Kingsworth: or, The Aim of a Life

Chapter Four

Applehurst

Down in a valley from which the softly outlined, richly wooded hills sloped away on every side, shut out by copse and orchard from church and village, lay an old red-brick house. High walls closed in its gardens, and within and without them the fruit trees bloomed and bore as the seasons came round. The ruddy moss-grown walls and the house itself shone white and radiant with spring blossoms, or supported the richly coloured freight of autumn fruit, while the copse woods and the orchards surged away over the hills, and never a roof or spire broke their solitude. The very road that led to the iron gate, so rarely opened, was noiseless and grass-grown; the soft moss gathered on the garden-paths, spite of their trim keeping; in the high summer, even the birds were silent. Year by year the same flowers either grew up or were planted in the quaintly cut beds; year by year the fruit dropped on the ground, and was picked up lest it should be an eyesore, not because any one wanted it for profit or for pleasure. Never elsewhere did the trees bend beneath such a weight of fruitage, surely no other roses and clematis flowered so profusely, no other turf was so soft and green, as if no strange foot ever trod it, no rough hand ever came near to pluck the brilliant blossoms. The scream of a railway whistle, even the roll of a carriage hardly ever disturbed the silence; the stock-doves cooed, and the starlings cried unstartled by any passing footsteps. The gardeners, moving deliberately to and fro, seemed too leisurable to disturb the feeling of quiet.

Suddenly, between the hanging creepers, a side door opened, and a girl darted hastily out, ran across the soft turf, and began to pace up and down the broad walks beneath the sunny fruit-laden walls, with rapid impatient steps.

She spoilt the picture. This was no dreamy maiden, idle and peaceful, to complete the charm of the garden scene; but a creature impatient and incongruous, evidently suffering under an access of temper or of trouble, probably of both, for she snatched off a twig as she passed and pulled it in pieces, and her bright hazel eyes were full of angry tears.

She was small and rather short, with the sort of birdlike air, always given by a delicately hooked nose, and round dark eyes set rather close together. Her hair of a reddish chestnut was crisp and rough, her skin brilliantly fair and rosy, and her teeth white, and just perceptible beneath the short upper lip. A pretty healthy face, but fierce, restless, and haughty.

“Oh, how I hate it! I wish – I wish – There it is, I don’t know what to wish for – except an earthquake that would knock the place to bits. I will not bear it a day longer – ”

“Miss Kitty, here are some nice ripe peaches, should you like to eat a few,” said the old gardener, approaching her, “or a Jargonelle pear?”

“I’m tired of pears and peaches!” said the girl ungraciously; “what is the good of so much fruit?”

“There’s some lavender ready to cut, Miss Katharine, then, – young ladies like to be doing something.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do then, Dickson,” said Katharine, “just leave that ladder against the wall, and I’ll climb up and look over, – perhaps I could see the church spire, or a waggon, – or a new cow. That would be something.”

“La! missy, – young ladies shouldn’t climb ladders!”

“You never were a young lady, Dickson,” said Katharine, laughing, while her foot still twitched impatiently.

“La! no, Miss Katharine, that I never was, – I’ve been man and boy this seventy year.”

“Then you don’t know how much nicer it is to be anything else!” said Katharine. “But the peaches are nice, thank you,” she added, taking one, “though this place is to life, what peaches are to roast mutton – cloying.”

She laughed again as she spoke, subsiding into the ordinary discontent of a well accustomed grievance. For it was no new thing for Katharine Kingsworth to wish herself anywhere but at Applehurst. Had she known how good a right she had to another home and to other interests, she might have been still less willing to endure her seclusion. But though she did not know her own family history, the sad fact that had prompted her mother, while still a young woman, to bury herself and her child at Applehurst was well-known to several people.

When that stern resolution had come to the new made widow, as she looked round on Kingsworth, and thought of the terrible doubt in which her husband’s fate was involved, thought of the way in which the country round must regard her daughter’s inheritance, a great horror of the place weighed on her. The Canon and Mr Macclesfield, the family man of business, might manage the estate as they liked, – she would never live there, never go there, and Katharine should not grow up where every one looked askance at her.

It was a vehement, one-sided resolution, and Canon Kingsworth did not approve of it; but as, of course, Katharine’s minority had never been contemplated, the will named no personal guardians for her, and he could not, if he would, have taken her from her mother’s charge. Applehurst belonged to Mrs Kingsworth herself, and thither she betook herself with her year-old baby, and there, with one short interval, she had remained ever since. Katharine was now a woman, and even her mother began to feel that something more was due to her.

Mrs Kingsworth was a woman of very strong principles and perhaps not very tender feelings. She was clever, high-spirited, and very handsome, when as Mary Lacy she had married George Kingsworth, and had he been worthy of her, might have softened into an excellent woman. But when she discovered his falsity, neither her love nor his terrible death threw any softening veil over her disappointment. She shuddered at her own disgrace yet more than at his, and every association connected with him was hateful to her. She was really perfectly unworldly, and she did not care at all for the wealth and position that had tempted him.

She took Katharine away, determined to rear her up in high, stern principles, and never to allow her to become accustomed to the life of an heiress. Let her be happy and know that she could be happy without Kingsworth, and on the day she was twenty-one let her give it back to her cousin Emberance.

This was the clue to Mrs Kingsworth’s conduct, this was the hope, nay, the resolve of her life, and therefore she brought up Katharine to be independent of luxuries and of society, therefore she secluded her from all intercourse with those of her own rank, fearing lest any marriage engagement might tie her hands, or any preference warp her judgment, before the day when she could legally free herself from the weight of her wealth.

Mrs Kingsworth, like many another parent, did not calculate on the unknown factors in the problem, – the will and the character of her own child.

Katharine grew up a merry, healthy child, sufficiently intelligent, but without the love of books, which her mother had hoped to see, with all natural instincts strong in her, and with an ardent desire to have other little girls to play with.

“Mamma, tell me how you used to go and drink tea with your cousins,” – “Mamma, do ask a little girl to come and stay here,” – “Mamma, I should like to go to Mrs Leicester’s school,” were among her earliest aspirations.

Her mother was clever and well-informed enough to educate her well, but solitary study was uninteresting to so sociable a being, and the girl was devoid of the daydreaming faculty, which while it would have given form to her desires, might have whiled away many a dreary hour. As it was, the poor child jarred her mother with every taste and turn that she developed.

High-mindedness was to be cultivated by a careful and sparing selection of poetry and romance; but this provoking Katharine at twelve years old borrowed the kitchen-maids Sunday-school prizes, and preferred them to the “Lady of the Lake.”

She thought her mother’s heroes tiresome, and with that curious instinctive resistance of strong-willed childhood to any set purpose of influence, could not be induced to care for the glorious tales of self-sacrifice and noble poverty which still made her mother’s blood thrill and her eyes brighten.

She was very carefully instructed in religious matters, and duly every Sunday attended service at Applehurst, a tiny country church with a very old-fashioned childless vicar, and one very quiet Sunday service. When Katharine was sixteen, the one event of her life took place, and her mother took her for three days to Fanchester, the cathedral city, where Canon Kingsworth lived, to be confirmed.

The vicar had nominally prepared her, her mother had endeavoured earnestly to influence her. Surely the first sight of the glorious cathedral, the solemn service, would awaken in the girl that tone of mind in which she now seemed so deficient.

But to Katharine the railway journey, the town, the people were a dream, or rather, a reality of delight.

“We will take Katharine over the cathedral to-day, that it may not be quite strange to her to-morrow,” said the Canon’s wife on the first morning.

“Oh please – please – but I shall see that to-morrow. Oh, Aunt Kingsworth, let me go and buy something in a shop. Let me see the streets first!”

And though she was obedient and decorous, it was evident that she could not think or feel in such a world of enchanting novelty. She could only look and enjoy.

After the Confirmation was over, her uncle delayed a few minutes and presently came in, bringing with him across the narrow close one of the white-veiled girls, who had just been confirmed.

“Mary,” he said briefly, “this is Emberance Kingsworth. Katharine, this is your cousin.”

“Oh, have I got a cousin?” cried Katharine vehemently, as she rushed at Emberance and reached up to kiss her. For Emberance was a tall, slim creature, with large soft eyes and a blushing face.

She looked with a certain shrinking at the new relations, though she returned the kiss.

“Miss Kingsworth is pleased to find a new cousin,” said a lady who was present.

“Miss Katharine,” said her mother, turning round on the speaker, “my niece is Miss Kingsworth if you please.”

The interview was not allowed to last long, and Emberance was sent back to join her schoolfellows, but Katharine never forgot it, – nor indeed her visit to Fanchester.

She knew what she wanted now, and chafed when she did not get it. And month by month and year by year she and her mother grew further apart, and only Katharine’s childish, undeveloped nature kept her feelings within bounds.

Chapter Five

Speculations

That hot autumn day was destined, little as she knew it, to be a crisis in Katharine Kingsworth’s life. She was very far from expecting that anything should happen to her, as she sauntered along by the garden wall, eating her peaches, and wondering what to do when she had finished them. She was accustomed to have her time pretty well filled up with her studies; but the absence of object and of emulation had made these of late very wearisome to her, and her mother had half unconsciously relaxed the rein, having indeed nearly come to the end of her own powers. Carefully as she learned and taught, the want of contact with other minds deprived her own of its freshness. Katharine at nineteen was sick of reading history and doing sums, and of talking French one day and German the next. She did not like drawing, and her musical taste was of a commonplace kind, and could not flourish “itself its own delight.”

She loved her mother; but she was afraid of her, and conscious of failing to satisfy her, and the impatient desire of Change hid from her all the pleasure of association and long habit.

“I wonder if mamma means this to go on for ever,” she thought. “Am I to live here till I am as old as she is? Surely other girls have more variety. I don’t know much about it – but I begin to think our lives are odd as well as disagreeable. Surely we could go again and see Uncle Kingsworth – or go and stay somewhere else? We could– why don’t we? Are we rich, I wonder?”

The childishness of a mind which had never had anything to measure itself with, and the unvarying ascendancy of a most resolute will, had so acted that Katharine had never distinctly put these questions to herself before. Often as she had murmured, she had never resisted, nor realised the possibility of resistance. Often as she had declared that her life was hateful to her, she had no more expected that it would change than that the sun would come out because she complained when it was raining.

Katharine was impetuous; but if she had any of her mother’s strength of purpose it was as yet undeveloped. Yet all sorts of impulses and desires were awakening within her, and gradually driving her to a settled purpose – namely, to question her mother as to her reasons for living at Applehurst, and her intentions for the future.

It would be difficult to realise how tremendous a step this seemed to Katharine. To have an opinion of her own and grumble about it, was one thing – to act upon it, quite another – still she got up from her knees by the lavender bush, which she had been cutting while indulging in these meditations, and walked slowly into the house. Katharine never remembered coming into her mother’s presence in her life without a certain sense of awe and of expectation of criticism, and now as she opened the drawing-room door, her heart beat fast, and her colour, always bright enough, burnt all over her forehead and neck.

It was a pretty pleasant drawing-room; with an unmistakable air of refinement and cultivation; plenty of books and tokens of occupation, while all the furniture was handsome and in good order.