THE one hour of play with Ernest de la Poer had the effect of making Kate
long more and more for a return of “fun,” and of intercourse with beings
of her own age and of high spirits.
She wove to herself dreams of possible delights with Sylvia and Charlie,
if the summer visit could be paid to them; and at other times she
imagined her Uncle Giles’s two daughters still alive, and sent home for
education, arranging in her busy brain wonderful scenes, in which she,
with their assistance, should be happy in spite of Aunt Barbara.
These fancies, however, would be checked by the recollection, that it was
shocking to lower two happy spirits in Heaven into playful little girls
upon earth; and she took refuge in the thought of the coming chance of
playfellows, when Lord de la Poer was to bring his family to London. She
had learnt the names and ages of all the ten; and even had her own
theories as to what her contemporaries were to be like—Mary and Fanny,
Ernest’s elders, and Adelaide and Grace, who came next below him; she had
a vision for each of them, and felt as if she already knew them.
Meanwhile, the want of the amount of air and running about to which she
had been used, did really tell upon her; she had giddy feelings in the
morning, tired limbs, and a weary listless air, and fretted over her
lessons at times. So they showed her to the doctor, who came to see Lady
Jane every alternate day; and when he said she wanted more exercise, her
morning walk was made an hour longer, and a shuttlecock and battledores
were bought, with which it was decreed that Mrs. Lacy should play with
her for exactly half an hour every afternoon, or an hour when it was too
wet to go out.
It must be confessed that this was a harder task to both than the music
lessons. Whether it were from the difference of height, or from Kate’s
innate unhandiness, they never could keep that unhappy shuttlecock up
more than three times; and Mrs. Lacy looked as grave and melancholy all
the time as if she played it for a punishment, making little efforts to
be cheerful that were sad to see. Kate hated it, and was always cross;
and willingly would they have given it up by mutual consent, but the
instant the tap of the cork against the parchment ceased, if it were not
half-past five, down sailed Lady Barbara to inquire after her
prescription.
She had been a famous battledore-player in the galleries of Caergwent
Castle; and once when she took up the battledore to give a lesson, it
seemed as if, between her and Mrs. Lacy, the shuttlecock would not come
down—they kept up five hundred and eighty-one, and then only stopped
because it was necessary for her to go to dinner.
She could not conceive anyone being unable to play at battledore, and
thought Kate’s failures and dislike pure perverseness. Once Kate by
accident knocked her shuttlecock through the window, and hoped she had
got rid of it; but she was treated as if she had done it out of
naughtiness, and a new instrument of torture, as she called it, was
bought for her.
It was no wonder she did not see the real care for her welfare, and
thought this intensely cruel and unkind; but it was a great pity that she
visited her vexation on poor Mrs. Lacy, to whom the game was even a
greater penance than to herself, especially on a warm day, with a bad
headache.
Even in her best days at home, Kate had resisted learning to take thought
for others. She had not been considerate of Mary’s toil, nor of Mr.
Wardour’s peace, except when Armyn or Sylvia reminded her; and now that
she had neither of them to put it into her mind, she never once thought
of her governess as one who ought to be spared and pitied. Yet if she
had been sorry for Mrs. Lacy, and tried to spare her trouble and
annoyance, how much irritability and peevishness, and sense of constant
naughtiness, would have been prevented! And it was that feeling of being
always naughty that was what had become the real dreariness of Kate’s
present home, and was far worse than the music, the battledore, or even
the absence of fun.
At last came a message that Lady Caergwent was to be dressed for going
out to make a call with Lady Barbara as soon as luncheon was over.
It could be on no one but the De la Poers; and Kate was so delighted,
that she executed all manner of little happy hops, skips, and fidgets,
all the time of her toilette, and caused many an expostulation of “Mais,
Miladi!” from Josephine, before the pretty delicate blue and white
muslin, worked white jacket, and white ribboned and feathered hat, were
adjusted. Lady Barbara kept her little countess very prettily and
quietly dressed; but it was at the cost of infinite worry of herself,
Kate, and Josephine, for there never was a child whom it was so hard to
keep in decent trim. Armyn’s old saying, that she ought to be always
kept dressed in sacking, as the only thing she could not spoil, was a
true one; for the sharp hasty movements, and entire disregard of where
she stepped, were so ruinous, that it was on the records of the Bruton
Street household, that she had gone far to demolish eight frocks in ten
days.
However, on this occasion she did get safe down to the carriage—clothes,
gloves, and all, without detriment or scolding; and jumped in first. She
was a long way yet from knowing that, though her aunts gave the first
place to her rank, it would have been proper in her to yield it to their
years, and make way for them.
She was too childish to have learnt this as a matter of good breeding,
but she might have learnt it of a certain parable, which she could say
from beginning to end, that she should “sit not down in the highest
room.”
Her aunt sat down beside her, and spent the first ten minutes of the
drive in enjoining on her proper behaviour at Lady de la Poer’s. The
children there were exceedingly well brought up, she said, and she was
very desirous they should be her niece’s friends; but she was certain
that Lady de la Poer would allow no one to associate with them who did
not behave properly.
“Lord de la Poer was very kind to me just as I was,” said Kate, in her
spirit of contradiction, which was always reckless of consequences.
“Gentlemen are no judges of what is becoming to a little girl,” said Lady
Barbara severely. “Unless you make a very different impression upon Lady
de la Poer, she will never permit you to be the friend of her daughters.”
“I wonder how I am to make an impression,” meditated Kate, as they drove
on; “I suppose it would make an impression if I stood up and repeated,
‘Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!’ or something of that sort, as soon as I
got in. But one couldn’t do that; and I am afraid nothing will happen.
If the horses would only upset us at the door, and Aunt Barbara be nicely
insensible, and the young countess show the utmost presence of mind! But
nothing nice and like a book ever does happen. And after all, I believe
that it is all nonsense about making impressions. Thinking of them is
all affectation; and one ought to be as simple and unconscious as one
can.” A conclusion which did honour to the countess’s sense. In fact,
she had plenty of sense, if only she had ever used it for herself,
instead of for the little ladies she drew on her quires of paper.
Lady Barbara had started early, as she really wished to find her friends
at home; and accordingly, when the stairs were mounted, and the aunt and
niece were ushered into a pretty bright-looking drawing-room, there they
found all that were not at school enjoying their after-dinner hour of
liberty with their father and mother.
Lord de la Poer himself had the youngest in his arms, and looked very
much as if he had only just scrambled up from the floor; his wife was
really sitting on the ground, helping two little ones to put up a puzzle
of wild beasts; and there was a little herd of girls at the farther
corner, all very busy over something, towards which Kate’s longing eyes
at once turned—even in the midst of Lord de la Poer’s very kind greeting,
and his wife’s no less friendly welcome.
It was true that, as Lady Barbara had said, they were all exceedingly
well-bred children. Even the little fellow in his father’s arms, though
but eighteen months old, made no objection to hold out his fat hand
graciously, and showed no shyness when Lady Barbara kissed him! and the
others all waited quietly over their several occupations, neither
shrinking foolishly from notice, nor putting themselves forward to claim
it. Only the four sisters came up, and took their own special visitor
into the midst of them as their own property; the elder of them, however,
at a sign from her mamma, taking the baby in her arms, and carrying him
off, followed by the other two small ones—only pausing at the door for
him to kiss his little hand, and wave it in the prettiest fashion of baby
stateliness.
The other sisters drew Kate back with them into the room, where they had
been busy. Generally, however much she and Sylvia might wish it, they
had found acquaintance with other children absolutely impossible in the
presence of grown-up people, whose eyes and voices seemed to strike all
parties dumb. But these children seemed in no wise constrained: one of
them said at once, “We are so glad you are come. Mamma said she thought
you would before we went out, one of those days.”
“Isn’t it horrid going out in London?” asked Kate, at once set at ease.
“It is not so nice as it is at home,” said one of the girls; laughing;
“except when it is our turn to go out with Mamma.”
“She takes us all out in turn,” explained another, “from Fanny, down to
little Cecil the baby—and that is our great time for talking to her, when
one has her all alone.”
“And does she never take you out in the country?”
“Oh yes! but there are people staying with us then, or else she goes out
with Papa. It is not a regular drive every day, as it is here.”
Kate would not have had a drive with Aunt Barbara every day, for more
than she could well say. However, she was discreet enough not to say so,
and asked what they did on other days.
“Oh, we walk with Miss Oswald in the park, and she tells us stories, or
we make them. We don’t tell stories in the country, unless we have to
walk straight along the drives, that, as Papa says, we may have some
solace.”
Then it was explained that Miss Oswald was their governess, and that they
were very busy preparing for her birth-day. They were making a
paper-case for her, all themselves, and this hour was their only time for
doing it out of her sight in secret.
“But why do you make it yourselves?” said Kate; “one can buy such
beauties at the bazaars.”
“Yes; but Mamma says a present one has taken pains to make, is worth a
great deal more than what is only bought; for trouble goes for more than
money.”
“But one can make nothing but nasty tumble-to-pieces things,” objected
Kate.
“That depends,” said Lady Mary, in a very odd merry voice; and the other
two, Adelaide and Grace, who were far too much alike for Kate to guess
which was which, began in a rather offended manner to assure her that
_their_ paper-case was to be anything but tumble-to-pieces. Fanny was to
bind it, and Papa had promised to paste its back and press it.
“And Mamma drove with me to Richmond, on purpose to get leaves to
spatter,” added the other sister.
Then they showed Kate—whose eyes brightened at anything approaching to a
mess—that they had a piece of coloured cardboard, on which leaves,
chiefly fern, were pinned tightly down, and that the entire sheet was
then covered with a spattering of ink from a tooth-brush drawn along the
tooth of a comb. When the process was completed, the form of the loaf
remained in the primitive colour of the card, thrown out by the cloud of
ink-spots, and only requiring a tracing of its veins by a pen.
A space had been cleared for these operations on a side-table; and in
spite of the newspaper, on which the appliances were laid, and even the
comb and brush, there was no look of disarrangement or untidiness.
“Oh, do—do show me how you do it!” cried Kate, who had had nothing to do
for months, with the dear delight of making a mess, except what she could
contrive with her paints.
And Lady Grace resumed a brown-holland apron and bib, and opening her
hands with a laugh, showed their black insides, then took up her
implements.
“Oh, do—do let me try,” was Kate’s next cry; “one little bit to show
Sylvia Wardour.”
With one voice the three sisters protested that she had better not; she
was not properly equipped, and would ink herself all over. If she would
pin down a leaf upon the scrap she held up, Grace should spatter it for
her, and they would make it up into anything she liked.
But this did not satisfy Kate at all; the pinning out of the leaf was
stupid work compared with the glory of making the ink fly. In vain did
Adelaide represent that all the taste and skill was in the laying out the
leaves, and pinning them down, and that anyone could put on the ink; in
vain did Mary represent the dirtiness of the work: this was the beauty of
it in her eyes; and the sight of the black dashes sputtering through the
comb filled her with emulation; so that she entreated, almost piteously,
to be allowed to “do” an ivy loaf, which she had hastily, and not very
carefully, pinned out with Mary’s assistance—that is, she had feebly and
unsteadily stuck every pin, and Mary had steadied them.
The new friends consented, seeing how much she was set on it; but Fanny,
who had returned from the nursery, insisted on precautions—took off the
jacket, turned up the frock sleeves, and tied on an apron; though Kate
fidgeted all the time, as if a great injury were being inflicted on her;
and really, in her little frantic spirit, thought Lady Fanny a great
torment, determined to delay her delight till her aunt should go away and
put a stop to it.
When once she had the brush, she was full of fun and merriment, and kept
her friends much amused by her droll talk, half to them, half to her
work.
“There’s a portentous cloud, isn’t there? An inky cloud, if ever there
was one! Take care, inhabitants below; growl, growl, there’s the
thunder; now comes the rain; hail, hail, all hail, like the beginning of
Macbeth.”
“Which the Frenchman said was in compliment to the climate,” said Fanny;
at which the whole company fell into convulsions of laughing; and neither
Kate nor Grace exactly knew what hands or brush or comb were about; but
whereas the little De La Poers had from their infancy laughed almost
noiselessly, and without making faces, Kate for her misfortune had never
been broken of a very queer contortion of her lips, and a cackle like a
bantam hen’s.
When this unlucky cackle had been several times repeated, it caused Lady
Barbara, who had been sitting with her back to the inner room, to turn
round.
Poor Lady Barbara! It would not be easy to describe her feelings when
she saw the young lady, whom she had brought delicately blue and white,
like a speedwell flower, nearly as black as a sweep.
Lord de la Poer broke out into an uncontrollable laugh, half at the aunt,
half at the niece. “Why, she has grown a moustache!” he exclaimed.
“Girls, what have you been doing to her?” and walking up to them, he
turned Kate round to a mirror, where she beheld her own brown eyes
looking out of a face dashed over with black specks, thicker about the
mouth, giving her altogether much the colouring of a very dark man
closely shaved. It was so exceedingly comical, that she went off into
fits of laughing, in which she was heartily joined by all the merry
party.
“There,” said Lord de la Poer, “do you want to know what your Uncle Giles
is like? you’ve only to look at yourself!—See, Barbara, is it not a
capital likeness?”
“I never thought her like _Giles_,” said her aunt gravely, with an
emphasis on the name, as if she meant that the child did bear a likeness
that was really painful to her.
“My dears,” said the mother, “you should not have put her in such a
condition; could you not have been more careful?”
Kate expected one of them to say, “She would do it in spite of us;” but
instead of that Fanny only answered, “It is not so bad as it looks,
Mamma; I believe her frock is quite safe; and we will soon have her face
and hands clean.”
Whereupon Kate turned round and said, “It is all my fault, and _nobody’s
else’s_. They told me not, but it was such fun!”
And therewith she obeyed a pull from Grace, and ran upstairs with the
party to be washed; and as the door shut behind them, Lord de la Poer
said, “You need not be afraid of _that_ likeness, Barbara. Whatever else
she may have brought from her parsonage, she has brought the spirit of
truth.”
Though knowing that something awful hung over her head, Kate was all the
more resolved to profit by her brief minutes of enjoyment; and the little
maidens all went racing and flying along the passages together; Kate
feeling as if the rapid motion among the other young feet was life once
more.
“Well! your frock is all right; I hope your aunt will not be very angry
with you,” said Adelaide. (She know Adelaide now, for Grace was the inky
one.)
“It is not a thing to be angry for,” added Grace.
“No, it would not have been at my home,” said Kate, with a sigh; “but,
oh! I hope she will not keep me from coming here again.”
“She shall not,” exclaimed Adelaide; “Papa won’t let her.”
“She said your mamma would mind what your papa did not,” said Kate, who
was not very well informed on the nature of mammas.
“Oh, that’s all stuff,” decidedly cried Adelaide. “When Papa told us
about you, she said, ‘Poor child! I wish I had her here.’”
Prudent Fanny made an endeavour at chocking her little sister; but the
light in Kate’s eye, and the responsive face, drew Grace on to ask, “She
didn’t punish you, I hope, for your tumbling off the bracket?”
“No, your papa made her promise not; but she was very cross. Did he tell
you about it?”
“Oh yes; and what do you think Ernest wrote? You must know he had
grumbled excessively at Papa’s having business with Lady Barbara; but his
letter said, ‘It wasn’t at all slow at Lady Barbara’s, for there was the
jolliest fellow there you ever knew; mind you get her to play at
acting.’”
Lady Fanny did not think this improving, and was very glad that the maid
came in with hot water and towels, and put an end to it with the work of
scrubbing.
Going home, Lady Barbara was as much displeased as Kate had expected, and
with good reason. After all her pains, it was very strange that
Katharine should be so utterly unfit to behave like a well-bred girl.
There might have been excuse for her before she had been taught, but now
it was mere obstinacy.
She should be careful how she took her out for a long time to come!
Kate’s heart swelled within her. It was not obstinacy, she know; and
that bit of injustice hindered her from seeing that it was really wilful
recklessness. She was elated with Ernest’s foolish school-boy account of
her, which a more maidenly little girl would not have relished; she was
strengthened in her notion that she was ill-used, by hearing that the De
la Poers pitied her; and because she found that Aunt Barbara was
considered to be a little wrong, she did not consider that she herself
had ever been wrong at all.
And Lady Barbara was not far from the truth when she told her sister
“that Katharine was perfectly hard and reckless; there was no such thing
as making her sorry!”