus, or, as I love to
call it by its sweet old name, the Morning Glory, seeded itself every
year, and twined its soft tendrils and opened its lovely flowers all
about the poor lady, as if it wanted to hide all the marks of hard
usage, and the grass made her a soft pillow, and the pink rose petals
dropped all about her, and she looked as if she were happily asleep
among the flowers. And when she was being moved the boys came upon
some other pieces of stone among the bushes, which might have been part
of the same tomb. There was one bit with part of a coat-of-arms on it
which no one could make out, and another bit with some letters, many of
them quite defaced, but after a lot of puzzling and rubbing the moss
off, the little girls managed to read the two words, 'Demoiselle
Jehanne.' Miss Angelica felt sure it was French, and she copied it out
and took it back to school to ask her schoolmistress what it meant.
And the mistress said she was right, it was most likely old
Norman-French such as was talked in England five or six hundred years
ago, and that 'demoiselle' was the title of a young lady, and 'Jehanne'
was the old way of writing Jeanne or Jane. So Angelica and Betty
decided directly that it must be the name of their stone lady, and
called her 'Demoiselle Jehanne,' or, to make it clearer to Peter and
their other village friends, 'Miss Jane.' And it was wonderful what a
companion Miss Jane had become to them: they never felt really alone
when they were sitting beside her. Betty made up stories about her,
and Angelica wondered about her and about the days when she was alive,
and how old she was when she died, and whether she ever saw Edward the
Black Prince, and whether she had a father and a mother who were very
sad when they put that figure over her grave. And often when anything
had gone wrong with the sisters, they would come and sit down on the
grass by the arbour and tell it to Miss Jane, and feel as if she
sympathized with them and comforted them. And if more lucky little
girls are inclined to laugh at them, I would ask them to be thankful
that they are happier than my two little sisters, and have a mother to
whom they can go and tell their troubles instead of whispering them
into the broken stone ear of Miss Jane.
And perhaps it was partly that old custom of theirs that made Betty at
this moment, when she wanted to tell about the great change that was
coming into her life, lead the way to the arbour and sit down on the
bench close to the silent figure among the trailing creepers. Peter
and Nancy stood in front of her and waited for her to speak, both a
little embarrassed, as we are when we aren't quite sure how we ought to
feel and what we ought to say. It was very sad, of course, about Mr.
Bernard Wyndham being dead, but, as they had neither of them ever seen
him in their lives, it was rather difficult to mind very much. But
then they knew they ought to think about what Miss Betty was feeling.
Nancy looked at Pete and felt that it would be dreadful to have one's
brother killed, even if he did scold one and keep one in order rather
too much. But then a brother who had been in the West Indies for
twelve out of the thirteen years of one's life was different from a
brother who was always there to get one blackberries and lift one over
hedges, and even box one's ears when one required it. And besides, as
I have said, Miss Betty did not look exactly very sad, only grave and
just the least little bit important. So they waited to hear what she
had to say.
'It is quite true, Pete and Nancy,' she began; 'Mr. Bernard has been
killed in a dreadful rising of the natives in the West Indian Islands.
He was very, very brave--of course we knew he would be that--and he has
died as an Englishman ought to die, so we shall never be able to show
him all the things we wanted to show him, and to introduce him to all
of you here, as we always thought we should.' Miss Betty's voice began
to shake a little for the first time, and Pete and Nancy waited in
respectful silence. After a minute she went on:
'But Angel says we must try to be very proud to think of him dying so
bravely, for she says that women all over England are giving up so
much, that we ought to be glad to think that we have given something
too. And now I am coming to the part that is the most surprising.
Only think--our brother was married, married out there eight years ago,
and he never told us! I suppose he wanted to give us a beautiful
surprise when he brought us a new sister home.'
She waited for somebody to say something. Peter's face did not look as
if he thought the surprise a very beautiful one.
'Beg your pardon, Miss Betty,' he said doubtfully, 'but Mr. Bernard's
lady, she'd--she'd be black, I suppose?'
'Black!' exclaimed Betty in horror. 'Oh, dear me, no, Peter! Of
course she wouldn't be black. There are English people in the West
Indies or my brother wouldn't have been there, and it was an English
lady he married; but, poor lady, she died when she'd only been our
sister not quite a year. I suppose that was why Bernard never told us
afterwards, because of not wanting us to know what we'd missed. It was
very, very brave and very unselfish of him, of course, but Angel and I
wish he had, because then we could have written and said how sorry we
were, and perhaps comforted him a little. And now I'm coming to the
most surprising thing of all. My brother had a little boy, and he is
seven years old now, and he is in England and he will be here
to-night.' Miss Betty hurried out these last pieces of news one on the
top of the other, and then stopped and looked at her hearers, who
certainly seemed surprised enough to satisfy her.
'Poor little gentleman!' said kind-hearted Peter, ''tis a sad coming to
England for him, for sure, and him an orphan and alone in the world, as
one may say.'
'No, Peter, one mayn't say anything of the kind,' said Miss Betty,
pulling herself up and looking as dignified as she possibly could. 'Of
course, he's an orphan, poor dear little boy! but he can't be alone in
the world at all when he's got two aunts, and his aunt Angelica and I
will take good care he never feels like an orphan, the darling.'
Nancy's eyes opened their very widest. 'But, Miss Betty,' she said, 'I
thought aunts were old people.'
'Oh, Nancy!' said Betty, with an air of wisdom; 'you have a very great
deal to learn, Nancy, dear. It is not the age that makes the aunt,
Nancy, it is the nephew or the niece. And as for being old, Angelica
and I aren't so very young. She was sixteen last winter and I am
thirteen, and people have done a great deal at thirteen, as you'll
learn when you read biography. And, even if we haven't been so very
old before, we have to begin now and grow up at once, for we are going
to live here and be independent ladies, with our cousin, Mr. Crayshaw,
coming down now and then from London to see us, and--and talk over
business, and advise us about our money matters, and we shall have
Godfrey, our nephew Godfrey, to take care of and educate. Angel says,'
she went on after a minute, while the faces of her listeners showed
great satisfaction at the arrangements, 'that we must put everything
else on one side and bring up our nephew as his father would have
wished, to be a proper English gentleman and a credit to his family.
She says we can fit ourselves to do any duty that we have got to do,
and our duty now is to be good aunts, and we must be _that_ with all
our might;' and here the good aunt broke off suddenly as her eye fell
for the first time on the baskets which her listeners were holding.
'Did you bring those for us?' she exclaimed. 'Oh, how kind of you!
Are those Polly's eggs, Nance? I guessed they were, and the mushrooms
are off the common, I know. Whereabouts did you get them, Pete? I
must go with you some day very soon, I'm longing----'
And then as if with a sudden recollection the eager little lady pulled
herself up, smoothed her crooked kerchief, and shook the rebellious
hair out of her eyes, and went on in her most sober tones: 'I don't
know, Peter, whether I shall be able to come mushrooming much now. Of
course my nephew will take up a good deal of my time, and I'm not sure
whether many mushrooms are quite a good thing for children. But eggs
will be very nice for his breakfast--a new-laid egg every day, I think,
not too hard-boiled. And there's just one more little thing; I hope
you won't mind, but I fancy if you could get into the way of calling us
Miss Angelica and Miss Elizabeth when our nephew is there it would be a
good thing, and make him look up to us more. You won't mind my saying
so, will you? And now I think I must go, because Angel--because Miss
Angelica will be up; so good-bye, and thank you very much indeed for
coming.'
And the next minute Miss Betty was gone, starting off in her usual
whirlwind fashion, then pulling herself up and marching along solemnly
and with the dignity which became the aunt.
But she forgot her dignity when she got upstairs, and met her sister
coming out of her bedroom to look for her with a little shade of
anxiety in her face. Angelica Wyndham was one of those very gentle,
thoughtful people who are so tender about their neighbours' happiness,
so fearful of hurting and slow to put their own wishes forward, that we
hardly know how powerful that very gentleness makes them in their
little world. Everybody loved Angel, and said how sweet she was and
how pretty; but they hardly knew how they came to consider her and to
go out of their way to please her, just because she always thought so
much about other people that really it was a shame to vex her. She was
not particularly quick, except with that sort of quickness which we can
all learn by being thoughtful for others, and watchful to please and
help them. She was not nearly so clever as Betty, and she knew it
quite well, and was never a bit jealous when Betty passed her in class
and learnt her lessons in half the time; and Betty, on her side,
thought there was no one in all the world like Angel and would have
done anything to please her, and always hoped that one day she might be
half as wise and good. And so this morning, when she saw her sister
standing in the doorway, with the little worried anxious look in her
gentle eyes, she flung her arms round her, and stood on tip-toe to kiss
her, exclaiming eagerly:
'Angel dear, did you wonder where I was? Did I wake you getting up? I
left the blinds down on purpose. I've only been talking to Pete and
Nancy, and telling them all about it, and Nancy's brought us some eggs,
and Pete's got such a basket of mushrooms!'
'You haven't been on the common for mushrooms this morning, have you,
dear?' asked Angelica.
'Oh no, no, of course not, Angel; how could I? No, I told him perhaps
I shouldn't be able to go with him now. You needn't be afraid, Angel,
I've told him all about it, and how we are going to grow up now at
once, as we have to be Godfrey's maiden aunts; and I told him to call
me Miss Elizabeth, and he quite understands.'
Angel, with an arm round Betty's neck among the tumbled curls,
wondered, in her gentle way, whether her eager young sister quite
understood herself, but all she said was:
'Come in and let me tie your hair, Betty dear.'
'Isn't it tidy?' said Betty, with a pull at her loose locks; then, as
she stopped beside the looking-glass, and caught sight of herself in
contrast to Angelica's graceful figure, looking taller and slimmer in
the straight black dress, with the soft muslin about her slender throat
and the dark abundant curls falling smoothly on her shoulders, she
exclaimed in dismay,
'Oh, Angel dear, I'm so sorry! I dressed in the dark.'
'I know, Betty dear. Sit down and let me do your hair,' said the elder
sister, getting the ribbon off with as little pulling of the tangled
curls as possible.
'You see,' she said very gently and diffidently, as she set to work to
put Betty in order, 'I've been thinking a great deal about this dear
little boy of ours, and, Betty, it makes me feel so young.'
'Does it?' said Betty, twisting her head round so as to look into her
sister's face; 'why, Angel dear, it makes me feel old!'
'Yes, I know what you mean. I mean it makes me feel silly and
inexperienced when I ought to be wise. You see, Betty, I think we
ought both to consider that we haven't got Bernard's little boy to
please ourselves with him, and pet him, and give him everything he
wants. He won't be a plaything for us--we have to make a man of him,
and as he hasn't any one else to look to, we mustn't let him just take
us for playfellows, he must look upon us as----'
'As his maiden aunts,' said Betty, emphatically; 'yes, Angel, I quite
see that.'
'You see,' Angelica went on, 'I expect when we get the dear little
thing to ourselves we shall find it much easier to romp with him and
pet him and all that, and so we might if there were any one else older
and wiser for him to look up to; but it wouldn't do for a little boy
only to have playfellows, there must be some one for him to respect.'
'And as there isn't any one else, it must be us,' said Betty,
decidedly, 'for he won't have any one else belonging to him to respect
except Cousin Crayshaw about once a fortnight, which isn't very often,
and so we shall have to be instead of a father and mother and uncles
and aunts and grandmothers and everybody that little boys have to
respect all rolled into one.'
'And not think at all about pleasing ourselves with him as if he were a
kitten,' said Angel, gravely; 'you see things so quickly, Betty
dear----'
But there her sentence was cut short by Betty springing up suddenly and
flinging both arms round her.
'Angel,' she cried, 'if you talk like that I'll never forgive you. If
he can't be good with you to teach him he doesn't deserve to have you
for his relation. And you are always to scold me--only it mustn't be
when he is there--if I forget about growing up and do stupid things and
make myself so that he can't respect me. And perhaps by-and-bye, if
you tell me, and I try very hard indeed, I may get to be a real, good,
proper, sensible maiden aunt.'
[Illustration: Chapter I tailpiece]
[Illustration: Chapter II headpiece]