"Girls!" said my Aunt Kezia, looking round at us, "I should just like to
know what is to come of the whole four of you!"
My Aunt Kezia has an awful way of looking round at us. She begins with
Sophy--she is our eldest--then she goes to Fanny, then to Hatty, and
ends up with me. As I am the youngest, I have to be ended up with. She
generally lays down her work to do it, too; and sometimes she settles
her spectacles first, and that makes it feel more awful than ever.
However, when she has gone round, she always takes them off--spectacles,
I mean--and wipes them, and gives little solemn shakes of her head while
she is doing it, as if she thought we were all four going to ruin
together, and had got very near the bottom.
This afternoon, when she said that, instead of sitting quiet, as we
generally do, Hatty--she is the pert one amongst us--actually spoke up.
"I should think we shall be married, Aunt Kezia, one of these days--
shan't we?"
"My dear, if you are," was my Aunt Kezia's reply, more solemn than ever,
"the only wedding present that I shall be conscientiously able to give
to those four misguided men will be a rope a-piece to hang themselves
with."
"Oh dear! I do wish she would not!" said Fanny in a plaintive whisper
behind me.
"Considering who brought us up, Aunt Kezia," replied impertinent Hatty,
"I should have thought they would have had better bargains than that."
"Hester, you forget yourself," said my aunt severely. Then, though she
had only just finished wiping her spectacles, she took them off, and
wiped them again, with more little shakes of her head. "And I did not
bring you all up, neither."
My cheeks grew hot, for I knew that meant me. My Aunt Kezia did not
bring me up, as she did the rest. I was thought sickly in my youth, and
as Brocklebank Fells is but a bleak place, I was packed off to Carlisle,
where Grandmamma lived, and there I have been with her until six weeks
back, when she went to live with Uncle Charles down in the South, and I
came home to Brocklebank, being thought to have now outgrown my
sickliness. My Aunt Kezia is Father's sister, and has kept house for
him since Mamma died, so of course she is no kin to Grandmamma at all.
I know it sounds queer to say "Father and Mamma," instead of "Father and
Mother," but I cannot help it. Grandmamma would never let me say
"Mother;" she said it was old-fashioned and vulgar: and now, when I come
back, Father will not hear of my calling him "Papa," which he says is
new-fangled finnicking nonsense. I did not get used, either, to saying
"Papa," as I did "Mamma," for Grandmamma never seemed to care to hear
about him; I don't believe she liked him. She never seemed to want to
hear about anything at Brocklebank. I don't think she ever took even to
the girls, except Fanny. They all came to see me in turns, but
Grandmamma said Sophy was only fit to be a country parson's wife; she
knew nothing except things about the house and sewing and mending: she
said fine breeding would be thrown away upon her. She might do very
well, Grandmamma said, with her snuff-box elegantly held in her left
hand, and taking a pinch out of it with the mittened fingers of her
right--that is, Grandmamma, not Sophy--she said Sophy might do very well
for a country squire's eldest daughter and some parson's wife, to cut
out clothes and roll pills and make dumplings, but that was all she was
good for. Then Hatty's pert speeches she could not bear one bit.
Grandmamma said it was perfectly dreadful, and that her great glazed red
cheeks--that is what she called them--were insufferably vulgar; she
wouldn't like anybody to hear that such a creature was her
grand-daughter. She wanted Hatty to take a lot of castor oil or some
such horrid stuff, to bring down her red cheeks and make her slender and
ladylike; she was ever so much too fat, Grandmamma said, and she thought
it so vulgar to be fat. She wanted to pinch her in with stays, too, but
it was all of no use. Hatty would not be pinched, and she would not
take castor oil, and she would eat and drink--like a plough-boy,
Grandmamma said--so at last she gave her up as a bad job. Then Fanny
came, and she is more like Grandmamma in her ways, and she did not mind
the castor oil, but swallowed bottles of it; and she did not mind the
stays, but let Grandmamma pinch her anyhow she pleased, so I think she
rather liked Fanny. I was pale and thin enough without castor oil, so
she did not give me any, for which I am thankful, for I could not have
swallowed it as meekly as Fanny.
It looked very queer to me, after Grandmamma's houseful of servants, to
come home and find only four at Brocklebank, and but three of those in
the house, and my Aunt Kezia doing half the work herself, and expecting
us girls to help her. Grandmamma would hardly let me pick up my
kerchief, if I dropped it; I had to call Willet, her woman, to give it
to me. And here, my Aunt Kezia looks as if she thought I ought to want
no telling how to dust a table or make an apple pie. She has only
cook-maid and chambermaid,--Maria and Bessy, their names are,--and Sam
the serving-man. There is the old shepherd, Will, but he only comes
into the house by nows and thens. Grandmamma had a black man who waited
on us. She said it gave the place an air, and that there were
gentlewomen in Carlisle who would scarce have come to see her if she had
not had a black man to look genteel. I don't fancy I should care much
for people who would not come to see me unless I had a black servant. I
should think they came to visit him, not me. But Grandmamma said that
my old Lady Mary Garsington, in the Close, never came to see anybody who
had less than a thousand a year, and did not keep a black. She was the
grandest person Grandmamma knew at Carlisle, for most of her friends
live in the South.
I do not know exactly where the South is, nor what it is like. Of
course London is in the South; I know that. But Grandmamma used to talk
about the South as if she thought it so fine; and my Uncle Charles once
said nobody could be a gentleman who had not lived in the South. They
were all clodhoppers up here, he said, and you could only get any proper
polish in the South. Fanny was there then, and she was quite hurt with
it. She did not like to think Father a clodhopper; and I am sure he is
not. Besides, our ancestors did come from the South. Our grandfather,
William Courtenay, who bought the land and built Brocklebank, belonged
[Note 1.] Wiltshire, and his father was a Devonshire man, and a
Courtenay of Powderham, whatever that may mean: Father knows more about
it than I do, and so, I think, does Fanny. Grandmamma once told me she
would never have thought of allowing Mamma to marry Father, if he had
not been a Courtenay and a man of substance. She said all his other
relations were so very mean and low, she could not have condescended so
far as to connect herself with them. Why, I believe one of them was
only a farmer's daughter: and I think, from what I have heard Grandmamma
and my Uncle Charles say, that another of them had something to do with
those low people called Dissenters. I don't suppose she really was
one--that would be too shocking; but Grandmamma always went into the
clouds when she mentioned these vulgar ancestors of mine, so I never
heard more than "that poor wretched mother of your grandfather's, my
dear," or "that dreadful farming creature whom your grandfather
married." I once asked my Aunt Dorothea--that is, Uncle Charles's
wife--if this wretched great-grandmother of mine had been a very bad
woman. But she said, "Oh no, not _bad_"--and I think she might have
told me something more, but my Uncle Charles put in, in that commanding
way he has, "Could not have been worse, my dear Dorothea--connected with
those Dissenters,"--so I got to know no more, and I was sorry.
Father once had two more sisters, who were both married, one in
Derbyshire, and one in Scotland. They both left children, so we have
two lots of cousins on Father's side. Our cousins in Derbyshire are
both girls; their names are Charlotte and Amelia Bracewell: and there
are two of our Scotch cousins, but they are a boy and a girl, and they
have queer Scotch names, Angus and Flora Drummond. At least, they were
boy and girl, I suppose; for Angus Drummond must be over twenty now, and
Flora is not far off it. It is more than ten years since we saw the
Drummonds, but the Bracewells have been to visit us several times.
Amelia Bracewell is Fanny made hotter, or Fanny is Amelia and water--
which you like. She makes me laugh, and my Aunt Kezia sniff. The other
day, my Aunt Kezia came into the room while we were talking about
Amelia, and she heard Fanny say,--
"She is so full of sympathy. She always comes and wants you to
sympathise with her. She just lives upon sympathy."
"So full of sympathy!" said my Aunt Kezia, turning round on Fanny. "So
empty, child, you mean. What poor weak thing are you talking about?"
"Cousin Amelia Bracewell," answered Fanny. "She is such a charming
creature. Don't you think so, Aunt Kezia? Such a dear sympathetic
darling!"
"It is well you told me whom you meant, Fanny," said my Aunt Kezia,
pursing up her lips. "I should never have guessed you meant Amelia
Bracewell, from what you said. Well, how differently two people can see
the same thing, to be sure!"
"Don't you like her, Aunt Kezia?" returned Fanny in an astonished tone.
"If I am to speak the full truth, my dear," said my Aunt Kezia, "I am
afraid I come as near to despising her as a Christian woman and a
communicant has any business to do. I never had any fancy for birds of
prey."
"Birds of prey!" exclaimed Fanny, blankly.
"Birds of prey," repeated my aunt in a very different tone. "She is one
of those folks who are for ever drawing twopenny cheques upon your
feelings, and there are no funds in my bank to meet them. I can stand a
bucketful of feeling drawn out of me, but I hate to let it waste away in
a drop here and a driblet there about nothing at all. Now I will just
tell you, girls--I once went to see a woman who had lost fifteen hundred
a year, all at a blow, without a bit of warning. What she had to say
was--`The Lord has taken it, and He knows best. I can trust Him to care
for me.' Well, about a week afterwards, I had a visit from another
woman, who had let a pan boil over, and had spoilt a lot of jam. She
wanted me to say she was the most tried creature since Adam. And I
could not, girls--I really could not. I have not the slightest doubt
there have been a million women worse tried since the battle of Prague,
never mention Adam. As to Amelia Bracewell, who carries her fan as if
it were a sceptre, and slurs her r's like a Londoner, silly chit! I
have hardly any patience with her. Charlotte's bad enough, but Amelia!
My word, she takes some standing, I can tell you!"
Now, I always admired the way Amelia sounds her r's, or, I suppose I
ought to say, the way she does not sound them. It is so soft and
pretty. Then she writes poetry,--all about the blue sea and the silver
moon, or else the gleaming sunbeams and the hoary hills--so grand! I
never read anything so beautiful as Amelia's poetry. She told me once
that a gentleman from London, who was fourth cousin to a peer of some
sort, had told her she wrote as well as Mr Pope. Only think!
Charlotte is as different as she can be. Her notion of things is to go
down to the stable and saddle her own horse, and scamper all over the
country, all by herself. Father says she is a fine girl, but she will
break her neck some day. My Aunt Kezia says, Saint Paul told women to
be keepers at home, and she thinks that page must have dropped out of
Charlotte's Bible. She does some other things, too, that I do not fancy
she would care for my Aunt Kezia to hear. She calls her father "the old
gentleman," and sometimes "the old boy." I do not know what my Aunt
Kezia would say, if she did hear it.
I wonder what Flora Drummond is like now. I used to think she had not
much in her. Perhaps it was only that she did not let it come out.
However, I shall have a chance of finding out soon; for she and Angus
are coming to stay with us, on his way to York, where his father is
sending him on some kind of business. I do not know what it is, and I
don't care. Business is always dry, uninteresting stuff. Flora will
stay with us while Angus goes on to York, and then he will pick her up
again as he comes back. I wish the Bracewells might be here at the same
time. I should like Flora and Amelia to know one another, and I do not
think they do at all.
It is shocking dull here at Brocklebank. I dare say I feel it more than
my sisters, having lived in Carlisle all my life, so to speak: and as to
my Aunt Kezia, I do believe, if she had her garden, and orchard, and
kitchen, and dairy, and her work-box, and a Bible, and Prayer-book, and
The Compleat Gentlewoman, she would be satisfied to live at the North
Pole or anywhere. But I am perfectly delighted when anybody comes to
see us, if 'tis only Ephraim Hebblethwaite. He is the son of Farmer
Hebblethwaite, lower down the valley, and I believe he admires Fanny.
Fanny cannot bear him; she says he has such an ugly name. But I think
he is very pleasant, and I suppose he could change his name, though I
can't see why it signifies. Beside him, and Ambrose Catterall, and
Esther Langridge, we know no young people except our cousins. Father
being Squire of Brocklebank, we cannot mix with the common folks.
Old Mr Digby is the Vicar, and I do not think he is far short of a
hundred years old. He is an old bachelor, and has nobody to keep his
house but our Sam's mother, a Scotchwoman--old Elspie they call her. He
does not often preach of late years--except on Good Friday and Easter
Sunday, and such high days. A pleasant old man he used to be, but he
grows forgetful now, for the last time we met him, he patted my head
just as if I were still a little child, and I shall be seventeen in
March. He has been Vicar over sixty years, and christened Father and
married my grand-parents.
I do wish we had just a few more friends. It really is too bad, for we
might have known the family at Seven Stones, only two miles off, if they
had not been Whigs, and there are five sons and four daughters there.
Father would no more think of shaking hands with a Whig (if he knew it)
than he would eat roast beef on Good Friday. I should not care. Why
should one not have some fun, because old Mr Outhwaite is a Whig?
I shall have to keep my book locked up if I tell it all I think, as I
have been doing now. I would not have Hatty get hold of it for all the
world. And as to my Aunt Kezia--I believe she would whip me and send me
to bed if she read only the last page.
Here comes Ambrose Catterall up the walk, and I must go down, though I
do not expect there will be any fun. He will stay supper, I dare say,
and then he and Father will have a game of whist with Sophy and Fanny,
and I shall sit by with my sewing, and Hatty will knit and whisper into
my ear things that I want to laugh at and dare not. If I did, Father
would look up over his cards with a black brow and say "Silence!" in
such a tone that I shall wish I was somebody else. Who I don't know--
only not Caroline Courtenay.
Father does not like our names--at least mine and Sophy's. Mamma named
us, and he says we have both fine romantic silly names. Hatty was
called after his mother, and that he likes; and Fanny is after a sister
of Mamma's who died young. But Father never gives over growling because
one of us was not a boy.
"Four girls!" he says: "four girls, and never a lad! Who on earth wants
four girls? I'll sell one or two of you cheap, if I can find him."
But I don't think he would, if it came to the point. I know, for all
his queer speeches sometimes, he is proud of Fanny's good looks, and
Sophy's good housekeeping, and even Hatty's pert sayings. I know by the
way he chuckles now and then when she says anything particularly smart.
I don't know what he is proud of in me, unless it is my manners. Of
course, having lived in Carlisle with Grandmamma, I have the best
manners of any. And I speak the best, I know. Sophy talks shockingly
broad; she says, "Aw wanted him to coom, boot he would not." Fanny has
found that will not do, so she tries to imitate my Aunt Dorothea and
Amelia Bracewell, but she goes on the other side of her pattern, and
does not sound the u full where she ought to do it, but says, "The basin
is fell of shegar." Hatty laughs at them both, and lets her u go where
it likes, but she is not so bad as Sophy.
I think I shall try and put the notion into my Aunt Kezia's head to have
the Bracewells here for Christmas. I know Angus and Flora will be here
then, and later. That would make a decent party, if we got Ephraim
Hebblethwaite, and Ambrose Catterall too.
After all, I went on writing so late, that I only got down-stairs in
time to see Ambrose Catterall's back as he went down the drive. He
could not stay for some reason--I did not hear what. Father growled as
he heard him go off, singing, down the walk.
"Where on earth did the fellow get hold of that piece of whiggery?" said
he. "Just listen to him!"