ELEANOR
Otho’s week of freedom was over. His sister had come, and on the day
following her arrival, in the afternoon, she rode with him through
Bradstane town towards Balder Hall.
Any one who could have seen her, even in the gray and mournful
November light, would have seen a very beautiful young woman. She
was tall, and had an admirable figure, full of grace and strength.
No feeble development here, nor niggard traits, nor look of feeble
spine or over-sensitive nerves. Whatever the intellect within that
beautiful head, its outward case was not one to find fault with. Her
features were not very regular; harmonious, though, in their very
irregularity. A soft, ivory-white complexion, as healthy as many a
ruddy one; and with this complexion, the red-brown hair and lambent,
tawny eyes which sometimes accompany it. Her eyebrows were much
darker than either her hair or her eyes; and she had a large mouth,
but a beautiful one—beautiful because of its smile in mirth and of
its expression in repose.
There was a vague, indefinite family likeness between her and the
fierce-looking Otho. Where it lay, in what exactly it consisted, it
would have been impossible to say, but it was there, though it was
slight, and perhaps more easily to be detected when they were apart
than when they were together; that is, seeing one of them alone, an
observer might have thought, ‘How like her brother’ or ‘his sister!’
And yet, had the other one appeared, and the faces been compared,
none could have discerned any resemblance.
During the first part of their ride they were both somewhat silent.
She was looking about her with quick, keen glances, speaking an
observant eye. Otho was wondering what Magdalen would say to him,
what he could say to her, at a later time, when he, after his
offhand description of the other day, had to introduce to her this
beautiful creature now riding with him.
Eleanor, while making her observations on the town and the
surroundings, was also occupied in thinking things over. It was a
fact, she told herself with some mortification, that Otho and she
were strangers to each other. It seemed that absence, and long
separation, and the influence of utterly diverse lives and habits
did produce that strangeness, even between brother and sister. Her
Aunt Emily, in some of their talks, had told her that this would be
the case, and she had said laughingly that she would defy her
brother to be a stranger to her, or to make a stranger of her. She
had felt very strong; she felt very strong now. That was her chief
feeling, when she thought about herself at all—strength of soul and
body, and a happy confidence that truth is great and will prevail.
Yet this had not been such a joyful home-coming as it ought to have
been. In all confidence she had set out to find the home which she
had only twice visited, each time for a day or two, on some tour
with her guardians, since, at six years of age, she had been brought
away by her Aunt Emily, a motherless and fatherless child. Those
visits had both been paid while she was still under fourteen, before
Otho had left college and taken possession. Otho was six years her
senior, and had pursued his public school course and got through his
college career while she was yet in the schoolroom and in short
frocks. Occasionally, when he had been in town, or anywhere near
them, he had paid her a flying visit; had once, when they had been
in the Highlands, spent a few days with them, to shoot grouse with
his uncle and cousin Paul. On these occasions he had told her that
she grew a fine girl (fancying it was a nice kind of thing to say to
a sister, though when he said “fine” he meant “tall,” and had taken
so little real notice of her, that he had spoken in all good faith
when describing her to Magdalen the week before). And he had
uniformly discouraged the idea of her coming to live at Thorsgarth
(it had never been seriously broached before), saying, whenever
allusion had been made to such a thing, ‘Oh, you will never want a
home there. You will be married before that.’
But Eleanor had not married, and she had come to Thorsgarth to make
her home there.
‘Is this all the town there is, Otho?’ she asked, suddenly, as they
emerged from the street into the open road. ‘I’ve almost forgotten
it. What an odd, little, gray, weather-beaten place it is! Not a bit
like the south.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I feel as if I’d never been here, and I hardly ever meet any one
who has. It looks bleak here; that’s what I mean.’
‘Well, it is,’ said Otho, vexed with such a persistent talk about
the looks of a place. As if it mattered what Bradstane looked like!
‘And it’s November, too. You can’t expect roses in November.’
‘But I’ve always had them. There were Dijon roses growing over the
south walls at Brinswell when I left. You remember Brinswell, Otho?’
‘Yes, I do; and a dull hole it was.’
‘Not any duller than Thorsgarth, I should fancy. It was as lovely a
place as ever I saw. We were more there and less in London the last
few years. Of course I like London, but I never felt dull at
Brinswell. What fruit and flowers! Of course, things can’t grow here
as they did there. The trees look so small and stunted.’
‘Small! Why, the Bradstane ash-trees are noted all through the
country-side.’
‘Well, yes, the ash-trees. They are fine. But, of course, they ought
to be.’ And she hummed to herself—
‘Oh, the oak, and the ash, and the bonny ivy-tree,
They grow the best at home in the north countrie.’
‘At home,’ she added, half to herself. ‘This is the north countrie,
and this is my home, after all. It’s a shame I don’t know it better.
Wherever you look,’ she added, addressing him directly again, ‘you
seem to see a blue wall in the distance. Otho, does any one ever get
as far as those blue walls?’ And she pointed towards the north-west,
where Mickle Fell and his brethren loomed high.
‘Blue walls!’ repeated Otho, embarrassed by the application of such
terms to the moors, which to him represented so many acres of good
shooting, and those in another direction stabling for another hobby
of his, of which Eleanor was as yet unaware. ‘How you talk! Those
that you are pointing to are the fells on the Westmoreland border,
and those other ones, to the south, are the Swaledale moors.’
‘Swaledale moors? But one can get over them, I suppose. What is
there on the other side?’
‘More moors and more dales. It’s bleak enough there, if you like.
There’s some good shooting, though.’
‘I should like to see what there is at the other side,’ said
Eleanor, her eyes fixed dreamily on the moors. Then, as they turned
a bend in the road, ‘Is it far to this place you are taking me to?’
‘Only about another three-quarters of a mile.’
‘This Miss Wynter—is she a very old friend of yours?’ asked Eleanor
unconsciously. ‘I don’t ever remember to have heard you speak of
her.’
‘Oh yes, you have,’ said Otho, with effrontery; ‘but you’ve very
likely forgotten. She is my only friend—amongst the women, that is.’
‘Ah! an elderly woman?’
‘About my own—well, she’s a year or so older than I am.’
‘Oh! An invalid, I suppose?’
‘Why the—— What on earth makes you think she should be an invalid?’
‘If she is neither old nor ill, I can’t understand why I am being
taken to see her. What should prevent her from coming to call upon
me, in the usual order of things?’
Otho was embarrassed, and annoyed too. This extremely simple
question of Eleanor’s showed him, in a sudden flash, that Magdalen’s
behaviour was not exactly courteous. Stealing a side glance at his
sister, he realised that when she came to meet Magdalen, she might
consider the latter had been insolent in her pretensions. Eleanor,
to use his own phrase, knew what was what, every bit as well as
Magdalen did. Free and natural though her manner was, he had known
enough of his Aunt Emily to be aware that no one brought up by her
could remain in ignorance as to any social usages. In his haste to
bring Magdalen’s influence into the field, he had made a mistake,
and she probably did not care whether Eleanor were offended or no.
All he could say to get himself out of his difficulty was—
‘We’re a neighbourly lot here, when we do happen to be friends.
You’ll be disappointed if you expect to find London etiquette at
Bradstane.’
‘I daresay,’ said she, with a light laugh. ‘I’ve generally found
country etiquette far more burdensome than etiquette in London. That
was partly what made me wonder. However, people do get a little
rusty in their manners, I daresay, when they live in one small set,’
Eleanor concluded serenely; but there was a sparkle in her eye as
she spoke. Her curiosity as to this Miss Wynter was aroused.
Otho burst into a short laugh, as he heard this speech, thinking
within himself, ‘I’ll keep that for Magdalen, and treat her to it
when she’s pulling me up, some day. Upon my word, this girl is
enough to make most others look rusty.’
‘Miss Wynter is your only friend among the women, you say,’ pursued
Eleanor in flute-like tones. ‘How is that? Don’t you like the ladies
about here?’
Otho’s expression of countenance, on hearing this question, was
worthy of study. Eleanor saw it, and averted her face. She had
already accurately gauged one phase of Otho’s character. He was
inwardly perturbed just now. His troubles were beginning already.
Here was this girl evidently under the impression that he was
hand-in-glove with all the ordinary society of the place. How was he
to explain to her exactly how things stood between him and Magdalen
Wynter? He knew he could not, in any way that should seem plausible
to one brought up like her. He was bored at having to explain at
all, and in his vexation took refuge in some sweeping general
statements.
‘Like the ladies about here? No, I don’t. And that is one reason why
I knew you would be awfully dull if you came here. You see, it has
suited my tastes not to go much into the society here—in fact,
hardly at all; and they have just begun to understand it at last,
and to let me alone—give over inviting me, and all that. So you
won’t find it very lively. But Magdalen is different. I’ve known her
ever since I came here. We were thick at the very first, and have
stuck together ever since, because she’s so reasonable and sensible.
As for the others’—he spoke with solemnity—‘they are one half sharks
and the other half fools. There’s no such thing as meeting a girl,
and trying to have a friendship with her, before you go any farther.
Your sex, my dear, are incapable of friendship with a man. Either
they try to make him in love with them, and make his existence
miserable, or they fall in love with him themselves—or think they
do; it’s much of a muchness—and if he don’t respond they say he has
deceived them, or trifled with them, or something equally absurd.
Suppose you see a nice girl, or a girl that you think looks nice.
Well, you have a head on your shoulders, and you know she may be a
shrew, for all her pleasantness, just as a horse may be a screw,
though he looks all right. You think it worth while to try and know
her a bit better, before you risk anything. You can’t do it. You may
not do it. It is their one object to get you to marry them without
giving you any opportunity to know anything about them. You never
get to know their real thoughts about any one thing on earth. You
must run the gauntlet of their mothers and sisters to get even a
word with them. It isn’t fair; it’s deuced hard. Why are you to show
up everything, and be slanged if you don’t do it all on the square,
while they are not to have any questions asked at all? The sisters
are bad enough, especially if you are sweet on a younger one, but
the mothers—oh, Lord! Those mothers! If you do but look at one of
their precious girls, they are down upon you to know your
“intentions.” I say, a man has a right to ask questions in his
turn—if their tempers are all right, if they’re sound in wind and
limb, and so on. I bolt if I see one of those mothers within——’
He was interrupted by a peal of laughter. Eleanor had contained
herself as long as she could, but at each higher flight of Otho’s
sombre eloquence it had been more and more difficult to keep her
gravity. Now it was impossible. She gave free vent to her mirth, and
bent to her saddle-bow in her merriment.
‘Oh, Otho!’ she ejaculated at last, turning a face quivering with
laughter to him, and eyes dancing behind tears of amusement. He
looked at her in speechless astonishment, and then by degrees
managed to take in the fact that she was laughing at him—at his
solemn and withering denunciation of the man-traps set for the
unwary in social life. He did not remember such a thing to have
happened to him before, and he was stunned by the shock.
‘Poor dear Otho!’ she said, between new bursts of merriment. ‘What a
life you must have led, with all these women trying to entrap you!
No wonder you are reserved and sad! No wonder you have retired into
private life to avoid the dangers that beset you on all sides! I
wonder almost that you dare ride out alone. And yet, Otho, what a
great thing to be so sought after!’
Otho’s face was almost purple, partly with breathless amazement,
partly with anger. Eleanor, it seemed, did not realise, or did not
care, to what inconvenience he was put by her presence here at all.
She chaffed and laughed at him. She now put the crowning point to
this offensive conduct by leaning over towards him, and asking, with
a pretence of looking round to see that no one was near to look or
listen—
‘Otho, did Miss Wynter warn you of the danger of these harpies by
whom you are surrounded? Women are always quick to see through the
designs of other women. How good of her to take care of you and keep
you out of danger!’
Otho’s deep colour grew deeper still. Shrewdly had Eleanor hit the
mark. The language, the turns of expression, were his own, native to
his genius and redolent of his mind; but the substance of his speech
was the substance of scores of conversations with Magdalen, in which
she had amused him by tearing to pieces the supposed designs of
their neighbours of the whole country-side.
‘What bosh!’ he said at last, with sovereign contempt. ‘You’ll be
saying next that she had designs herself.’ A peculiar smile hovered
about his sister’s lips, but she said nothing. ‘No, no. It is quite
different with her, as you will see when you meet her. You can go
and have an hour’s chat with her—or two hours, if you like. She’s
always pleasant, always amusing; no father or mother to be down on
you. And she does not imagine, even if you were to go and see her
regularly twice a week, that you’ve got “intentions;” and, what is
more, she has none herself. She can be pleasant, and free, and
agreeable, without all the time being bent upon hooking you.
Yes’—the taciturn Otho waxed enthusiastic—‘she is my friend. I don’t
care who knows it. She’s the only woman in the neighbourhood that I
call upon.’
Had Eleanor been better acquainted with ‘the neighbourhood’ and its
annals, she might better have appreciated the honourable distinction
conveyed in this speech.
‘Dear me! She ought to be flattered, I am sure. Is this place of
hers a large one?’
‘Balder Hall, Magdalen’s? God bless you, no! I wish it was. She’s a
poor penniless niece of an old bedridden woman, Miss Martha
Strangforth, whom they call about here “the Immortal,” for they say
she will never die. I daresay Magdalen wishes it were true, for so
long as the old woman lives the girl has a home and a position. And
old Martha’s income dies with her, and I don’t fancy she has saved
much.’
‘Girl—she must be a precocious girl,’ said Eleanor, sweetly.
‘Oh, the malice of you women!’ said Otho, gnashing his teeth with
virtuous and masculine indignation. ‘When I say “girl,” I’m rather
stretching a point. She is a year or so older than I am—about eight
and twenty. And it seems to me that precious few women under that
age are worth speaking to.’
‘Well, they certainly should be worth speaking to by the time they
are that age, if ever they intend to be. But if she is poor and
dependent, it seems to me men ought to be rather careful about going
to see her very often.’
‘For fear she should set traps for them, of course,’ sneered Otho.
‘Oh, not at all. But because other people are sometimes ill-natured,
and a woman who has her way to make, or who may have her living to
earn some time, cannot be too careful.’
‘Oh, come, Eleanor! When you see her you will understand that one
can’t speak of Magdalen Wynter in that way. No one could imagine her
in any inferior position. It isn’t in her to take one.’
‘Isn’t it? Well, it is lucky for her if she has some power that can
defy need and want of money. I used to help Aunt Emily with some
charitable works that she was interested in—governesses’ homes, and
ladies’ work societies, and so on; and you would have been
astonished at the terrible cases one used to see, and the deplorable
condition of ladies—ladies of birth and beauty, with the most
terrible tales of the straits to which poverty and distress had
driven them. I used to lie awake for hours sometimes, wishing I had
the courage to divide my money into a common fund, for some of the
poorest, and go and live with them on equal terms.’
‘You’ll come to no good if you let that sort of nonsense get into
your head,’ said Otho, gruffly. ‘But it’s useless to talk. You will
understand what I mean when you see her,’ he added, feeling that his
sister was not altogether devoid of the obstinacy which was so
salient a feature in his own character. ‘She does not care for the
people about here, you know. In fact, she dislikes them, and makes
great fun of them. And they don’t care about her; she’s too handsome
for them.’
Eleanor made no answer to this, and they rode on in silence for a
little time. Miss Askam did not feel ‘drawn’ to Magdalen by Otho’s
description of his friend. Indeed, it had the very natural effect of
putting her mind into a defensive attitude with regard to the other
woman. Without being any stickler for forms, she could not
understand why Miss Wynter had not called upon her, perhaps on her
aunt’s behalf, or why she was being thus hurried to see this
wonderful penniless orphan who had no designs upon men, but who
disliked and was disliked by all the other women of the
neighbourhood. ‘It looks very much as if I were being taken to her
on approval, for inspection,’ said Eleanor within herself. Her white
teeth showed a little in a not altogether amiable smile. ‘Well, let
it be so. I am committed to nothing with her. We will see what she
is. I think I can sustain her inspection.’
She also reflected that Otho’s gift of character-drawing seemed to
be in a very undeveloped condition, and she had more than once
noticed, during her short career, that when men describe women, they
very often paint them, not as they are, but as the women have chosen
that they should find them; and this was very likely the case with
Otho and Miss Wynter.
‘Here we are,’ observed Otho, as they turned in at the Balder Hall
Lodge, rode up to the door, and found that Miss Wynter was at home.