A CRONY AND A CLIMB
"WELL, what do you think of Sidney?" asked Monica as they were walking
home together.
"A very self-controlled young woman," replied Randolph promptly.
Monica eyed him sharply.
"You are more observant than most men," she said. "Sidney is very good
company at all times; but she is not phlegmatic by nature, and is
thinner skinned than most people, so is apt to be misunderstood. She is
of the make of French aristocrats in the Revolution, who went to the
guillotine with a jest upon their lips."
"You speak as if a tragedy is hers."
"Oh, no; we have no tragedies in this village."
"Nor suitors to carry off your heroines?"
Again Monica glanced at him, but she said nothing.
It was the next day that he was enlightened, and it was Aunt Dannie who
did it.
She came out into the garden with him and paced up and down by his side
as he was smoking his pipe.
"Tell me about your dinner party. Such a little amuses us in this quiet
neighbourhood. I suppose you fell in love with Sidney Urquhart on the
spot. Most people do, I believe. She might have married over and over
again had she been so minded. But I always said that her cousin, Archie
Hughes, was the favoured man."
"You're a veritable gossip," said Randolph, looking at the old lady
with twinkling eyes.
Aunt Dannie nodded her head, well pleased with the accusation.
"Of course I am. Country people must be gossips, unless they're
recluses. You see, Archie lived all his life close here. His father was
one of the Admiral's cronies. He died two years ago. Archie and Sidney
grew up together, and there was a kind of boy and girl engagement
between them. We all expected a marriage, but I fancy Sidney could
not make up her mind to leave her father. She was content to drift
along. Then General Hughes died, and Archie grew restless, and the next
thing we heard was that he was going out to India as secretary to a
distant relative of his out there, who was Governor in some outlandish
province. And then the other day, to our great surprise, we heard of
his marriage. So I suppose, after all, there was nothing but cousinly
feeling between him and Sidney. He was a second cousin of hers. She and
Monica are great friends, but it is a pity she does not marry. She is
not like Monica; she has not half such a self-reliant nature."
Randolph did not speak. He was wondering at the coincidence of his
coming down to this place to hear of the man who had stolen his fiancée
from him. And he alone—unless Monica knew her friend's secret—had by
mere accident discovered that Sidney had suffered as well as himself in
that transaction.
Aunt Dannie continued:
"I am interested in Sidney; she is a little different from most girls;
it comes of being chiefly associated with men. Her mother died when
she was five. She had a brother two years younger than herself. He was
in the Navy, and a rollicking sailor he was, but he died of fever a
few years ago. It was a great grief to the Admiral. She is straight
and blunt at times, and has no airs or graces, but she is not quite so
masculine as Monica."
Then the old lady rambled on about some of Monica's misdemeanours, and
Randolph hardly heeded her.
The sudden appearance of Chuckles, demanding his presence at the
sheep-shearing, made him change his company, and for a time his
thoughts.
Sidney, if he had only known it, was at the same time discussing him
with her father. Admiral Urquhart spent most of his afternoons on the
lower lawn by the river. Sidney established him there, with his pipe
and newspaper, with clockwork regularity directly luncheon was over. He
had his own chair, and Major Urquhart had his, but the Major was not a
slave to his afternoon nap as was the Admiral. He was a restless man
by nature, and generally had more on hand than he could possibly get
through. He seldom sat down till tea-time. It was half-past three now,
and in her white linen dress and cool shady hat, Sidney approached her
father with her work-basket under her arm.
"Now, dad, I'm ready if you are. The leading article first of all,
please, and then details after."
Admiral Urquhart turned over the sheet of the "Times" with alacrity.
There was nothing he enjoyed more than reading the paper to his
daughter and discussing the degeneracy of old England. But he paused
for a moment, paper in hand.
"A nice fellow, Neville is; very like his father, who was the most
ultra-conscientious beggar that I ever came across. But it was his own
undoing. He never did much in politics."
"I don't know anything about the Nevilles. Tell me about them."
Sidney settled herself with her work under the shady beech that grew
down so close, to the river. Her father responded:
"Charles Neville was a school chum of mine. He came into a nice little
property in Hampshire, and was member in the House for a good number
of years. He had talent and interest, and we expected him to do great
things; but he was one of those independent thinkers, and though he
made good speeches, he never secured a good office for himself under
his Government. This son of his is going the same way, I fear. He was
in the Army, and, I expect, might have got on; but on his father's
death, the constituents insisted that he should take his father's
seat, and Randolph chucked the Service. He was telling me about it
last night, and, upon my soul, I don't blame him. He was returned all
right, and was in Parliament for five years, but at the last election,
he retired. He was dead sick of the party discussions, and tricks,
and subterfuges. Told me a clean pair of hands was impossible if you
climbed the ladder. I don't agree with him, but, of course, things
are different from what they were. The class of member is different,
to begin with, and now this payment system has been started, the old
patriotic spirit will die out."
"What is he doing now? He looks too keen to be an idler."
"He is waiting for a job; has been promised a post of some importance
in India or the Colonies. I hope he'll get it. He's a strong man; too
conscientious for the present time."
"Oh, dad, don't! I hate to hear you talk so."
Sidney's grey eyes flashed fire.
"Do you think we're to follow the multitude, and to abjure all the
traditions of our race?"
"Why cast pearls to swine?" said the Admiral, "or take up pebbles with
a silver spoon? There are only two professions, my dear, where dirty
tricks don't prosper, and those are soldiering and sailoring."
"I'm sure every profession wants good clean-handed men in it," retorted
Sidney.
Then she laughed.
"It is too warm to argue, or I would suggest that the War Office and
the Admiralty have diplomatic ways sometimes. Mr. Neville looks more of
a soldier than anything else. But he's not so keen as he has been. He
speaks so indifferently of people and things in general."
"He classes himself amongst the failures in life," said the Admiral.
"That's what he said to me; but he's not the fellow to sit down under
it."
"I should hope not."
Sidney's lips curled a little, then mischief stole into her eyes.
"Let us hope Monnie will take him in hand, dad. I long that some
inferior man should come along and capture her proud heart. It would
be glorious to see her knuckle under and have to defer to her lord and
master. And he looks as if he would manage the woman he cared for."
"I think he has more grit than his father," said Admiral Urquhart,
puffing out a thin column of smoke and watching it ascend in the still
air.
"I'm waiting for your news," said Sidney. "We won't dissect Mr. Neville
too thoroughly."
So her father turned to his "Times;" but he was very comfortable, and
the atmosphere was a sleepy one. His voice began to waver, the paper
slipped from his fingers, and a gentle snore told Sidney that further
reading was over for the present. She dropped her work in her lap and
gazed dreamily over the water; shadows gathered and deepened in her
eyes. Then she sprang up and slipped quietly down some broad steps
close by. There was a light boat moored to the stone wall. With deft
fingers she loosened the rope, stepped in, and taking up the light pair
of oars, rowed gently away from the garden and down the river towards
the sea.
Then, alone at last, she raised her head with a passionate gesture.
"Oh, I can't bear it! I can't bear it! What is life to me now? It's
finished—absolutely done! There is nothing to hope for, nothing to wait
for! Nothing will ever come to me now!"
She went back in thought to the years that stretched behind her. One
figure, one personality, was prominent in them all. Archie Hughes
had been a playmate first, then a friend, then a lover. She and he
latterly had been separated by distance, but it had only made the
future brighter to her, for would it not bring them together? In all
she planned, Archie took a prominent part. She did not now seem able to
adjust her life without him. Never had she looked forward to the years
stretching away in front of her without a happy thrill, the certain
hope that she would have Archie to advise her, comfort her, and be her
stand-by.
Sidney was no modern young woman with an assurance and independence
of thought which made a single life appear so attractive. She had
grown-up amongst men who still held chivalrous ideas of women. She was
accustomed to little attentions from them, and perhaps queened it over
them rather more than was good for her.
"Oh," she moaned, as she pulled in her oars and let herself drift for
a little with the tide, bowing her head in her hands in abject misery,
"if it had been anyone but Archie! He must have tired of me. Perhaps I
showed him too much how I cared. And yet when he wished me good-bye, he
whispered, 'Good-bye, little wifie!' What can have happened to make him
change so?" She recalled his letters; but a pang went through her as
she remembered how few and far between they had been of late.
It was bitter to her to feel that he had flung her aside without a
word, without giving her any reason for doing so. "Perhaps," she
soliloquised, "he was tired of waiting for me. Men are not like women.
I tried his patience. But how secure I felt! How implicitly I trusted
him!"
Then she sat up and pushed her hair off her forehead, and the proud
little poise of her head told that there was still some spirit left in
her.
"I must have pluck and courage. Others have gone through as bad a time
as I am having now. Some women seem to be happy without husbands or
lovers. Monica is. She never seems to have a thought about them, except
to like a friendly chat with them occasionally. I must rise above my
trouble. I will not brood over it. I shall never be tempted to leave
dad now. I must learn to look at life differently. God will help me. My
life belongs to Him, and He has arranged it so. I will try not to pity
myself any more. If only I could forget!"
She caught up her oars again and swung the boat round. Rowing back
against the tide was hard work, but the exercise to muscle did her
good, and the desire to battle with difficulty was realised.
When she brought the boat back to its mooring-place she saw that
visitors were with her father. A young fellow, seeing her, sprang
towards her.
He was a curly-haired merry-faced boy of twenty-two, a special crony of
hers.
"It isn't often the mother and I drive out paying calls," he said, as
he assisted in mooring the boat to her anchor, "but I was as dull as
ditch-water. When I'm like that my mind always veers to you! Buck me
up. I'm as flabby as a codfish. This heat, and life as it is seen from
our house, is pretty deadly, I can tell you."
"You're too idle," Sidney said, looking at him with laughing eyes. "Hot
weather and idleness naturally sap all your energy and spirit out of
you. But if you had come down early this morning and told me you would
take me for a day's sail in your new boat, we should both be returning
now, enormously hungry, and ready for anything."
"Oh, why didn't I! But this scandalous little agent keeps me pottering
over fusty musty documents on purpose to annoy. And the governor had a
bad night, and so, of course, he insisted upon an extra lot of business
being done; and first I had to be shut up with Dobbs, and then I had to
be shut up with him, telling him every item of our conversation. The
doctor is an old fool; he won't let Dobbs come near the governor; as if
my bungling recital isn't fifty times worse than the genuine article!
I assure you I wasn't done till one o'clock, and then I don't know who
was exhausted most, the governor or myself."
Sidney went up the garden and greeted a tall, handsome woman who was
talking to her father.
It was said in the neighbourhood that the de Cressiers were the
proudest people in the county. They had lived at Thanning Towers since
the Norman Conquest, and had refused several peerages, for their
menkind had been of great service to their country and king. The
present Henry de Cressiers had been stricken down a year ago in the
hunting field, and he lay a helpless paralysed invalid; but his voice
was left him, and his brain, though the latter was enfeebled. The
eldest son and heir had been drowned out in America in that same year,
and Austin, the second one, had been summoned home from the university
to manage his father's estate and try to keep an eye upon a very
unsatisfactory agent, whom Mr. de Cressiers would not discharge. Nearly
all the de Cressiers were good-looking, dark men, with strong wills and
stern self-repressed natures.
Austin often declared he must be a changeling, for his pride was nil,
and he was one of the sunniest and most warm-hearted of mortals. As a
small boy he had been devoted to Sidney, who was a distant cousin, her
mother having been a de Cressiers, and his devotion was still as great.
Mrs. de Cressiers kissed Sidney affectionately. There were few people
round who did not like the girl. Perhaps her attraction was chiefly
in her intense interest in everyone and their affairs. Her nature was
essentially a sympathetic one.
"My dear Sidney, I want to borrow you for a couple of nights. We have
two big dinners on, and I want your help at them."
Sidney made a little grimace.
"Eating is such a farce this hot weather. Why don't you turn them into
moonlight suppers up the river?"
Austin chuckled. His mother looked scandalised.
And then Sidney laid her hand caressingly on her arm.
"Of course I will come, if dad thinks he can spare me. Is he to be
asked?"
"I have asked him already. He won't come. We must have your uncle."
"You won't get him, I am afraid. He is going up the river for a week's
fishing to-morrow."
"I want another man badly."
"Monnie has a cousin staying with her. Ask him."
"But then I should have to include her, and I don't want another woman."
"I'll stay at home. Why did you ask me?"
"Sidney, don't be silly. I really need you."
A little pucker of Mrs. de Cressiers' eyebrows made Sidney drop her
bantering tone.
"Monnie won't dine with you. She hates a lot of people, and she'll be
very glad to get rid of her visitor. Just explain it to her; she will
understand."
"But what is her cousin like?"
"Is he county or cockney?" interrupted Austin. "Has he a long enough
pedigree to eat salt with us, and has he an immaculate dress-suit?"
"He is one of the Nevilles," said Sidney, shaking her head reprovingly
at him, for one of his mother's failings was a lack of humour. "Dad
will tell you his pedigree. He's an ex-M.P. and a failure."
"That he's not!" contradicted the Admiral with warmth. "He is too good
for his party, that's what he is. Take him and be thankful, Clarice.
But I doubt if he'll go to you; he told me he wanted to rusticate."
"I'll drop in on Monica on my way home," said Mrs. de Cressiers.
"And I'm going to plant myself firmly here till bedtime," said Austin.
His mother looked at him reproachfully, and he added heartily: "I
really ought to be canonised, mother, so don't overdo it. Think of my
busy day, and let me have a little recreation now. I really will come
home before the small hours of the morning."
Mrs. de Cressiers rose to go. Her son accompanied her to the gate,
where the carriage was waiting; then he came back joyously to Sidney.
"Now, Sid, what shall we do?"
"Go and tell them to bring down tea to us here," said Sidney, sitting
down by her father's side and taking up her work again.
He made a grimace, but obeyed. Admiral Urquhart looked after his
retreating figure with twinkling eyes.
"If he were a few years older I should take myself off, my dear. As it
is, I don't intend to move. He'll never make a good landlord, and his
mother knows it. When he comes into the property he'll spend all his
father has saved."
"Now, dad, you shall not abuse him. He is a dear boy, and will be more
popular than any former de Cressiers. They are so alarming as a rule."
Austin returned and flung himself into a hammock under the trees.
"The mother is as keen as mustard on these dinners. They are to
introduce Sir Walter Rame as possible member."
"I thought he refused to be canvassed," Sidney said.
"He is in doubtful mind. Our first dinner is for the cream of Thanning
Dale, our second for the ordinary. Now, which is this new arrival? The
mother will sort him with her eye in a twinkling."
"I don't think he is ordinary," said Sidney slowly.
"I wish you would enlighten me as to this Monica Pembroke. She has only
appeared since I left home. Everyone seems to know her, but I don't."
"I suppose not; but she used to live at Crawford Manor, only after
her parents' death she lost all her money and left the neighbourhood.
She had one brother abroad in New Zealand. He wrote to her, telling
her his wife was dead, and he wanted to come home. He said he would
take a farm in England if she would join him. And she worked hard at
an agricultural college and was full of it, and then on his way home,
her brother died, and a small imp of a boy arrived alone. Monnie has,
of course, adopted him, has put her brother's money into a farm, as
he wished, and means to bring up the imp to work it. Meanwhile, she's
master, and is making a huge success of it. She's a dear. She succeeds
in everything she puts her hand to. I wish I had half her energy and
capability."
"What would you do with it?"
Sidney's eyes grew wistful.
"I should like to be of use to my generation," she said.
"Be content with being useful to your old father and uncle," said the
Admiral. "I hate these rampaging public women, and pray you may never
be one of them."
"I don't care a button for my generation," said Austin—"wish I did. I
loathed all the mangy chaps at Oxford. There were a few who were rather
decent chaps, but I would always rather people were useful to me than
the other way about. I say, Sid, will you come up Rock Beacon with me
after tea? It will be cool enough for a climb. You see how your society
is beginning to invigorate me!"
"Yes; I am longing for bracing air. We'll go."
They started when tea was over. It was not the first time they had
climbed the Beacon together. It lay about a mile from them, and as they
went, Austin plunged into confidences about his home and the work that
was so distasteful to him.
"You understand," he said; "I've no one else to grouse to. If I was
given a free hand I would work from morning to night and be as happy
as a sand-boy, but I have to see all kinds of inane things being done.
I know Dobbs is a rogue, and is an adept at cunning and lining his own
nest, but the mother implores me to keep worries from the governor, and
he, poor chap, thinks that Dobbs is an angel of goodness, and tells me
that I'm not to do a thing unless he agrees. I'd chuck it all to-morrow
except for the mother. I'm wasting my days, and doing no good."
"What good would you be doing if you weren't at home!"
Austin looked at Sidney's grave face and laughed.
"I'd be storing honey like the busy bees: imbibing knowledge and having
a good time generally. No, I wouldn't! It was a mistake going to
Oxford. I'm not a scholar. I want to travel. The de Cressiers are as
narrow as—as—give me an apt simile!—A thread of silk! I want my mind
broadened."
"You ought to have had a profession."
"It's the eldest son's role to be in the Service—a very stupid
arrangement, for he never stays there long."
"I don't think it is wise to grumble at what you're doing now, for it
is work. You must be a check on Dobbs, and you can't deny that you're a
pleasure and comfort to your parents."
"Oh, Sid, don't be a stuffy prig!"
"Well, don't ask for my opinion then."
"Did I?"
"You invited it! Of course, you're very young, and you think that life
ought to be your servant. You will discover that it may be your master."
"A de Cressiers is never mastered by fate!" His merry eyes flashed
fire; then he gave a little chuckle. "Didn't I say that like my mother!
I believe, after all, I've got the same pride of race at the bottom of
my heart."
There was a little silence between them; then he said:
"Sid, you are changed. What has happened? Has life mastered you?"
Sidney laughed, but her laugh had lost its merry ring.
"I am climbing," she said, "and we won't philosophise any more. You
know what I think about idle men. And I want you to have high ideals,
Austin, not low selfish ones."
Heather and bracken were now under their feet; the wind came over from
the ocean and fanned their faces. Soon they left the heather below
them, and short turf with grey blocks of stone lay before them. Sidney
presently spied a man's figure in front of them. He was just gaining
the summit.
"Who is that? Some tourist? He is not a shepherd or anyone of our
parts."
"What dogged shoulders! And what a pace! Come, Sid, buck up! We're
awfully slack."
"We aren't climbing for a wager. Let us look back. I don't know why I
feel inclined to moralise to-day, but I do."
"Oh, let me do it for you! I know the style. As we look back on the
path of our feet, dear friend, we see here a picture of our life's
journey. When we come to the top of the hill of life we shall see how
small the things now look that once seemed so great—our all in all. As
we—"
"Be quiet, Austin. I want to enjoy the view."
Sidney was gazing out towards the ocean which lay before them in the
distance. The land below them, with its shining valleys and winding
river, its wooded hills, and the cluster of cottages dotted here and
there round a turreted church tower, or spire, presented a fair picture
of English country.
Austin threw himself upon the ground to rest. His eyes were fixed on
Sidney's slim upright young figure.
"I wonder some fellow has not stepped in and laid siege to your heart,"
he remarked meditatively. "I always thought that Hughes would be the
lucky chap. You don't mind my mentioning it. He has got tied up now,
hasn't he?"
"I believe he has," Sidney answered quietly. "Now let us finish our
climb."
They started again, and in another ten minutes were at the top of the
Beacon. There, leaning against a pile of rocks, the foundation for many
a bonfire, was Randolph Neville.