"I cannot get this skirt to hang as Lady Edith's did," said Sarah
Fox-Wilton discontentedly.
"Spend twenty guineas on it, my dear, as Lady Edith did on hers, and
it'll be all right," said a mocking voice.
Sarah frowned. She went on pinning and adjusting a serge skirt in the
making, which hung on the dummy before her. "Oh, we all know what _you_
would like to spend on your dress, Hester!" she said angrily, but
indistinctly, as her mouth was full of pins.
"Because really nice frocks are not to be had any other way," said Hester
coolly. "You pay for them--and you get them. But as for supposing you can
copy Lady Edith's frocks for nothing, why, of course you can't, and you
don't!"
"If I had ever so much money," said Sarah severely, "I shouldn't think it
_right_ to spend what Lady Edith does on her dress."
"Oh, wouldn't you!" said Hester with a laugh and a yawn. "Just give _me_
the chance--that's all!" Then she turned her head--"Lulu!--you mustn't
eat any more toffy!"--and she flung out a mischievous hand and captured a
box that was lying on the table, before a girl, who was sitting near it
with a book, could abstract from it another square of toffy.
"Give it me!" said Lulu, springing up, and making for her assailant.
Hester laughingly resisted, and they wrestled for the box a little, till
Hester suddenly let it go.
"Take it then--and good luck to you! I wouldn't spoil my teeth and my
complexion as you do--not for tons of sweets. Hullo!"--the speaker sprang
up--"the rain's over, and it's quite a decent evening. I shall go out for
a run and take Roddy."
"Then I shall have to come too," said Sarah, getting up from her knees,
and pulling down her sleeves. "I don't want to at all, but mamma says you
are not to go out alone."
Hester flushed. "Do you think I can't escape you all--if I want to? Of
course I can. What geese you are! None of you will ever prevent me from
doing what I want to do. It really would save such a lot of time and
trouble if you would get that into your heads."
"Where do you mean to go?" said Sarah stolidly, without taking any notice
of her remark. "Because if you'll go to the village, I can get some
binding I want."
"I have no intention whatever of going out for your convenience, thank
you!" said Hester, laughing angrily. "I am going into the garden, and you
can come or not as you please." She opened the French window as she spoke
and stepped out.
"Has mamma heard from that Paris woman yet?" asked Lulu, looking after
Hester, who was now standing on the lawn playing with a terrier-puppy she
had lately brought home as a gift from a neighbouring farmer--much to
Lady Fox-Wilton's annoyance. Hester had an absurd way of making friends
with the most unsuitable people, and they generally gave her things.
"The Rector expected to hear to-day."
"I don't believe she'll go," said Lulu, beginning again on the toffy. She
was a heavily made girl of twenty, with sleepy eyes and a dull
complexion. She took little exercise, was inordinately fond of sweet
things, helped her mother a little in the housekeeping, and was
intimately acquainted with all the gossip of the village. So was Sarah;
but her tongue was sharper than Lulu's, and her brain quicker. She was
therefore the unpopular sister; while for Lulu her acquaintances felt
rather a contemptuous indulgence. Sarah had had various love affairs,
which had come to nothing, and was regarded as "disappointed" in the
village. Lulu was not interested in young men, and had never yet been
observed to take any trouble to capture one. So long as she was allowed
sufficient sixpenny novels to read, and enough sweet things to eat, she
was good-humoured enough, and could do kind things on occasion for her
friends. Sarah was rarely known to do kind things; but as her woman
friends were much more afraid of her than of Lulu, she was in general
treated with much more consideration.
Still it could not be said that Lady Fox-Wilton was to be regarded as
blessed in either of her two elder daughters. And her sons were quite
frankly a trouble to her. The eldest, Sarah's junior by a year and a
half, had just left Oxford suddenly and ignominiously, without a degree,
and was for the most part loafing at home. The youngest, a boy of
fifteen, was supposed to be delicate, and had been removed from school by
his mother on that account. He too was at home, and a tutor who lodged in
the village was understood to be preparing him for the Civil Service. He
was a pettish and spiteful lad, and between him and Hester existed
perpetual feud.
But indeed Hester was at war with each member of the family in turn;
sometimes with all of them together. And it had been so from her earliest
childhood. They all felt instinctively that she despised them and the
slow, lethargic temperament which was in most of them an inheritance from
a father cast in one of the typical moulds of British Philistinism. There
was some insurmountable difference between her and them. In the first
place, her beauty set her apart from the rest; and, beside her, Sarah's
sharp profile, and round apple-red cheeks, or Lulu's clumsiness, made,
as both girls were secretly aware, an even worse impression than they
need have made. And in the next, there were in her strains of romantic,
egotistic ability to which nothing in them corresponded. She could
play, she could draw--brilliantly, spontaneously--up to a certain
point, when neither Sarah nor Lulu could stumble through a "piece," or
produce anything capable of giving the smallest satisfaction to their
drawing-master. She could chatter, on occasion, so that a room full of
people instinctively listened. And she had read voraciously, especially
poetry, where they were content with picture-papers and the mildest of
novels. Hester brought nothing to perfection; but there could be no
question that in every aspect of life she was constantly making, in
comparison with her family, a dashing or dazzling effect all the more
striking because of the unattractive _milieu_ out of which it sprang.
The presence of Lady Fox-Wilton, in particular, was needed to show these
contrasts at their sharpest.
As Hester still raced about the lawn, with the dog, that lady came round
the corner of the house, with a shawl over her head, and beckoned to the
girl at play. Hester carelessly looked round.
"What do you want, mamma!"
"Come here. I want to speak to you."
Hester ran across the lawn in wide curves, playing with the dog, and
arrived laughing and breathless beside the newcomer. Edith Fox-Wilton was
a small, withered woman, in a widow's cap, who more than looked her age,
which was not far from fifty. She had been pretty in youth, and her blue
eyes were still appealing, especially when she smiled. But she did not
smile often, and she had the expression of one perpetually protesting
against all the agencies--this-worldly or other-worldly--which had the
control of her existence. Her weak fretfulness depressed all the
vitalities near her; only Hester resisted.
At the moment, however, her look was not so much fretful as excited. Her
thin cheeks were much redder than usual; she constantly looked round as
though expecting or dreading some interruption; and in a hand which shook
she held a just opened letter.
"What is the matter, mamma?" asked Hester, a sharp challenging note in
her gay voice. "You look as though something had happened."
"Nothing has happened," said Lady Fox-Wilton hastily. "And I wish you
wouldn't romp with the puppy in that way, Hester. He's always doing some
damage to the flowers. I'm going out, and I wished to give you a message
from the Rector."
"Is that from Uncle Richard?" said Hester, glancing carelessly at the
letter.
Lady Fox-Wilton crushed it in her hand.
"I told you it was. Why do you ask unnecessary questions? The Rector has
heard from the lady in Paris and he wants you to go as soon as possible.
Either he or Aunt Alice will take you over. We have had the best possible
recommendations. You will enjoy it very much. They can get you the best
lessons in Paris, they say. They know everybody."
"H'm--" said Hester, reflectively. Then she looked at the speaker. "Do
you know, mamma, that I happen to be eighteen this week?"
"Don't be silly, Hester! Of course I know!"
"Well, you see, it's rather important. Am I or am I not obliged to do
what you and Mr. Meynell want me to do? I believe I'm not obliged.
Anyway, I don't quite see how you're going to make me do it, if I don't
want to."
"You can behave like a naughty, troublesome girl, without any proper
feeling, of course!--if you choose," said Lady Fox-Wilton warmly. "But I
trust you will do nothing of the kind. We are your guardians till you are
twenty-one; and you ought to be guided by us."
"Well, of course I can't be engaged to Stephen, if you say I
mayn't--because there's Stephen to back you up. But if Queen Victoria
could be a queen at eighteen, I don't see why _I_ shouldn't be fit at
eighteen to manage my own wretched affairs! Anyway--I--am--not--going to
Paris--unless I want to go. So I don't advise you to promise that lady
just yet. If she keeps her room empty, you might have to pay for it!"
"Hester, you are really the plague of my life!" cried Lady Fox-Wilton
helplessly. "I try to keep you--the Rector tries to keep you--out of
mischief that any girl ought to be ashamed--of--and--"
"What mischief?" demanded Hester peremptorily. "Don't run into
generalities, mamma."
"You know very well what mischief I mean!"
"I know that you think I shall be running away some day with Sir Philip
Meryon!" said the girl, laughing, but with a fierce gleam in her eyes. "I
have no intention at present of doing anything of the kind. But if
anything could make me do it, it would be the foolish way in which you
and the others behave. I don't believe the Rector ever told you to set
Sarah and Lulu on to dog me wherever I go!"
"He told me you were not to be allowed to meet that man. You won't
promise me not to meet him--and what can we do? You know what the Rector
feels. You know that he spent an hour yesterday arguing and pleading with
you, when he had been up most of the night preparing papers for this
commission. What's the matter with you, Hester? Are you quite in your
right senses?"
The girl had clasped her hands behind her back, and stood with one foot
forward, "on tiptoe for a flight," her young figure and radiant look
expressing the hot will which possessed her. At the mention of Meynell's
name she clearly hesitated, a frown crossed her eyes, her lip twitched.
Then she said with vehemence:
"Who asked him to spend all that time? Not I. Let him leave me alone. He
does not care twopence about me, and it's mere humbug and hypocrisy all
his pretending to care."
"And your Aunt Alice--who's always worshipped you? Why, she's just
miserable about you!"
"She says exactly what you and Uncle Richard tell her to say--she always
has! Well, I don't know about Paris, mamma--I'll think about it. If you
and Sarah will just let me be, I'll take Roddy for a stroll, and then
after tea I'll tell you what I'll do." And, turning, she beckoned to a
fine collie lazily sunning himself on the drawing-room steps, and he
sprang up, gambolling about her.
"Promise you won't meet that man!" said Lady Fox-Wilton, in agitation.
"I believe he went up to Scotland to-day," said Hester, laughing. "I
haven't the smallest intention of meeting him. Come, Roddy!"
The eyes of the two met--in those of the older woman, impatience, a kind
of cold exasperation; in Hester's, defiance. It was a strange look to
pass between a mother and daughter. Hester turned away, and then paused:
"Oh, by the way, mamma--where are you going?"
Lady Fox-Wilton hesitated unaccountedly.
"Why do you ask?"
Hester opened her eyes.
"Why shouldn't I? Is it a secret? I wanted you to tell Aunt Alice
something if you were going that way."
"Mamma!"
Sarah suddenly emerged from the schoolroom window and ran excitedly
across the lawn toward her mother. "Have you heard this extraordinary
story about John Broad's mother? Tibbald has just told me."
Tibbald was the butler, and Sarah's special friend and crony.
"What story? I wish you wouldn't allow Tibbald to gossip as you do,
Sarah!" said Lady Fox-Wilton angrily. But a close observer might have
seen that her bright colour precipitately left her.
"Why, what harm was it?" cried Sarah, wondering. "He told me, because it
seems Mrs. Sabin used to be a servant of ours long ago. Do you remember
her, mamma?"
Again Lady Fox-Wilton stumbled perceptibly in replying. She turned away,
and, with the garden scissors at her waist, she began vaguely to clip off
some dead roses from some bushes near her.
"We once had a maid--for a very short time," she said over her shoulder,
"who married some one of that name. What about her?"
"Well, she came back from America two days ago. John Broad thought
she was dead. He hadn't heard of her for four years. But she turned
up on Tuesday--the queerest old woman! She sat there boasting and
chattering--in a silk dress with gold bracelets!--they thought she was
going to make all their fortunes. But she must just have been off her
head, for she died last night in her sleep, and there were only a few
shillings on her--not enough to bury her. There's to be an inquest this
evening, they say."
"Don't spend all your time chattering in the village, Sarah," said Lady
Fox-Wilton severely, as, still with her back toward the girls, she moved
away in the direction of the drive. "You'll never get your dress done if
you do."
"I say--what's wrong with mamma?" said Hester coolly, looking after her.
"I suppose Bertie's been getting into some fresh bother."
Bertie was the elder brother, who was Sarah's special friend in the
family. So that she at once resented the remark.
"If she's worrying about anything, she's worrying about you," said Sarah
tartly, as she went back to the house. "We all know that."
Hester, with her dog beside her, went strolling leisurely through the
village street, past Miss Puttenham's cottage on the one hand and the
Rectory gates on the other, making for a footpath that led from the back
of the village, through fields and woods, on to the Chase.
As she passed beneath the limes that overhung Miss Puttenham's railings
she perceived some distant figures in the garden. Uncle Richard, with
mamma and Aunt Alice on either side of him. They were walking up and down
in close conversation; or, rather, Uncle Richard seemed to be talking
earnestly, addressing now one lady, now the other.
What a confabulation! No doubt all about her own crimes and
misdemeanours. What fun to creep into the garden and play the spy.
"That's what Sarah would do--but I'm not Sarah." Instead, she turned into
the footpath and began to mount toward the borders of the Chase. It was a
brilliant September afternoon, and the new grass in the shorn hayfields
was vividly green. In front rose the purple hills of the Chase, while
to the left, on the far borders of the village, the wheels and chimneys
of two collieries stood black against a blaze of sun. But the sharp
emphasis of light and colour, which in general would have set her own
spirits racing, was for a while lost on Hester. As soon as she was out
of sight of the village, or any passers-by, her aspect changed. Once or
twice she caught her breath in what was very like a sob; and there were
moments when she could only save herself from the disgrace of tears by a
wild burst of racing with Roddy. It was evident that her brush with Lady
Fox-Wilton had not left her as callous as she seemed.
Presently the path forsook the open fields and entered a plantation of
dark and closely woven trees where the track was almost lost in the
magnificence of the bracken. Beyond this, a short climb of broken slopes,
and Hester was out on the bare heath, with the moorland wind blowing
about her.
She sat down on a bank beneath a birch tree, twisted and tortured out of
shape by the northwesterly gales that swept the heath in winter. All
round her a pink and purple wilderness, with oases of vivid green and
swaying grass. Nothing in sight but a keeper's hut, and some grouse butts
far away; an ugly red building on the horizon, in the very middle of the
heath, the Markborough isolation hospital; and round the edge of the vast
undulating plateau in all directions the faint smoke of the colliery
chimneys. But the colour of the heath was the marvel. The world seemed
stained in crimson, and in every shade and combination of it. Close at
hand the reds and pinks were diapered with green and gold as the
bilberries and the grasses ran in and out of the heather; but on every
side the crimson spread and billowed to the horizon, covering the hollows
and hills of the Chase, absorbing all lesser tones into itself. After the
rain of the morning, the contours of the heath, the distances of the
plain, were unnaturally clear; and as the sunshine, the high air, the
freshly moving wind, played upon Hester, her irritation passed away in a
sensuous delight.
"Why should I let them worry me? I won't! I am here! I am alive! I am
only eighteen! I am going to manage my life for myself--and get out of
this coil. Now let me think!"
She slid downward among the heather, her face propped on her hands.
Close beneath her eyes was an exquisite tuft of pink bell-heather
intergrown with bunchberries. And while a whole vague series of thoughts
and memories passed through her mind she was still vividly conscious of
the pink bells, the small bright leaves. Sensation in her was
exceptionally keen, whether for pleasure or pain. She knew it and had
often coolly asked herself whether it meant that she would wear out--life
and brain--quicker than other people--burn faster to the socket. So much
the better if it did.
What was it she really wanted?--what did she mean to do? Proudly, she
refused to admit any other will in the matter. The thought of Meynell,
indeed, touched some very sore and bitter chords in her mind, but it did
not melt her. She knew very well that she had nothing to blame her
guardian for; that year after year from her childhood up she had repelled
and resisted him, that her whole relation to him had been one of
stubbornness and caprice. Well, there were reasons for it; she was not
going to repent or change.
Of late his conduct with regard to Stephen's proposal had stirred in her
a kind of rage. It was not that she imagined herself in love with
Stephen; but she had chosen to be engaged to him; and that any one should
affect to control her in such a matter, should definitely and decidedly
cross her will, was intolerable to her wild pride. If Stephen had
rebelled with her, she might have fallen fiercely in love with him--for a
month. But he had submitted--though it was tolerably plain what it had
cost him; and all her careless liking for him, the fruit of years of very
poorly requited devotion on his part, seemed to have disappeared in a
night.
Why shouldn't she be engaged at seventeen--within two months of eighteen,
in fact? Heaps of girls were. It was mere tyranny and nonsense. She
recalled her interview with Meynell, in which the Rector had roused in
her a new and deeper antagonism than any she had yet felt toward his
efforts to control her. It was as though he did not altogether believe in
his own arguments; as though there were something behind which she could
not get at. But if there were something behind, she had a right to know
it. She had a right to know the meaning of her father's extraordinary
letter to Meynell--the letter attached to his will--in which she had been
singled out by name as needing the special tutelage of the Rector. So far
as the Rector's guardianship of the other children was concerned, it was
almost a nominal thing. Another guardian had been named in the will, Lady
Fox-Wilton's elder brother, and practically everything that concerned the
other children was settled by him, in concert with the mother. The Rector
never interfered, was never indeed consulted, except on purely formal
matters of business. But for her--for her only--Uncle Richard--as she
always called her guardian--was to be the master--the tyrant!--close at
hand. For so Sir Ralph had laid it down, in his testamentary letter--"I
commend Hester to your special care. And in any difficulties that may
arise in connection with her, I beg for our old friendship's sake that
you will give my wife the help and counsel that she will certainly need.
She knows it is my wish she should rely entirely upon you."
Why had he written such a letter? Since Sir Ralph's death, two years
before, the story of it had got about; and the injustice, as she held, of
her position under it had sunk deep into the girl's passionate sense, and
made her infinitely more difficult to manage than she had been before. Of
course everybody said it was because of her temper; because of the
constant friction between her and her father; people believed the hateful
things he used sometimes to say about her.
Nor was it only the guardianship--there was the money too! Provision made
for all of them by name--and nothing for her! She had made Sarah show her
a copy of the will--she knew! Nothing indeed for any of them--the girls
at least--till Lady Fox-Wilton's death, or till they married; but nothing
for _her_, under any circumstances.
"Well, why should there be?" Sarah had said. "You know you'll have Aunt
Alice's money. _She_ won't leave a penny to us."
All very well! The money didn't matter! But to be singled out and held up
to scorn by your own father!
A flood of bitterness surged in the girl's heart. And then they expected
her to be a meek and obedient drudge to her mother and her elder sisters;
to open her mouth and take what they chose to send her. She might
not be engaged to Stephen--for two years at any rate; and yet if she
amused herself with any one else she was to be packed off to Paris, to
some house of detention or other, under lock and key.
Her cheeks flamed. When had she first come across Philip Meryon? Only the
day before that evening when Uncle Richard had found her fishing with
him. She knew very well that he was badly spoken of; trust Upcote for
gossip and scandal! Well, so was she!--they were outcasts together.
Anyway, he was more amusing to walk and talk with than her sisters, or
the dreadful young men they sometimes gathered about them. Why shouldn't
she walk and talk with him? As if she couldn't protect herself! As if she
didn't know a great deal more of the world than her stupid sisters did,
who never read a book or thought of anything beyond the tittle-tattle
of their few local friends.
But Philip Meryon had read lots of books, and liked those that she liked.
He could read French too, as she could. And he had lent her some French
books, which she had read eagerly--at night or in the woods--wherever
she could be alone and unobserved. Why shouldn't she read them? There was
one among them--"Julie de Trecoeur," by Octave Feuillet, that still
seemed running, like a great emotion, through her veins. The tragic
leap of Julie, as she sets her horse to the cliff and thunders to her
death, was always in Hester's mind. It was so that she herself would like
to die, spurning submission and patience, and all the humdrum virtues.
She raised herself, and the dog beside her sprang up and barked. The sun
was just dropping below a bank of fiery cloud, and a dazzling and garish
light lay on the red undulations of the heath. As she stood up she
suddenly perceived the figure of a man about a hundred yards off emerging
from a gully--a sportsman with his gun over his shoulder. He had
apparently just parted from the group with whom he had been shooting, who
were disappearing in another direction.
Philip Meryon! Now she remembered! He and two other men had taken the
shooting on this side of the Chase. Honestly she had forgotten it;
honestly her impression was that he had gone to Scotland. But of course
none of her family would ever believe it. They would insist she had
simply come out to meet him.
What was she to do? She was in a white serge dress, and with Roddy
beside her, on that bare heath, she was an object easily recognized.
Indeed, as she hesitated, she heard a call in the distance, and saw that
Meryon was waving to her and quickening his pace. Instantly, with a
leaping pulse, she turned and fled, Roddy beside her, barking his
loudest. She ran along the rough track of the heath, as though some vague
wild terror had been breathed into her by the local Pan. She ran fleet
and light as air--famous as a runner from her childhood. But the man
behind her had once been a fine athlete, and he gained upon her fast.
Soon she could hear his laugh behind her, his entreaties to her to stop.
She had reached the edge of the heath, where the wood began, and the path
ran winding down it, with banks of thick fern on either hand.
If it had not been for the dog she could have slipped under the close-set
trees, whence the light had already departed, and lain close among the
fern. But with Roddy--no chance! She suddenly turned toward her pursuer,
and with her hand on the dog's neck awaited him.
"Caught--caught!--by Jove!" cried Philip Meryon, plunging to her through
the fern. "Now what do you deserve--for running away?"
"A _gentleman_ would not have tried to catch me!" she said haughtily, as
she faced him, with dilating nostrils.
"Take care!--don't be rude to me--I shall take my revenge!"
As he spoke, Meryon was fairly dazzled, intoxicated by the beauty of the
vision before him--this angry wood-nymph, half-vanishing like another
Daphne into the deep fern amid which she stood. But at the same time he
was puzzled--and checked--by her expression. There was no mere
provocation in it, no defiance that covers a yielding mind; but, rather,
an energy of will, a concentrated force, that held at bay a man whose
will was the mere register of his impulses.
"You forget," said Hester coolly, "that I have Roddy with me." And as she
spoke the dog couching at her side poked up his slender nose through the
fern and growled. He did not like Sir Philip.
Meryon looked upon her smiling--his hands on his sides. "Do you mean to
say that when you ran you did not mean me to follow?"
"On the contrary, if I ran, it was evidently because I wished to get
away."
"Then you were very ungrateful and unkind; for I have at this moment in
my pocket a book you asked me to get for you. That's what I get for
trying to please you."
"I don't remember that I asked you to get anything for me."
"Well, you said you would like to see some of George Sand's novels,
which--for me--was just the same. So when I went to London yesterday I
managed to borrow it, and there it is." He pointed triumphantly to a
yellow-paper-bound volume sticking out of his coat pocket. "Of course you
know George Sand is a sort of old Johnnie now; nobody reads her. But
that's your affair. Will you have it?" He offered it.
The excitement, the wild flush in the girl's face, had subsided. She
looked at the book, and at the man holding it out.
"What is it?" She stooped to read the title--"Mauprat." "What's it
about?"
"Some nonsense about a cad tamed by a sentimental young woman." He
shrugged his shoulders, "I tried to read it, and couldn't. But they say
it's one of her best. If you want it, there it is."
She took it reluctantly, and moved on along the downward path, he
following, and the dog beside them.
"Have you read the other book?" he asked her.
"'Julie de Trécoeur?' Yes."
"What did you think of it?"
"It was magnificent!" she said shortly, with a quickened breath. "I shall
get some more by that man."
"Well, you'd better be careful!" He laughed. "I've got some others, but I
didn't want to recommend them to you. Lady Fox-Wilton wouldn't exactly
approve."
"I don't tell mamma what I read." The girl's young voice sounded sharply
beside him in the warm autumnal dusk. "But if you lent me anything you
oughtn't to lend me I would never speak to you again!"
Meryon gave a low whistle.
"My goodness! I shall have to mind my p's and q's. I don't know that I
ought to have lent you 'Julie de Trécoeur' if it comes to that."
"Why not?" Hester turned her great, astonished eyes upon him. "One might
as well not read Byron as not read that."
"Hm--I don't suppose you read _all_ Byron."
He threw her an audacious look.
"As much as I want to," she said, indifferently. "Why aren't you in
Scotland?"
"Because I had to go to London instead. Beastly nuisance! But there was
some business I couldn't get out of."
"Debts?" she said, raising her eyebrows.
The self-possession of this child of eighteen was really amazing. Not a
trace in her manner of timidity or tremor. In spite of her flight from
him he could not flatter himself that he had made any impression on her
nerves. Whereas her beauty and her provocative way were beginning to tell
deeply on his own.
"Well, I daresay!" His laugh was as frank as her question. "I'm generally
in straits."
"Why don't you do some work, and earn money?" she asked him, frowning.
"Frankly--because I dislike work."
"Then why did you write a play?"
"Because it amused me. But if it had been acted and made money, and I had
had to write another, that would have been work; and I should probably
have loathed it."
"That I don't believe," she said, shaking her head. "One can always do
what succeeds. It's like pouring petrol into the motor."
"So you think I'm only idle because I'm a failure?" he asked her, his
tone betraying a certain irritation.
"I wonder why you _are_ idle--and why you _are_ a failure?" she said,
turning upon him a pair of considering eyes.
"Take care, Mademoiselle!" he said, gasping a little. "I don't know why
you allow yourself these _franchises_!"
"Because I am interested in you--rather. Why won't the neighbourhood call
on you--why do you have disreputable people to stay with you? It is all
so foolish!" she said, with childish and yet passionate emphasis. "You
needn't do it!"
Meryon had turned rather white.
"When you grow a little older," he said severely, "you will know better
than to believe all the gossip you hear. I choose the friends that suit
me--and the life too. My friends are mostly artists and actors--they are
quite content to be excluded from Upcote society--so am I. I don't gather
you are altogether in love with it yourself."
He looked at her mockingly.
"If it were only Sarah--or mamma," she said doubtfully.
"You mean I suppose that Meynell--your precious guardian--my very amiable
cousin--allows himself to make all kinds of impertinent statements about
me. Well, you'll understand some day that there's no such bad judge of
men as a clergyman. When he's not ignorant he's prejudiced--and when he's
not prejudiced he's ignorant."
A sudden remorse swelled in Hester's mind.
"He's not prejudiced!--he's not ignorant! How strange that you and he
should be cousins!"
"Well, we do happen to be cousins. And I've no doubt that you would
like me to resemble him. Unfortunately I can't accommodate you. If I
am to take a relation for a model, I prefer a very different sort of
person--the man from whom I inherited Sandford. But Richard, I am sure,
never approved of him either."
"Who was he?--I never heard of him." And, with the words, Hester
carelessly turned her head to look at a squirrel that had run across the
glade and was now peeping at the pair from the first fork of an oak tree.
"My uncle? Well, he was an awfully fine fellow--whatever Meynell may say.
If the Abbey wasn't taboo, I could show you a portrait of him there--by a
Frenchman--that's a superb thing. He was the best fencer in England--and
one of the best shots. He had a beautiful voice--he could write--he could
do anything he pleased. Of course he got into scrapes--such men do--and
if Richard ever talked to you about him, of course he'd crab him. All the
same, if one must be like one's relations--which is, of course, quite
unnecessary--I should prefer to take after Neville than after Richard."
"What was his name?"
"Neville--Sir Neville Flood." Hester looked puzzled.
"Well!--if you want the whole genealogical tree, here it is: There was a
certain Ralph Flood, my grandfather, an old hunting squire, a regular bad
lot! Oh! I can tell you the family history doesn't give me much chance!
He came from Lincolnshire originally, having made the county there too
hot to hold him, and bought the Abbey, which he meant to restore and
never did. He worried his wife into her grave, and she left him three
children: Neville, who succeeded his father; and two daughters--Meynell's
mother, who was a good deal older than Neville and married Colonel
Meynell, as he was then; and my mother, who was much the youngest, and
died three years ago. She was Neville's favourite sister, and as he knew
Richard didn't want the Abbey, he left it to me. A precious white
elephant--not worth a fiver to anybody. I was only thirteen when Neville
was drowned--"
"Drowned?"
Meryon explained that Neville Flood had lost his life in a storm on an
Irish lough; a queer business, which no one had ever quite got to the
bottom of. Many people had talked of suicide. There was no doubt he was
in very low spirits just before it happened. He was unhappily married,
mainly through his own fault. His wife could certainly have got a divorce
from him if she had applied for it. But very soon after she separated
from Flood she became a Catholic, and nothing would induce her to divorce
him. And against her there was never a breath. It was said of course that
he was in love with some one else, and broken-hearted that his wife
refused to lend herself to a divorce. But nobody knew anything.
"And, by Jove, I wonder why I'm telling you all these shady tales. You
oughtn't to know anything about such things," Meryon broke off suddenly.
Hester's beautiful mouth made a scornful movement.
"I'm not a baby--and I intend to know what's _true_. I should like to see
that picture."
"What--of my Uncle Neville?"
Meryon eyed her curiously, as they strolled on through the arched green
of the woodland. Every now and then there were openings through which
poured a fiery sun, illuminating Hester's face and form.
"Do you know"--he said at last--"there is an uncommonly queer likeness
between you and that picture?"
"Me?" Hester opened her eyes in half-indifferent astonishment.
"People say such absurd things. Heaps of people think I am like Uncle
Richard--not complimentary, is it? I hope his uncle was better looking.
And, anyway, I am no relation of either of them."
"Neville and Richard were often mistaken for one another--though Neville
was a deal handsomer than old Richard. However, nobody can account for
likenesses. If you come to think of it, we are all descended from a small
number of people. But it has often struck me--" He looked at her again
attentively. "The setting of the ear--and the upper lip--and the shape
of the brow--I shall bring you a photograph of the picture."
"What does it matter!" said Hester impatiently. "Besides, I am going away
directly--to Paris."
"To Paris!--why and wherefore?"
"To improve my French--and"--she turned and looked at him in the face,
laughing--"to make sure I don't go walks with you!"
He was silent a moment, twisting his lip.
"When do you go?"
"In a week or two--when there's room for me."
He laughed.
"Oh! come then--there's time for a few more talks. Listen--you think I'm
such an idle dog. I'm nothing of the sort. I've nearly finished a whole
new play. Only--well, I couldn't talk to you about it--it's not a play
for _jeunes filles_. But after all I might read you a few scenes. That
wouldn't do any harm. You're so deuced clever!--your opinion would be
worth having. I can tell you the managers are all after it! I'm getting
letters by every post asking for parts. What do you say? Can you meet
me somewhere? I'll choose some of the best bits. Just name your time!"
Her face had kindled, answering to the vivacity--the peremptoriness--in
his. Her vanity was flattered at last; and he saw it.
"Send me a word!" he said under his breath. "That little schoolroom
maid--is she safe?"
"Quite!" said Hester, also under her breath, and smiling.
"You beautiful creature!" he spoke with low intensity. "You lovely, wild
thing!"
"Take care!" Hester sprang away from him as he put out an incautious
hand. "Come, Roddy! Goodnight!"
In a flash the gloom of the wood closed upon her, and she was gone.
Meryon walked on laughing to himself, and twisting his black moustache.
After some years of bad company and easy conquests, Hester's proud grace,
her reckless beauty, her independent, satiric ways had sent a new
stimulus through jaded nerves. Had he met her in London on equal terms
with other men he knew instinctively that he would have had but small
chance with her. It was the circumstances of this quiet country place,
where young men of Hester's class were the rarest of apparitions, and
where Philip, flying from his creditors and playing the part of a needy
Don Juan amid the picturesque dilapidations of the Abbey, was gravelled
day after day for lack of occupation--it was these surroundings that had
made the flirtation possible. Well, she was a handsome daredevil little
minx. It amused him to make love to her, and in spite of his parsonical
cousin, he should continue to do so. And that the proceeding annoyed
Richard Meynell made it not less, but more, enticing. Parsons, cousins or
no, must be kept in their place.
Hester ran home, a new laugh on her lip, and a new red on her cheek.
Several persons turned to look at her in the village street, but she took
no notice of any one till, just as she was nearing the Cowroast, she saw
groups round the door of the little inn, and a stream of men coming out.
Among them she perceived the Rector. He no sooner saw her than with an
evident start he altered his course and came up to her.
"Where have you been, Hester?"
She chose to be offended by the inquiry, and answered pettishly that for
once she had been out by herself without a keeper. He took no notice of
her tone, and walked on beside her, his eyes on the ground. Presently she
wondered whether he had heard her reply at all, he was so evidently
thinking of something else. In her turn she began to ask questions.
"What's happening in the village? Why are those people coming out of the
Cowroast?"
"There's been an inquest there."
"On that old woman who was once a servant of ours?"
The Rector looked up quickly.
"Who told you anything about her?"
"Oh, Sarah heard from Tibbald--trust him for gossip! Was she off her
head?"
"She died of disease of the brain. They found her dead in her bed."
"Well, why shouldn't she? An excellent way to die! Good night, Uncle
Richard--good night! You go too slow for me."
She walked away with a defiant air, intended to show him that he was in
her black books. He stood a moment looking after her, compunction and sad
affection in his kind eyes.