IN THE KENTISH LANES.
Bessie did not make any answer for a minute or two, but her eyes were a
little dim as she heard Hatty sob.
"I must not break the bruised reed," she said to herself. "Hatty's world
is a very little one; she is not strong enough to come out of herself,
and take wider views; when she loves people, she loves them somehow in
herself; she can't understand the freedom of an affection that can be
happy in the absence of its object. I am not like Hatty; but then our
natures are different, and I must not judge her. What can I say that
will help her?"
"Can't you find anything to say to me, Bessie dear?"
"Plenty; but you must wait for it to come. I was just thinking for
you--putting myself in your place, and trying to feel as you do."
"Well!"
"I was getting very low down when you spoke; it was quite creepy among
the shadows. 'So this is how Hatty feels,' I said to myself, and did not
like it at all."
"You would not like to be me, Bessie."
"What an ungrammatical sentence! Poor little me! I should think not; I
could not breathe freely in such a confined atmosphere. Why don't you
give it up and let yourself alone? I would not be only a bundle of fears
and feelings if I were you."
"Oh, it is easy to talk, but it is not quite so easy to be good."
"I am not asking you to be good. We can't make ourselves good, Hatty;
that lies in different hands. But why don't you look on your unhappy
nature as your appointed cross, and just bear with yourself as much as
you expect others to bear with you? Why not exercise the same patience
as you expect to be shown to you?"
"I hardly understand you, Bessie. I ought to hate myself for my
ill-temper and selfishness, ought I not?"
"It seems to me that there are two sorts of hatred, and only one of them
is right. We all have two natures. Even an apostle could say, 'Oh,
wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?' Even St. Paul felt the two natures warring within him. How can
you and I, then, expect to be exempt from this conflict?"
"Don't put yourself in the same category with me, Bessie. You have
crushed your lower nature, if you ever had it."
"Oh, hush!" replied her sister, quite shocked at this. "You can't know
what you are talking about." And here her voice trembled a little, for
no one was more conscious of her faults and shortcomings. Bessie could
remember the time when the conflict had been very hard; when her
standard of duty had been lower than that she held now; when she had
been as careless and indifferent as many girls of her age, until Divine
guidance had led her feet into better paths; and knowing this, in her
humility she could be tolerant of others.
"You do not know what you are saying, Hatty, or you would not hurt me by
such a speech; it is only your love for me that blinds you. What I want
to tell you is this--that you must not be so impatient; you waste all
your strength in saying hard things about yourself, instead of fighting
your faults. Why don't you say to yourself, 'I am a poor, weak little
creature, but my Creator knows that too, and he bears with me. I cannot
rid myself of my tiresome nature; it sticks to me like a Nessus
shirt'--you know the old mythological story, Hatty--'but it is my cross,
a horrid spiky one, so I will carry it as patiently as I can. If it is
not always light, I will grope my way through the shadows; but my one
prayer and my one effort shall be to prevent other people suffering
through me?'"
"Oh, Bessie, that is beautiful!"
"You will find nothing else will help you to fight your bogies; do try
it, darling. Be merciful to your poor little self; 'respect the possible
angel in you,' as Mr. Robertson said. You will get rid of all your
faults and fancies one day, as your namesake did in the river. You won't
always be poor little Hatty, whose back aches, and who is so cross;
there is no pain nor crossness in the lovely land where all things are
new."
"Oh, if we were only there now, Bessie, you and I, safe and happy!"
"I would rather wait till my time comes. I am young and strong enough to
find life beautiful. Don't be cowardly, Hatty; you want to drop behind
in the march, before many a gray-haired old veteran. That is because you
are weak and tired, and you fear the long journey; but you forget," and
here Bessie dropped her voice reverently, "that we don't journey alone,
any more than the children of Israel did in the wilderness. We also have
our pillar of cloud to lead us by day, and our pillar of fire by night
to give us light. Mother always said what a type of the Christian
pilgrimage the story of the Israelites is; she made us go through it all
with her, and I remember all she told me. Hark! I think I hear
footsteps outside the window; the servants are coming in from church."
"Wait a minute, Bessie, before you let them in. You have done me so much
good; you always do. I will try not to mope and vex mother and Christine
while you are away." And Hatty threw her arms penitently round her
sister's neck.
Bessie returned her kisses warmly, and left the room with a light heart.
Her Sunday evening had not been wasted if she had given the cup of cold
water in the form of tender sympathy to one of Christ's suffering little
ones.
Bessie felt her words were not thrown away when she saw Hatty's brave
efforts to be cheerful the next day, and how she refrained from sharp
speeches to Christine; she did not even give way when Bessie bade her
good-bye.
"You will remember our Sunday talk, Hatty, dear."
"I do remember it," with a quivering lip, "and I am trying to march,
Bessie."
"All right, darling, and I shall soon be back, and we can keep step
again. I will write you long letters, and bring you back some ferns and
primrose roots," and then Bessie waved her hand to them all, and jumped
in the brougham, for her father was going to take her to the station.
It must be confessed that Bessie felt a trifle dull when the train
moved off, and she left her father standing on the platform. With the
exception of short visits to her relatives, that were looked on in the
light of duties, she had never left home before. But this feeling soon
wore off, and a pleasant sense of exhilaration, not unmixed with
excitement followed, as the wide tracts of country opened before her
delighted eyes, green meadows and hedgerows steeped in the pure
sunlight. Bessie was to be met at the station by some friend of the
Seftons, as the country-bred girl knew little about London, and though a
short cab drive would deposit her at Charing Cross, it would be far
pleasanter for her to have an escort. Mrs. Sefton had suggested Mrs.
Sinclair, and Dr. Lambert had been much relieved by her thoughtfulness.
As the train drew up to the platform Bessie jumped out, and stood
eagerly looking about her for the lady whom she expected to see, and she
was much surprised when a gentlemanly looking man approached her, and
lifting his hat, said, with a pleasant smile:
"I believe I am addressing Miss Lambert."
"Yes, certainly; that is my name," returned Bessie, in rather an
embarrassed manner.
"Ah, that is all right, and I have made no mistake. Miss Lambert, my
mother is so seriously indisposed that she was unable to meet you
herself, but you must allow me to offer my services instead. Now I will
look after your luggage, and then I will find you a cab. Will you come
with me, please? The luggage is at the other end."
"I am so sorry to trouble you," returned Bessie. "I have only one box--a
black one, with 'E. L.' on the cover." And then she stood aside quietly,
while Mr. Sinclair procured a porter and identified the box; and
presently she found herself in a cab, with her escort seated opposite to
her, questioning her politely about her journey, and pointing out
different objects of interest on their way.
Bessie's brief embarrassment had soon worn off; and she chatted to her
new companion in her usual cheerful manner. She liked Mr. Sinclair's
appearance--he looked clever, and his manners were quiet and well bred.
He did not seem young; Edna had told her that he was thirty but he
looked quite five years older.
"I wonder how you recognized me so quickly?" Bessie observed presently.
"It was not very difficult to identify you," he returned quietly. "I saw
a young lady who seemed rather strange to her surroundings, and who was
evidently, by her attitude, expecting some one. I could tell at once you
were not a Londoner."
"I am afraid I must have looked very countrified," returned Bessie, in
an amused tone.
"Pardon me, I meant no such invidious comparison. People from the
country have an air of greater freshness about them, that is all. You
live at Cliffe, do you not? I was never there, but it is rather an
interesting place, is it not?"
"I think it a dear place," returned Bessie enthusiastically; "but then
it is my home, so I am not unprejudiced. It is very unlike other places.
The streets are so steep, and some of the houses are built in such high,
out-of-the-way nooks, you look up and see steps winding up the hill, and
there is a big house perched up among the trees, and then another. You
wonder how people care to climb up so many steps; but then, there is the
view. I went over one of the houses one day, and from every window there
was a perfect panorama. You could see miles away. Think what the sunsets
must be from those windows!"
"You live lower down the hill, then?" with an air of polite interest.
"Yes, in such a quiet, secluded corner; but we are near the quarry
woods, and there are such lovely walks. And then the bay; it is not the
real open sea you know, but it is so pretty; and we sit on the rocks
sometimes to watch the sunset. Oh, I should not like to live anywhere
else!"
"Not in London, for example?"
"Oh, no, not for worlds! It is very amusing to watch the people, but one
seems to have no room to breathe freely."
"We are pretty crowded, certainly," returned Mr. Sinclair; "but some of
us would not care to live anywhere else, and I confess I am one of those
people. The country is all very well for a month or two, but to a
Londoner it is a sort of stagnation. Men like myself prefer to be at the
heart of things--to live close to the centre of activity. London is the
nucleus of England; not only the seat of government, but the focus of
intellect, of art, of culture, of all that makes life worth living; and
please do not put me down as a cockney, Miss Lambert, if I confess that
I love these crowded streets. I am a lawyer, you know, and human nature
is my study."
"I quite understand you," returned Bessie, with the bright intelligence
that was natural to her. She was beginning to think Edna a fortunate
girl. "There must be more in her than I thought, or this clever man
would not have chosen her," she said to herself; for Bessie, in her
girlish innocence, knew little of the law of opposites, or how an
intellectual or scientific man will sometimes select for his life
companion a woman of only ordinary intelligence, who will, nevertheless,
adorn her husband's home by her simple domestic virtues. A wife does not
need to be a moral whetstone to sharpen her husband's wits by the
fireside, neither would it enhance his happiness to find her filling
reams of foolscap paper with choice specimens of prose and poetry;
intelligent sympathy with his work is all he demands, and a loving,
restful companion, who will soothe his hours of depression, who is never
too weary or self-absorbed to listen to the story of his successes or
failures.
"I shall be down at The Grange in a week or two--that is, if my mother
be better; and then I hope we shall renew our acquaintance," were Mr.
Sinclair's parting words as he took leave of Bessie; and Bessie
sincerely echoed this wish.
"He is the sort of a man father would like," she thought, as the train
moved slowly out of the station.
This was paying a great compliment to Mr. Sinclair, for Dr. Lambert was
rather severe on the young men of the day. "I don't know what has come
to them," he would remark irritably; "young men nowadays call their
father 'governor,' and speak to him as though he were their equal in
age. There is no respect shown to elders. A brainless young puppy will
contradict a man twice his age, and there is not even the same courtesy
shown to the weaker sex either. I have heard young men and young
women--young ladies, I suppose I ought to say--who address each other in
a 'hail-fellow-well-met' sort of manner, but what can you expect," in a
disgusted tone, "when the girls talk slang, and ape their young
brothers? I think the 'sweet madame' of our great-grandmothers' times
preferable to these slipshod manners. I would rather see our girls live
and die in single blessedness than marry one of those fellows."
"Father, we don't want to marry any one, unless he is as nice as you,"
replied Christine, on overhearing this tirade, and Bessie had indorsed
this speech.
It was rather late in the afternoon when Bessie reached her destination,
and she was feeling somewhat weary and dusty as she stood on the
platform beside her box. The little station was empty, but as Bessie was
waiting to question the porter, a man-servant came up to her and touched
his hat.
"Miss Sefton is outside with the pony-carriage," he said civilly. "I
will look after the luggage, ma'am--there is a cart waiting for it."
"Oh, thank you!" returned Bessie, and she went quickly through the
little waiting-room. A young man in knickerbockers, with a couple of
large sporting dogs, was talking to the station-master, and looked after
her as she passed; but Bessie did not notice him particularly; her eyes
were fixed on the road, and on a pony-carriage drawn up under the trees.
Miss Sefton waved her whip when she saw Bessie, and drove quickly up to
the door. She looked prettier than ever in her dark-blue cambric and
large shady hat.
"How do you do, Miss Lambert? I am delighted to see you again. How
punctual you are. Jump in. Ford will look after your luggage. This is a
very different meeting, is it not, from our last? No snow about, but a
very hot sun for June. Where is your sunshade? You will want it. Yes,
that is right; put it up--my hat shades me. Now then, Ford, are you
ready? Go on, Jack. What are you about, Jill? Are not my ponies pretty,
Miss Lambert? Richard gave them to me last birthday, but I am afraid I
plagued him a good deal beforehand to provoke such unusual generosity.
There is nothing like teasing when you want a thing."
Bessie smiled, but remained silent; she was tired, and not quite
inclined for repartee. They had turned into a long, lovely lane, so
narrow that no vehicle could have passed them, and the thick hedgerows
were full of pink and white briar roses and other wild flowers; on
either side lay hop fields. Bessie uttered a delighted exclamation.
"Yes, I told you you would admire our Kentish lanes. They are pretty
now, but in the winter they are not quite so pleasant. Well, did Mrs.
Sinclair meet you, as she promised?"
"No, her son came instead; he said his mother was seriously indisposed,
and unable to keep her engagement."
"Neville met you. How extremely odd! How on earth did you discover each
other? Were you very much embarrassed, Miss Lambert?"
"No; it was a little strange at first, but Mr. Sinclair was very kind
and pleasant, and soon put me at my ease."
"Oh, Neville always gets on with ladies; there is certainly no fault to
find with him in that respect. His civility is natural to him; he is
just as polite to an old woman with a market basket and a few apples
tied up in a blue spotted handkerchief as he is to a lady whose dress
has been made by Worth."
"I call that true politeness," returned Bessie warmly.
"There is not much of the precious commodity to be found in our days;
the young men one meets in society are not cut after that pattern. And
so Mrs. Sinclair is ailing again?"
"'Seriously indisposed,' was Mr. Sinclair's expression; and he looked
rather grave, I thought."
"My dear creature, Neville always looks grave, as though he were engaged
in a criminal investigation. He is a barrister, you see, and he troubles
himself if his mother's finger aches. The dear old lady is always
ailing, more or less, but there is never much the matter--a creaking
door; you know the sort; only Neville always makes the worst of it. Now,
look here, Miss Lambert, that is what we call the village--just those
few cottages and the inn; there is not even a church; we have to walk
over to Melton, a mile and a half away. Isn't that pond pretty, with the
ducks on it? and there is a flock of geese. Now we have only to turn
down this road and there is The Grange." And as Miss Sefton pointed with
her whip, Bessie saw the outlines of a large red house between the
trees.