That bore of bores--a tedious male cousin!--Old Play.
Loitering slowly onward from stile to stile, from field to field, and
from pasture to pasture, the two ladies at last reached a country road
leading right through the heart of the parish, and commanding from time
to time a view of the distant sea. They found Fensea, as usual, fast
asleep, basking in the midst of its own breath; the red-tiled houses
dormant, the population invisible, save in the square or market-place
opposite the tavern, where a drowsy cart-horse was blinking into a water
trough, and a somnambulistic ostler was vacantly looking on. Even in
the open shops such as Radford the linendraper’s and Summerhayes the
grocer’s, nothing seemed doing. But just as they left the village behind
them, and saw in front of them the spire of the village church peeping
through the trees, they suddenly came face to face with a human being
who was walking towards them in great haste and with some indications of
ill-temper.
‘Ah, here you are!’ ejaculated this individual. ‘I have been hunting for
you up and down.’
He was a man under thirty, and looking very little over twenty, though
his face showed little of the brightness and candour of early manhood.
His hair was cropped close and he was clean-shaven; his eyes were
yellowish and large, of an expression so fixed and peculiar as to have
been compared by irreverent friends to ‘hard-boiled eggs’; his forehead
was low, his jaw coarse and determined. With regard to his dress, it
was of the description known as horsey; short coat and tight-fitting
trousers of light tweed, a low-crowned hat of the same material, white
neckcloth fastened by a horseshoe pin.
This was George Craik, son of Sir George Craik, Bart., of Craik Castle,
in the neighbourhood, and Alma’s cousin on her father’s side.
Alma greeted him with a nod, while he shook hands with her companion.
‘Did you ride over, George?’ she inquired.
‘Yes; I put my nag up at the George, and walked up to the Larches. Not
finding you at home, I strolled down to the vicarage, thinking to find
you _there_. But old Bradley is not at home; so I suppose there was no
attraction to take you.’
The young lady’s cheek flushed, and she looked at her relation, not too
amicably.
‘Old Bradley, as you call him (though he is about your own age, I
suppose), is away in London. Did you want to see him?’
George shrugged his shoulders, and struck at his boots irritably with
his riding-whip.
‘I wanted to see _you_, as I told you. By the way, though, what’s this
they’re telling me about Bradley and the Bishop? He’s come to the length
of his tether at last, I suppose? Well, I always said he was no better
than an atheist, and a confounded radical into the bargain.’
‘An atheist, I presume,’ returned the young lady superciliously, ‘is a
person who does not believe in a Supreme Being. When you describe Mr.
Bradley as one, you forget he is a minister of the Church of Christ.’
George Craik scowled, and then laughed contemptuously.
‘Of course _you_ defend him!’ he cried. ‘You will tell me next, I dare
say, that you share his opinions.’
‘When you explain to me what they are, I will inform you,’ responded
Alma, moving slowly on, while George lounged after her, and Miss Combe
listened in amused amazement.
‘It’s a scandal,’ proceeded the young man, ‘that a fellow like that
should retain a living in the Church. Cripps tells me that his sermon
last Sunday went slap in the face of the Bible. I myself have heard him
say that some German fellow had proved the Gospels to be a tissue of
falsehoods.’
Without directly answering this invective, Alma looked coldly round at
her cousin over her shoulder. Her expression was not encouraging, and
her manner showed a very natural irritation.
‘How amiable we are this morning!’ she exclaimed. ‘Pray, do you come
all the way from Craik to give me a discussion on the whole duty of a
Christian clergyman? Really, George, such attempts at edification have a
curious effect, coming from _you_.’
The young man flushed scarlet, and winced nervously under his cousin’s
too ardent contempt.
‘I don’t pretend to be a saint,’ he said, ‘but I know what I’m talking
about. I call Bradley a renegade! It’s a mean thing, in my opinion, to
take money for preaching opinions in which a man does not believe.’
‘Only just now you said that he preached heresy--or atheism--whatever
you like to call it.’
‘Yes; and is paid for preaching the very reverse.’
Alma could no longer conceal her irritation.
‘Why should we discuss a topic you do not understand? Mr. Bradley is a
gentleman whose aims are too high for the ordinary comprehension, that
is all.’
‘Of course you think me a fool, and are polite enough to say so!’
persisted George. ‘Well, I should not mind so much if Bradley had not
succeeded in infecting _you_ with his pernicious opinions. He _has_ done
so, though you may deny it! Since he came to the neighbourhood, you have
not been like the same girl. The fellow ought to be horsewhipped if he
had his deserts.’
Alma stopped short, and looked the speaker in the face.
‘Be good enough to leave me,--and come back when you are in a better
temper.’
George gave a disagreeable laugh.
‘No; I’m coming to lunch with you.’
‘That you shall not, unless you promise to conduct yourself like a
gentleman.’
‘Well, hang the parson,--since you can’t bear him to be discussed. I
didn’t come over to quarrel.’
‘You generally succeed in doing so, however.’
‘No fault of mine; you snap a fellow’s head off, when he wants to give
you a bit of good advice. ‘There, there,’ he added, laughing again, but
not cordially, ‘let us drop the subject. I want something to eat.’
Alma echoed the laugh, with about an equal amount of cordiality.
‘Now you are talking of what you do understand. Lunch will be served at
two.’
As she spoke they were passing by the church gate, and saw, across the
churchyard, with its long rank grass and tombstones stained with mossy
slime, the old parish church of Fensea:--a quaint timeworn structure,
with an arched and gargoyled entrance, Gothic windows, and a belfry of
strange device. High up in the belfry, and on the boughs of the great
ash-trees surrounding the burial acre, jackdaws were gathered, sleepily
discussing the weather and their family affairs. A footpath, much
overgrown with grass, crossed from the church porch to a door in the
weather-beaten wall communicating with the adjacent vicarage--a large,
dismal, old-fashioned residence, buried in gloomy foliage.
Miss Combe glanced at church and churchyard with the air of superior
enlightenment which a Christian missionary might assume on approaching
some temple of Buddha or Brahma. George, glancing over the wall, uttered
an exclamation.
‘What’s the matter now?’ demanded Alma.
‘Brown’s blind mare grazing among the graves,’ said young Craik
with righteous indignation. He was about to enlarge further on the
delinquencies of the vicar, and the shameful condition of the parish, of
which he had just discovered a fresh illustration, but, remembering
his recent experience, he controlled himself and contented himself with
throwing a stone at the animal, which was leisurely cropping the grass
surrounding an ancient headstone. They walked on, and passed the front
of the vicarage, which looked out through sombre ash-trees on the road.
The place seemed dreary and desolate enough, despite a few flower-beds
and a green lawn. The windows were mantled in dark ivy, which drooped in
heavy clusters over the gloomy door.
Leaving the vicarage behind them, the three followed the country road
for about a mile, when, passing through the gate of a pretty lodge, they
entered an avenue of larch-trees leading up to the mansion to which they
gave their name. Here all was bright and well kept, the grass swards
cleanly swept and variegated with flower-beds, and leading on to
shrubberies full of flowering trees. The house itself, an elegant modern
structure, stood upon a slight eminence, and was reached by two marble
terraces commanding a sunny view of the open fields and distant sea.
It may be well to explain here that the Larches, with a large extent of
the surrounding property, belonged to Miss Alma Craik in her own right,
the lady being an orphan and an only child. Her father, a rich railway
contractor, had bought the property and built the house just before she
was born. During her infancy her mother had died, and before she was
of age her father too had joined the great majority; so that she found
herself, at a very early age, the heiress to a large property, and with
no relations in the world save her uncle, Sir George Craik, and his son.
Sir George, who had been knighted on the completion of a great railway
bridge considered a triumph of engineering skill, had bought an adjacent
property at about the time when his brother purchased the lands-of
Fensea.
The same contrast which was noticeable between the cousins had existed
between the brothers, Thomas and George Craik. They were both
Scotchmen, and had begun life as common working engineers, but there the
resemblance ceased. Thomas had been a comparative recluse, thoughtful,
melancholy, of advanced opinions, fond of books and abstruse
speculation; and his daughter’s liberal education had been the
consequence of his culture, and in a measure of his radicalism.
George was a man of the world, quick, fond of money, a Conservative in
politics, and a courtier by disposition, whose ambition was to found a
‘family,’ and who disapproved of all social changes unconnected with
the spread of the railway system and the success of his own commercial
speculations. Young George was his only son, and had acquired, at a very
early age, all the instincts (not to speak of many of the vices) of the
born aristocrat. He was particularly sensitive on the score of his
lowly origin, and his great grudge against society was that it had
not provided him with an old-fashioned ancestry. Failing the fact, he
assumed all the fiction, of an hereditary heir of the soil, but would
have given half his heirloom to any one who could have produced for him
an authentic ‘family tree,’ and convinced him that, despite his father’s
beginnings, his blood had in it a dash of ‘blue.’
George Craik lunched with his cousin and her companion in a spacious
chamber, communicating with the terrace by French windows opening to
the ground. He was not a conversationalist, and the meal passed in
comparative silence. Alma could not fail to perceive that the young man
was unusually preoccupied and taciturn.
At last he rose without ceremony, strolled out on the terrace, and lit a
cigar. He paced up and down for some minutes, then, with the air of one
whose mind is made up, he looked in and beckoned to his cousin.
‘Come out here,’ he said. ‘Never mind your hat--there is no sun to speak
of.’
After a moment’s hesitation, she stepped out and joined him.
‘Do you want me?’ she asked carelessly. ‘I would rather leave you
to your smoke, and go to the library with Miss Combe. We’re studying
Herbert Spencer’s “First Principles” together, and she reads a portion
aloud every afternoon.’
She knew that something was coming by the fixed gaze with which he
regarded her, and the peculiar expression in his eyes. His manner
was far less like that of a lover than that of a somewhat sulky and
tyrannical elder brother,--and indeed they had been so much together
from childhood upward that she felt the relation between them to be
quite a fraternal one. Nevertheless, his mind just then was occupied
with a warmer sentiment--the one, indeed, which often leads the way to
wedlock.
He began abruptly enough.
‘I say, Alma, how long is this to last?’ he demanded not without
asperity.
‘What, pray?’
‘Our perpetual misunderstandings. I declare if I did not know what a
queer girl you are, I should think you detested me!’
‘I like you well enough, George,--when you are agreeable, which is not
so often as I could wish.’
Thus she answered, with a somewhat weary laugh.
‘But you know I like _you_ better than anything in the world!’ he cried
eagerly. ‘You know I have set my heart on making you my wife.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense, George!’ replied Alma. ‘Love between cousins is an
absurdity.’
She would have added an ‘enormity,’ having during her vagrant studies
imbibed strong views on the subject of consanguinity, but, advanced as
she was, she was not quite advanced enough to discuss a physiological
and social problem with the man who wanted to marry her. In simple
truth, she had the strongest personal objection to her cousin, in his
present character of lover.
‘I don’t see the absurdity of it,’ answered the young man, ‘nor does my
father. His heart is set upon this match, as you know; and besides, he
does not at all approve of your living the life you do--alone, without a
protector, and all that sort of thing.’
By this time Alma had quite recovered herself, and was able to reassume
the air of sweet superiority which is at once so bewitching in a pretty
woman, or so irritating. It did not bewitch George Craik; it irritated
him beyond measure. A not inconsiderable experience of vulgar amours in
the country, not to speak of the business known as sowing wild oats’ in
Paris and London, had familiarised him with a different type of woman.
In his cousin’s presence he felt, not abashed, but at a disadvantage.
She had a manner, too, of talking down to him, as to a younger brother,
which he disliked exceedingly; and more than once, when he had talked to
her in the language of love, he had smarted under her ridicule.
So now, instead of taking the matter too seriously, she smiled frankly
in his face, and quietly took his arm.
‘You must not talk like that, George,’ she said, walking up and down
with him. ‘When you do, I feel as if you were a very little boy, and I
quite an old woman. Even if I cared for you in that way--and I don’t,
and never shall--we are not at all suited to each other. Our thoughts
and aims in life are altogether different. I like you very much as a
cousin, of course, and that is just the reason why I can never think of
you as a husband. Don’t talk of it again, please!--and forgive me for
being quite frank--I should not like you to have any misconception on
the subject.’
‘I know what it is,’ he cried angrily. ‘It is that clergyman fellow! He
has come between us.’
‘Nothing of the sort,’ answered Alma with heightened colour. ‘If there
was not another man in the world, it would be all the same so far as you
and I are concerned.’
‘I don’t believe a word of it. Bradley is your choice. A pretty choice!
A fellow who is almost a beggar, and in a very short time will be kicked
out of the Church as a heretic.’
She released his arm, and drew away from him in deep exasperation; but
her feeling towards him was still that of an elder sister annoyed at the
_gaucherie_ of a privileged brother.
‘If you continue to talk like that of Mr. Bradley, we shall quarrel,
George. I think you had better go home now, and think it over. In any
case, you will do no good by abusing an innocent man who is vastly your
superior.’
All the bad blood of George Craik’s heart now mounted to his face, and
his frame shook with rage.
‘Bradley will have to reckon with me,’ he exclaimed furiously. ‘What
right has he to raise his eyes towards you? Until he came down here, we
were the best of friends; but he has poisoned your heart against me, and
against all your friends. Never mind! I’ll have it out with him, before
many days are done!’
Without deigning to reply, Alma walked from him into the house.
An hour later, George Craik mounted his horse at the inn, and rode
furiously homeward. An observer of human nature, noticing the expression
of his countenance, and taking count of his square-set jaw and savage
mouth, would have concluded perhaps that Alma estimated his opposition,
and perhaps his whole character, somewhat too lightly. He had a
bull-dog’s tenacity, when he had once made up his mind to a course of
action.
But when he was gone, the high-spirited lady of his affections dismissed
him completely from her thoughts. She joined Miss Combe in the library,
and was soon busy with the problem of the Unknowable, as presented in
the pages of the clearest-headed philosopher of our time.