Countess Kate

Mr. Wardour spoke to her very little.  He said he had seen Colonel Umfraville’s name in the Gazette, and asked about his coming home; and when she had answered that the time and speed of the journey were to depend on Giles’s health, he turned from her to Armyn, and began talking to him about some public matters that seemed very dull to Kate; and one little foolish voice within her said, “He is not like Mrs. George Wardour, he forgets what I am;” but there was a wiser, more loving voice to answer, “Dear Papa, he thinks of me as myself; he is no respecter of persons.  Oh, I hope he is not angry with me!”

When tea was over Mr. Wardour stood up, and said, “I shall wish you children good-night now; I have to read with John Bailey for his Confirmation, and to prepare for to-morrow;—and you, Kate, must go to bed early.—Mary, she had better sleep with you.”

This was rather a blank, for sleeping with Sylvia again had been Kate’s dream of felicity; yet this was almost lost in the sweetness of once more coming in turn for the precious kiss and good-night, in the midst of which she faltered, “O Papa, don’t be angry with me!”

“I am not angry, Katie,” he said gently; “I am very sorry.  You have done a thing that nothing can justify, and that may do you much future harm; and I cannot receive you as if you had come properly.  I do not know what excuse there was for you, and I cannot attend to you to-night; indeed, I do not think you could tell me rightly; but another time we will talk it all over, and I will try to help you.  Now good-night, my dear child.”

Those words of his, “I will try to help you,” were to Kate like a promise of certain rescue from all her troubles; and, elastic ball that her nature was, no sooner was his anxious face out of sight, and she secure that he was not angry, than up bounded her spirits again.  She began wondering why Papa thought she could not tell him properly, and forthwith began to give what she intended for a full and particular history of all that she had gone through.

It was a happy party round the fire; Kate and Sylvia both together in the large arm-chair, and Lily upon one of its arms; Charles in various odd attitudes before the fire; Armyn at the table with his book, half reading, half listening; Mary with her work; and Kate pouring out her story, making herself her own heroine, and describing her adventures, her way of life, and all her varieties of miseries, in the most glowing colours.  How she did rattle on!  It would be a great deal too much to tell; indeed it would be longer than this whole story!

Sylvia and Charlie took it all in, pitied, wondered, and were indignant, with all their hearts; indeed Charlie was once heard to wish he could only get that horrid old witch near the horse-pond; and when Kate talked of her Diana face, he declared that he should get the old brute of a cat into the field, and set all the boys to stone her.

Little Lily listened, not sure whether it was not all what she called “a made-up story only for prettiness;” and Mary, sitting over her work, was puzzled, and saw that her father was right in saying that Kate could not at present give an accurate account of herself.  Mary knew her truthfulness, and that she would not have said what she knew to be invention; but those black eyes, glowing like little hot coals, and those burning cheeks, as well as the loud, squeaky key of the voice, all showed that she had worked herself up into a state of excitement, such as not to know what was invented by an exaggerating memory.  Besides, it could not be all true; it did not agree; the ill-treatment was not consistent with the grandeur.  For Kate had taken to talking very big, as if she was an immensely important personage, receiving much respect wherever she went; and though Armyn once or twice tried putting in a sober matter-of-fact question for the fun of disconcerting her, she was too mad to care or understand what he said.

“Oh no! she never was allowed to do anything for herself.  That was quite a rule, and very tiresome it was.”

“Like the King of Spain, you can’t move your chair away from the fire without the proper attendant.”

“I never do put on coals or wood there!”

“There may be several reasons for that,” said Armyn, recollecting how nearly Kate had once burnt the house down.

“Oh, I assure you it would not do for me,” said Kate.  “If it were not so inconvenient in that little house, I should have my own man-servant to attend to my fire, and walk out behind me.  Indeed, now Perkins always does walk behind me, and it is such a bore.”

And what was the consequence of all this wild chatter?  When Mary had seen the hot-faced eager child into bed, she came down to her brother in the drawing-room with her eyes brimful of tears, saying, “Poor dear child!  I am afraid she is very much spoilt!”

“Don’t make up your mind to-night,” said Armyn.  “She is slightly insane as yet!  Never mind, Mary; her heart is in the right place, if her head is turned a little.”

“It is very much turned indeed,” said Mary.  “How wise it was of Papa not to let Sylvia sleep with her!  What will he do with her?  Oh dear!”

CHAPTER XIII

The Sunday at Oldburgh was not spent as Kate would have had it.  It dawned upon her in the midst of horrid dreams, ending by wakening to an overpowering sick headache, the consequence of the agitations and alarms of the previous day, and the long fast, appeased by the contents of the pastry-cook’s shop, with the journey and the excitement of the meeting—altogether quite sufficient to produce such a miserable feeling of indisposition, that if Kate could have thought at all of anything but present wretchedness, she would have feared that she was really carrying out the likeness to Cardinal Wolsey by laying her bones among them.

That it was not quite so bad as that, might be inferred from her having no doctor but Mary Wardour, who attended to her most assiduously from her first moans at four o’clock in the morning, till her dropping off to sleep about noon; when the valiant Mary, in the absence of everyone at church, took upon herself to pen a note, to catch the early Sunday post, on her own responsibility, to Lady Barbara Umfraville, to say that her little cousin was so unwell that it would be impossible to carry out the promise of bringing her home on Monday, which Mr. Wardour had written on Saturday night.

Sleep considerably repaired her little ladyship; and when she had awakened, and supped up a bason of beef-tea, toast and all, with considerable appetite, she was so much herself again, that there was no reason that anyone should be kept at home to attend to her.  Mary’s absence was extremely inconvenient, as she was organist and leader of the choir.

“So, Katie dear,” she said, when she saw her patient on her legs again, making friends with the last new kitten of the old cat, “you will not mind being left alone, will you?  It is only for the Litany and catechising, you know.”

Kate looked blank, and longed to ask that Sylvia might stay with her, but did not venture; knowing that she was not ill enough for it to be a necessity, and that no one in that house was ever kept from church, except for some real and sufficient cause.

But the silly thoughts that passed through the little head in the hour of solitude would fill two or three volumes.  In the first place, she was affronted.  They made very little of her, considering who she was, and how she had come to see them at all risks, and how ill she had been!  They would hardly have treated a little village child so negligently as their visitor, the Countess—

Then her heart smote her.  She remembered Mary’s tender and assiduous nursing all the morning, and how she had already stayed from service and Sunday school; and she recollected her honour for her friends for not valuing her for her rank; and in that mood she looked out the Psalms and Lessons, which she had not been able to read in the morning, and when she had finished them, began to examine the book-case in search of a new, or else a very dear old, Sunday book.

But then something went “crack,”—or else it was Kate’s fancy—for she started as if it had been a cannon-ball; and though she sat with her book in her lap by the fire in Mary’s room, all the dear old furniture and pictures round her, her head was weaving an unheard-of imagination, about robbers coming in rifling everything—coming up the stairs—creak, creak, was that their step?—she held her breath, and her eyes dilated—seizing her for the sake of her watch!  What article there would be in the paper—“Melancholy disappearance of the youthful Countess of Caergwent.”  Then Aunt Barbara would be sorry she had treated her so cruelly; then Mary would know she ought not to have abandoned the child who had thrown herself on her protection.

That was the way Lady Caergwent spent her hour.  She had been kidnapped and murdered a good many times before; there was a buzz in the street, her senses came back, and she sprang out on the stairs to meet her cousins, calling herself quite well again.  And then they had a very peaceful, pleasant time; she was one of them again, when, as of old, Mr. Wardour came into the drawing-room, and she stood up with Charles, Sylvia, and little Lily, who was now old enough for the Catechism, and then the Collect, and a hymn.  Yes, she had Collect and hymn ready too, and some of the Gospel; Aunt Barbara always heard her say them on Sunday, besides some very difficult questions, not at all like what Mr. Wardour asked out of his own head.

Kate was a little afraid he would make his teaching turn on submitting to rulers; it was an Epistle that would have given him a good opportunity, for it was the Fourth Epiphany Sunday, brought in at the end of the Sundays after Trinity.  If he made his teaching personal, something within her wondered if she could bear it, and was ready to turn angry and defiant.  But no such thing; what he talked to them about was the gentle Presence that hushed the waves and winds in outward nature, and calmed the wild spiritual torments of the possessed; and how all fears and terrors, all foolish fancies and passionate tempers, will be softened into peace when the thought of Him rises in the heart.

Kate wondered if she should be able to think of that next time she was going to work herself into an agony.

But at present all was like a precious dream, to be enjoyed as slowly as the moments could be persuaded to pass.  Out came the dear old Dutch Bible History, with pictures of everything—pictures that they had looked at every Sunday since they could walk, and could have described with their eyes shut; and now Kate was to feast her eyes once again upon them, and hear how many little Lily knew; and a pretty sight it was, that tiny child, with her fat hands clasped behind her so as not to be tempted to put a finger on the print, going so happily and thoroughly through all the creatures that came to Adam to be named, and showing the whole procession into the Ark, and, her favourite of all, the Angels coming down to Jacob.

Then came tea; and then Kate was pronounced, to her great delight, well enough for Evening Service.  The Evening Service she always thought a treat, with the lighted church, and the choicest singing—the only singing that had ever taken hold of Kate’s tuneless ear, and that seemed to come home to her.  At least, to-night it came home as it had never done before; it seemed to touch some tender spot in her heart, and when she thought how dear it was, and how little she had cared about it, and how glad she had been to go away, she found the candles dancing in a green mist, and great drops came down upon the Prayer-book in her hand.

Then it could not be true that she had no feeling.  She was crying—the first time she had ever known herself cry except for pain or at reproof; and she was really so far pleased, that she made no attempt to stop the great tears that came trickling down at each familiar note, at each thought how long it had been since she had heard them.  She cried all church time; for whenever she tried to attend to the prayers, the very sound of the voice she loved so well set her off again; and Sylvia, tenderly laying a hand on her by way of sympathy, made her weep the more, though still so softly and gently that it was like a strange sort of happiness—almost better than joy and merriment.  And then the sermon—upon the text, “Peace, be still,”—was on the same thought on which her uncle had talked to the children: not that she followed it much; the very words “peace” and “be still,” seemed to be enough to touch, soften, and dissolve her into those sweet comfortable tears.

Perhaps they partly came from the weakening of the morning’s indisposition; at any rate, when she moved, after the Blessing, holding the pitying Sylvia’s hand, she found that she was very much tired, her eyelids were swollen and aching, and in fact she was fit for nothing but bed, where Mary and Sylvia laid her; and she slept, and slept in dreamless soundness, till she was waked by Mary’s getting up in the morning, and found herself perfectly well.

“And now, Sylvia,” she said, as they went downstairs hand-in-hand, “let us put it all out of our heads, and try and think all day that it is just one of our old times, and that I am your old Kate.  Let me do my lessons and go into school, and have some fun, and quite forget all that is horrid.”

But there was something to come before this happy return to old times.  As soon as breakfast was over Mr Wardour said, “Now, Kate, I want you.”  And then she knew what was coming; and somehow, she did not feel exactly the same about her exploit and its causes by broad daylight, now that she was cool.  Perhaps she would have been glad to hang back; yet on the whole, she had a great deal to say to “Papa,” and it was a relief, though rather terrific, to find herself alone with him in the study.

“Now, Kate,” said he again, with his arm round her, as she stood by him, “will you tell me what led you to this very sad and strange proceeding?”

Kate hung her head, and ran her fingers along the mouldings of his chair.

“Why was it, my dear?” asked Mr. Wardour.

“It was—” and she grew bolder at the sound of her own voice, and more confident in the goodness of her cause—“it was because Aunt Barbara said I must write what was not true, and—and I’ll never tell a falsehood—never, for no one!” and her eyes flashed.

“Gently, Kate,” he said, laying his hand upon hers; “I don’t want to know what you never will do, only what you have done.  What was this falsehood?”

“Why, Papa, the other Sylvia—Sylvia Joanna, you know—has her birthday to-day, and we settled at Bournemouth that I should spend the day with her; and on Saturday, when Aunt Barbara heard of it, she said she did not want me to be intimate there, and that I must not go, and told me to write a note to say she had made a previous engagement for me.”

“And do you know that she had not done so?”

“O Papa! she could not; for when I said I would not write a lie, she never said it was true.”

“Was that what you said to your aunt?”

“Yes,”—and Kate hung her head—“I was in a passion.”

“Then, Kate, I do not wonder that Lady Barbara insisted on obedience, instead of condescending to argue with a child who could be so insolent.”

“But, Papa,” said Kate, abashed for a moment, then getting eager, “she does tell fashionable falsehoods; she says she is not at home when she is, and—”

“Stay, Kate; it is not for you to judge of grown people’s doings.  Neither I nor Mary would like to use that form of denying ourselves; but it is usually understood to mean only not ready to receive visitors.  In the same way, this previous engagement was evidently meant to make the refusal less discourteous, and you were not even certain it did not exist.”

“My Italian mistress did want to come on Monday,” faltered Kate, “but it was not ‘previous.’”

“Then, Kate, who was it that went beside the mark in letting us believe that Lady Barbara locked you up to make you tell falsehoods?”

“Indeed, Papa, I did not say locked—Charlie and Sylvia said that.”