PRINCESS PUCK
BY
U. L. SILBERRAD
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
1902
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MISS BROWNLOW’S NIECES, 1
II. BILL, 12
III. ROBERT MORTON, 20
IV. HARBOROUGH OF CROWS’ FARM, 31
V. FOR BILL’S GOOD, 44
VI. THE RIGHT OF WAY, 57
VII. HARBOROUGH OF GURNETT, 72
VIII. THE COURTSHIP OF HARBOROUGH OF GURNETT, 88
IX. “RED IS THE ROSE,” 107
X. IN THE GARDEN, 124
XI. WILHELMINA I. AND II., 138
XII. NATURAL SELECTION, 150
XIII. CHASING A SHADOW, 156
XIV. THE COURTSHIP OF HARBOROUGH OF CROWS’ FARM, 171
XV. FAMILY HISTORY, 187
XVI. A GRANDFATHER, 198
XVII. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF A GUARDIAN, 208
XVIII. THE PLUM HARVEST, 219
XIX. PETER HARBOROUGH: SHOT, 231
XX. HARBOROUGH OF BYBRIDGE, 248
XXI. THE ACQUISITIVE FACULTY, 266
XXII. POLLY SETTLES THINGS, 279
XXIII. PETER HARBOROUGH’S SHOE-BUCKLES, 285
XXIV. THE COURTSHIP OF HARBOROUGH OF BYBRIDGE, 303
XXV. GENERAL SERVANT, 317
XXVI. AN OLD WOUND, 337
XXVII. A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK, 346
XXVIII. THE OAK BOX GOES TO WRUGGLESBY, 364
XXIX. POLLY PROVES A TRUE PROPHET, 378
XXX. A RELISH WITH TEA, 392
XXXI. THE FULFILLING OF THE DREAM, 399
CHAPTER I.
MISS BROWNLOW’S NIECES.
It was in March that Bill Alardy went to Ashelton. She was sent there
“to grow up,” Polly said, and added some sceptical remarks with regard
to both place and person. “Poor little Wilhelmina,” said Miss Brownlow,
“she has never had a fair chance among us all; the best possible thing
for her would be to go to Ashelton with Theresa.” And Miss Brownlow
should have known, for she was acquainted with Ashelton, and even
better acquainted with Bill, having had the doubtful pleasure of her
charge and company from early childhood. Polly did not know much about
Ashelton; she had only been there once to spend the day with Theresa,
which was a grievance in itself, for Theresa had lived there ever since
her marriage last June. That, however, was beside the point; Polly did
not so much base her doubts of the efficacy of the plan on Ashelton as
on Bill, and she had known her as long as Miss Brownlow, for she was
the eldest, as Bill was the youngest, of the four nieces Miss Brownlow
had taken into her household. Polly’s opinion and Miss Brownlow’s were
not identical on the subject of Bill; but when the matter of the going
to Ashelton was being discussed Polly did not consider it necessary to
give undue prominence to the difference, thinking Bill might as well go
even if it did her no good.
It was a Monday evening when the plan was first mentioned, and Miss
Brownlow was making up her accounts at the time. She always made up
her accounts on Monday evenings. In her opinion there was no other
time half so satisfactory, because, as she said, there was Sunday just
before, and it was so easy to remember forgotten things on a Sunday.
Perhaps it was not right to think of such things then, and of course
she never did so on purpose, only one cannot help things flashing
across one’s mind. Occasionally the things flashed away again before
she had time to secure them on Monday evening; occasionally also, the
flashes were delusive and baseless; but on the other hand, sometimes
they did chance to be correct, and then it was most satisfactory. This
did not make any material difference to Miss Brownlow’s accounts, which
never by any chance came right; they never had come right since she
first began keeping them in her girlhood, more years ago than she ever
mentioned.
“My father always insisted on our keeping an account of our money, and
how we spent it,” she used to say to her nieces. “It is an excellent
plan, my dears, for then you know where you are and how you stand.”
These desirable results did not always occur in her own case, though
that did not deter her nieces from following the suggestion, each
according to her nature,--Theresa with neatness and some success,
Bella with results not unlike her aunt’s, Polly--there were commercial
instincts in Polly’s blood and her untidy books were kept with an
accuracy which might have savoured of sharp practice to any one who
could comprehend them. Bill, of course, was too young to be considered,
and too penniless to keep a record of her non-existent income;
moreover, she was only “Poor little Bill--Wilhelmina”--Miss Brownlow
invariably made the correction in mind and sometimes in speech. She
sighed as she thought about the girl,--she had just come to the item
_one shilling, a bottle of Stephens’s blue-black writing-ink_. Bill had
on Thursday upset the last bottle on the schoolroom-floor, in class,
too, with all the little girls looking on. How they giggled! Polly said
afterwards that Bill made them, but Miss Brownlow did not think so.
Bill was too old to do anything so wrong; she was seventeen now, though
she seemed such a child. Polly, who was perhaps not without authority
on the subject, was of opinion that age had little to do with iniquity,
but Miss Brownlow was not convinced. In any case she had to pay the
shilling for another bottle of ink. The column of figures she was now
counting up did not come to the total she expected: “Now what have I
forgotten?” she said.
Bella and Theresa glanced up but did not hazard a suggestion; they
knew the remark was not addressed to them, and they went on correcting
French exercises in silence. These French exercises were really Bella’s
work, but Theresa was helping her with them to-night. A year ago they
were Theresa’s own, but when she married her sister had taken up that
part of her work. Theresa was on a visit to Miss Brownlow, and finding
herself back among the familiar surroundings it came quite natural to
her to take up some part of the old duties; besides, she liked to help
Bella.
As the two tall sisters sat close together, sharing the same dictionary
and sometimes bending over the same page, Miss Brownlow thought they
made a beautiful picture; possibly even a less prejudiced observer
might not have entirely disagreed. Polly was certainly not a prejudiced
observer, yet even she admitted the sisters’ beauty in a general way.
She did not look in their direction now, for she was busy with her
needlework. She sat opposite to Miss Brownlow, close to the lamp, her
dressmaking scattered around her. She possessed a perfect genius for
what is technically known as “doing up” her clothes; consequently some
of them were always undergoing alterations and repairs, and none of
them kept the same appearance for long together.
“I cannot account for sixpence,” Miss Brownlow said at last; “on what
can I have spent sixpence?”
“Cabbages,” Polly said briefly.
“Cabbages! My dear Polly, one cannot buy cabbages at this time of year,
nor hardly anything else either; vegetables are so dear and scarce, it
is really quite dreadful.”
“Sweep,” was Polly’s only comment.
But it was not the sweep, Miss Brownlow said. “We have not had him this
fortnight past,” she declared. “Don’t you remember, the last--”
“Then we ought to have had.”
“Oh, I am sure we do not need him yet, don’t you remember the last time
he came--”
Polly did not remember, and she showed no interest in the reminiscence;
but Theresa, who did not like to hear Miss Brownlow treated so
cavalierly, encouraged her aunt to describe the last coming of the
sweep and the delinquencies of the maid-servant who overslept herself
on that occasion. “And I really do believe he would never have got in
at all if it had not been for Bill; she heard him ringing and went down
and let him in,--in her nightdress too!”
“That sixpence is for mending Bill’s boots.” This was Polly’s remark.
“What a memory you have!” Miss Brownlow exclaimed, and Polly showed
signs of remembering the incident of the sweep. “Bill did go down to
him,” she said, “in her nightdress and _nothing else_. I should like to
know how long she stopped down with him!”
Polly had a habit of talking in italics; her treatment of the English
language made it acquire an almost double value, her intonation giving
the words an additional worth and meaning. Her last speech was an
admirable example of her methods; there were many more things implied
in it than were said. It was the implications which made Bella exclaim,
“You are hard on the child.”
“Oh, well!” And Polly shrugged her shoulders and bent over her work
again.
“Poor little Bill, poor little Wilhelmina!” Miss Brownlow sighed softly.
Polly sniffed and Theresa asked: “How much longer are you going to let
her be in the school?”
“Oh, a long time,” Miss Brownlow answered readily; she had not begun
to contemplate the problem of Bill’s future, nor even to admit its
existence. Polly knew that and her small dark eyes showed that she knew
it as she remarked: “I began to teach the little ones before I was
seventeen.”
Miss Brownlow looked distressed, but Bella said cheerfully: “That was
long ago; Auntie wanted help then. Now it is quite different; if Bill
were ever so able to teach there would not be the slightest need for
her to do it; in fact I don’t see whom she would teach.”
This speech, though perhaps hardly likely to fulfil its comforting
intention, was unfortunately only too true. It was indisputable that
Miss Brownlow’s school was not what it had been, that its best days
lay behind it. At one time it had been almost an Establishment, the
recognised school of Wrugglesby, the place to which the country
clergymen and gentlemen-farmers of the surrounding districts sent their
daughters. The boarders were so many then that it had been necessary
to have a _mademoiselle_ and a visiting English governess. That was
some time ago, but even when Theresa first began to help with the
teaching, things were more prosperous than they were now. Gradually
they had changed; times had changed, boarders had fallen off one by
one, new ones did not come; girls went further now,--to Brighton, to
Bournemouth, even to France and Germany. Mademoiselle left, and it
hardly seemed necessary to fill her place, for Theresa was a very good
French scholar. The English governess married, and Bella was found
equal to doing all that was left of her work. Then, rather more than a
year ago, Theresa married, and though Miss Brownlow talked of finding
some nice well-educated girl to fill her place, nothing came of it.
Theresa used to take the elder girls, and they were so few now that
Bella could quite well help Miss Brownlow with them, especially as she
was rather clever; she had passed the Cambridge Local Examination and
attended some history lectures. Polly, of course, still taught the
little ones; she always had done so, and had always contrived to drill
a certain amount of information into them. It is to be feared that
she did not know very much herself; even Miss Brownlow was obliged to
admit that; yet she possessed a far greater faculty for teaching than
did the more accomplished Bella. As the school was chiefly composed
of little girls, it really was important that they should be well
taught. Sometimes Miss Brownlow felt a passing regret when she saw them
struggling for their overshoes in the lobby; they were not what her old
pupils had been, not of the same social position, not of the same age;
most of them were “reductions” on account of sisters past, present, or
to come; none of them were likely to remain any length of time, none of
them were even weekly boarders. There were only two boarders besides
Wilhelmina, who could hardly be counted since she belonged to the
household.
Miss Wilson, the principal of the High School two stations up the line,
thought of Miss Brownlow when, in her able paper on the education of
girls, she had written of teachers of the past. Miss Brownlow was
of the past, not highly educated, not clever, but kindly, simple,
pleasant, well loved by those pupils of long ago, a gentle power for
good in those past best days,--and in the present? Ah, well, the school
was going; there were no boarders to be influenced one way or the
other now, and the little girls who came daily did not trouble about
Miss Brownlow. She was of a race of schoolmistresses fast disappearing
from the earth, vanishing under the inexorable law of the survival of
the fittest. She was not the fittest. Inefficient? Yes, that was it;
inefficient for modern needs, modern wants; growing old, just a little
past the work she once did, not at all fit for the work now to be
done; never a very wise woman, thank God, not wise enough to know that
she was a failure.
“Wilhelmina will teach somewhere else,” Miss Brownlow said, after she
had mentally reviewed the prospect called up by Bella’s words; and
mercifully the prospect she reviewed was not quite that which other
people saw.
“Where?” Polly asked casually, as if the matter were of small moment.
Miss Brownlow did not know. She had not thought, and the question was
embarrassing.
Bella came to the rescue. “Mrs. Caxton will want a governess if her
little girls are leaving at Easter. They are leaving because they
always catch colds from the other children, so she is sure to want a
governess.”
“Yes, of course,” Miss Brownlow said enthusiastically; “it would be the
very thing for Bill; she never has a cold.”
“H’m! What is she to teach? How not to catch cold? It is about the only
thing she knows, and she does that by accident.”
“They are so young,” Miss Brownlow went on, delighted with the plan and
regardless of Polly’s interruption; “they will only want elementary
teaching, reading and writing and spelling.”
“Bill can’t spell, not that that matters so very much though”--Polly
perhaps knew by experience that it was possible to teach a subject in
which you were not very deeply learned. “It certainly would not matter
to Bill, nothing would matter. If she could spell every word in the
dictionary, do you suppose any one would have her for a governess?”
“I don’t know why not,--when she is a little older of course. She is
such a child yet; wait till she is grown up.”
“We have been waiting,” Polly observed grimly.
“She is very young for her age; I am sure I don’t know how it is.”
“She was born without gumption,” said Polly with conviction, “and she
has never been able to acquire any general knowledge.”
“She is not clever,” Miss Brownlow admitted sadly.
“Cleverness has nothing to do with it,” Polly retorted. “If you
start in life lacking what Bill lacks, you must do what you can with
common-sense. That will teach you a few things,--what not to say, and
how to say it, and--and all that. Bill has no common-sense.”
“We have always treated her like a child;” and here Miss Brownlow
sighed again.
It was then that Theresa suggested that Bill should come home with her
to stay at Ashelton for a little while. Miss Brownlow was delighted
with the suggestion; it was just the thing, she was sure. No doubt the
girl would develop; Theresa would use her influence, and her young
cousin had always been so fond of her, had always respected and admired
her so much; such a visit would be the best possible thing. Theresa
herself did not anticipate very great results, but she promised to do
her best, and after some discussion of details regarding the proposed
visit, Miss Brownlow returned to her accounts and the sisters to the
exercises, interrupted only now and again by a repetition of the elder
lady’s satisfaction with the plan. After the third interruption Polly
yawned aggressively. When there was silence again she bit her cotton
and looked thoughtfully across at Miss Brownlow, at the kindly face,
the thin hair, the black stuff gown she knew so well. She did not
approve of the whole effect; she thought it “snuffy,” and as such
unlikely to create a favourable impression on the parents of possible
scholars. She looked beyond Miss Brownlow to the wall behind,--to the
pale-toned paper with faint gold lines and fainter grey flowers, to the
old-fashioned water-colours in shabby gilt frames, the white marble
mantelpiece with red glass candlesticks upon it, and to the rosewood
chairs covered with green rep, standing one on either side of the
fireplace. The room was no more attractive than Miss Brownlow’s dress,
she thought; it was terribly old-fashioned in comparison with Miss
Wilson’s flatted walls and artistic green cushions. Polly had a poor
opinion of art-colours, but she seriously considered the advisability
of draping some of the household gods with the best of the shades of
yellow. She was, in her own mind, reckoning the quantity of material
necessary, when Miss Brownlow again broke in on her reflections.
“Are you sure Robert won’t mind?” she asked for the fourth time.
“Quite sure,” was Theresa’s answer.
“That’s all right; I should not like to put him about at all. You are
quite certain?”
Theresa was quite certain, and the subject was dismissed. Polly
breathed a heavy sigh, and once more fell back on her own thoughts.
These now turned from the art-materials to Robert Morton, Theresa’s
husband. Polly had not a very high opinion of Robert Morton; she liked
him well enough, but considered him a bad speculation. “He’ll die of
apoplexy--poor Theresa--I’m sorry for that poor girl. He’ll certainly
die of it, and I expect he’ll die young.” So she had once said to the
indignant Bella, and she thought of the verdict again this evening as
she glanced at the sisters and mentally dressed Theresa in widow’s
weeds. She would make a handsome widow, though perhaps not so effective
as Bella. Polly glanced meditatively at Bella; a widow’s cap would
look well on that golden head. Theresa was darker and older too by
nearly four years; she would be twenty-six in the summer and she looked
her age; in fact, Theresa was almost too dignified. Bella was not
dignified, though she was tall. They were both tall and graceful and
clear-skinned; both had blue eyes, Theresa’s grave and sweet, Bella’s
holy, innocent, suggesting a madonna’s eyes to the observer until he
became aware of the turned-up nose between; “a flirt’s nose,” Polly
called it. Theresa’s features were better, though less attractive; she
had not a flirt’s nose, but also she had no tantalising dimple in her
chin. Still they were both undeniably beauties, and Polly was nothing
of the sort.