Countess Kate

“A clerk!”

“Yes; in Mr. Brown’s office, you know.  Aunt Jane, did you ever go out to tea?”

“Yes, my dear; sometimes we drank tea with our little friends in the dolls’ tea-cups.”

“Oh! you can’t think what fun we have when Mrs. Brown asks us to tea.  She has got the nicest garden in the world, and a greenhouse, and a great squirt-syringe, I mean, to water it; and we always used to get it, till once, without meaning it, I squirted right through the drawing-room window, and made such a puddle; and Mrs. Brown thought it was Charlie, only I ran in and told of myself, and Mrs. Brown said it was very generous, and gave me a Venetian weight with a little hermit in a snow-storm; only it is worn out now, and won’t snow, so I gave it to little Lily when we had the whooping-cough.”

By this time Lady Jane was utterly ignorant what the gabble was about, except that Katharine had been in very odd company, and done very strange things with those boys, and she gave a melancholy little sound in the pause; but Kate, taking breath, ran on again—

“It is because Mrs. Brown is not used to educating children, you know, that she fancies one wants a reward for telling the truth; I told her so, but Mary thought it would vex her, and stopped my mouth.  Well, then we young ones—that is, Charlie, and Sylvia, and Armyn, and I—drank tea out on the lawn.  Mary had to sit up and be company; but we had such fun!  There was a great old laurel tree, and Armyn put Sylvia and me up into the fork; and that was our nest, and we were birds, and he fed us with strawberries; and we pretended to be learning to fly, and stood up flapping our frocks and squeaking, and Charlie came under and danced the branches about.  We didn’t like that; and Armyn said it was a shame, and hunted him away, racing all round the garden; and we scrambled down by ourselves, and came down on the slope.  It is a long green slope, right down to the river, all smooth and turfy, you know; and I was standing at the top, when Charlie comes slyly, and saying he would help the little bird to fly, gave me one push, and down I went, roll, roll, tumble, tumble, till Sylvia really thought she heard my neck crack!  Wasn’t it fun?”

“But the river, my dear!” said Lady Jane, shuddering.

“Oh! there was a good flat place before we came to the river, and I stopped long before that!  So then, as we had been the birds of the air, we thought we would be the fishes of the sea; and it was nice and shallow, with dear little caddises and river cray-fish, and great British pearl-shells at the bottom.  So we took off our shoes and stockings, and Charlie and Armyn turned up their trousers, and we had such a nice paddling.  I really thought I should have got a British pearl then; and you know there were some in the breast-plate of Venus.”

“In the river!  Did your cousin allow that?”

“Oh yes; we had on our old blue checks; and Mary never minds anything when Armyn is there to take care of us.  When they heard in the drawing-room what we had been doing, they made Mary sing ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ because of ‘We twa hae paidlit in the burn frae morning sun till dine;’ and whenever in future times I meet Armyn, I mean to say,

‘We twa hae paidlit in the burn
Frae morning sun till dine;
We’ve wandered many a weary foot
Sin auld lang syne.’

Or perhaps I shall be able to sing it, and that will be still prettier.”

And Kate sat still, thinking of the prettiness of the scene of the stranger, alone in the midst of numbers, in the splendid drawing-rooms, hearing the sweet voice of the lovely young countess at the piano, singing this touching memorial of the simple days of childhood.

Lady Jane meanwhile worked her embroidery, and thought what wonderful disadvantages the poor child had had, and that Barbara really must not be too severe on her, after she had lived with such odd people, and that it was very fortunate that she had been taken away from them before she had grown any older, or more used to them.

Soon after, Kate gave a specimen of her manners with boys.  When she went into the dining-room at luncheon time one wet afternoon, she heard steps on the stairs behind her aunt’s, and there appeared a very pleasant-looking gentleman, followed by a boy of about her own age.

“Here is our niece,” said Lady Barbara.  “Katharine, come and speak to Lord de la Poer.”

Kate liked his looks, and the way in which he held out his hand to her; but she knew she should be scolded for her awkward greeting: so she put out her hand as if she had no use of her arm above the elbow, hung down her head, and said “—do;” at least no more was audible.

But there was something comfortable and encouraging in the grasp of the strong large hand over the foolish little fingers; and he quite gave them to his son, whose shake was a real treat; the contact with anything young was like meeting a follow-countryman in a foreign land, though neither as yet spoke.

She found out that the boy’s name was Ernest, and that his father was taking him to school, but had come to arrange some business matters for her aunts upon the way.  She listened with interest to Lord de la Poer’s voice, for she liked it, and was sure he was a greater friend there than any she had before seen.  He was talking about Giles—that was her uncle, the Colonel in India; and she first gathered from what was passing that her uncle’s eldest and only surviving son, an officer in his own regiment, had never recovered a wound he had received at the relief of Lucknow, and that if he did not get better at Simlah, where his mother had just taken him, his father thought of retiring and bringing him home, though all agreed that it would be a very unfortunate thing that the Colonel should be obliged to resign his command before getting promoted; but they fully thought he would do so, for this was the last of his children; another son had been killed in the Mutiny, and two or three little girls had been born and died in India.

Kate had never known this.  Her aunts never told her anything, nor talked over family affairs before her; and she was opening her ears most eagerly, and turning her quick bright eyes from one speaker to the other with such earnest attention, that the guest turned kindly to her, and said, “Do you remember your uncle?”

“Oh dear no!  I was a little baby when he went away.”

Kate never used dear as an adjective except at the beginning of a letter, but always, and very unnecessarily, as an interjection; and this time it was so emphatic as to bring Lady Barbara’s eyes on her.

“Did you see either Giles or poor Frank before they went out to him?”

“Oh dear no!”

This time the dear was from the confusion that made her always do the very thing she ought not to do.

“No; my niece has been too much separated from her own relations,” said Lady Barbara, putting this as an excuse for the “Oh dears.”

“I hope Mr. Wardour is quite well,” said Lord de la Poer, turning again to Kate.

“Oh yes, quite, thank you;” and then with brightening eyes, she ventured on “Do you know him?”

“I saw him two or three times,” he answered with increased kindness of manner.  “Will you remember me to him when you write?”

“Very well,” said Kate promptly; “but he says all those sort of things are nonsense.”

The horror of the two aunts was only kept in check by the good manners that hindered a public scolding; but Lord de la Poer only laughed heartily, and said, “Indeed!  What sort of things, may I ask, Lady Caergwent?”

“Why—love, and regards, and remembrances.  Mary used to get letters from her school-fellows, all filled with dearest loves, and we always laughed at her; and Armyn used to say them by heart beforehand,” said Kate.

“I beg to observe,” was the answer, in the grave tone which, however, Kate understood as fun, “that I did not presume to send my love to Mr. Wardour.  May not that make the case different?”

“Yes,” said Kate meditatively; “only I don’t know that your remembrance would be of more use than your love.”

“And are we never to send any messages unless they are of use?”  This was a puzzling question, and Kate did not immediately reply.

“None for pleasure—eh?”

“Well, but I don’t see what would be the pleasure.”

“What, do you consider it pleasurable to be universally forgotten?”

“Nobody ever could forget Pa—my Uncle Wardour,” cried Kate, with eager vehemence flashing in her eyes.

“Certainly not,” said Lord de la Poer, in a voice as if he were much pleased with her; “he is not a man to be forgotten.  It is a privilege to have been brought up by him.  But come, Lady Caergwent, since you are so critical, will you be pleased to devise some message for me, that may combine use, pleasure, and my deep respect for him?” and as she sat beside him at the table, he laid his hand on hers, so that she felt that he really meant what he said.

She sat fixed in deep thought; and her aunts, who had been miserable all through the conversation, began to speak of other things; but in the midst the shrill little voice broke in, “I know what!” and good-natured Lord de la Poer turned at once, smiling, and saying, “Well, what?”

“If you would help in the new aisle!  You know the church is not big enough; there are so many people come into the district, with the new ironworks, you know; and we have not got half room enough, and can’t make more, though we have three services; and we want to build a new aisle, and it will cost £250, but we have only got £139 15s. 6d.  And if you would but be so kind as to give one sovereign for it—that would be better than remembrances and respects, and all that sort of thing.”

“I rather think it would,” said Lord de la Poer; and though Lady Barbara eagerly exclaimed, “Oh! do not think of it; the child does not know what she is talking of.  Pray excuse her—” he took out his purse, and from it came a crackling smooth five-pound note, which he put into the hand, saying, “There, my dear, cut that in two, and send the two halves on different days to Mr. Wardour, with my best wishes for his success in his good works.  Will that do?”

Kate turned quite red, and only perpetrated a choked sound of her favourite —q.  For the whole world she could not have said more: but though she knew perfectly well that anger and wrath were hanging over her, she felt happier than for many a long week.

Presently the aunts rose, and Lady Barbara said to her in the low ceremonious voice that was a sure sign of warning and displeasure, “You had better come up stairs with us, Katharine, and amuse Lord Ernest in the back drawing-room while his father is engaged with us.”

Kate’s heart leapt up at the sound “amuse.”  She popped her precious note into her pocket, bounded up-stairs, and opened the back drawing-room door for her playfellow, as he brought up the rear of the procession.

Lord de la Poer and Lady Barbara spread the table with papers; Lady Jane sat by; the children were behind the heavy red curtains that parted off the second room.  There was a great silence at first, then began a little tittering, then a little chattering, then presently a stifled explosion.  Lady Barbara began to betray some restlessness; she really must see what that child was about.

“No, no,” said Lord de la Poer; “leave them in peace.  That poor girl will never thrive unless you let her use her voice and limbs.  I shall make her come over and enjoy herself with my flock when we come up en masse.”

The explosions were less carefully stifled, and there were some sounds of rushing about, some small shrieks, and then the door shut, and there was a silence again.