Hathercourt

“We don’t need to be taken care of that way, papa,” said Josephine, “we were only in the Balner woods, and Captain Beverley was coming here, anyhow.”

“He only tookened care of Lily and me,” said Francie, importantly, but the observation was a happy one. It was impossible not to laugh at it, and Josey’s abruptness passed unrebuked.

“I certainly deserve no thanks,” said Captain Beverley. “My visit yesterday was a selfish one, and as for to-day – why, all my thanks are due to you, Francie! I should have been lost in the woods, and perhaps eaten up by Red Riding-hood’s wolf if I had not met you, and been shown the way here.”

“But that wolf was killed long ago, Lily says,” said Francie, staring up with great bewilderment in her blue eyes. “It couldn’t have eatened you up when it was killed itself.”

“Indeed. I am very glad to hear it,” replied Captain Beverley, gravely, “then I needn’t be afraid of coming through the Balner woods; it is a good thing to know that. It is a much pleasanter walk than by the road,” he went on, turning again to Mr Western. “I really was on my way here when I met your daughters. I am afraid you will think me very troublesome.”

His manner was certainly boyish, but not in the least awkward. That Mr Western was “taken” with him was quickly evident.

“Indeed, no,” he said, heartily. “Living here so completely out of the world, as you see, it is very seldom that we have the pleasure of showing even the little hospitality we have in our power. But, such as it is, I hope you will accept it. Lilias, Mary,” he continued, turning to his daughters, the younger ones having by this time disappeared, “tell your mother that Captain Beverley is here.”

“I will,” said Mary, hastening away with a great excitement in her thoughts, “I do believe papa is going to ask him to stay to tea. What will mamma say?” and not knowing whether she was pleased or distressed, she hurried in to break the momentous tidings to her mother, and to consult the cook.

Lilias was following her, but her father called her back. “You need not both go, my dears,” he said with sudden remembrance of unwritten letters awaiting him in his study, which must be seen to before four o’clock post-time. “Perhaps Captain Beverley would like to have a look at the church again, if you will take him to see it. I will follow you in a few minutes, but I have a letter or two I must finish, which I was forgetting.”

“Pray don’t let me interrupt you,” exclaimed Captain Beverley, with anxiety almost disproportionate to the occasion. “I should very much like to look at the church, for there are some tablets there I want to examine. And if Miss Western will explain them a little, I shall be very much obliged.”

Lilias hesitated. “Mary understands them better than I do,” she began, but her father interrupted her.

“I will send her after you, if you go on, and I will finish my letters as quickly as I can, and then, Captain Beverley, I shall be at your service. Mrs Western tells me you want to hear about Joseph Owen. You will stay and – I can’t say dine with us – we are very uncivilised, you see; we have a mongrel meal at six!”

He spoke with a slight nervousness, which made Lilias’s cheek grow hot. “Poor dear father!” she ejaculated, mentally. But the guest seemed blissfully unconscious of his host’s hesitation.

“You are very kind indeed,” he said, eagerly. “I should very much like to stay, if I shall not be a trouble. It is so wretchedly dull and uncomfortable at the Edge, I don’t think I could have stood it much longer, unless – if you had not taken pity on me,” he added, laughingly, as Lilias led the way across the grass to the old church.

Mary joined them there in a few minutes, and while Captain Beverley was examining the old coat-of-arms on the tablet in memory of his ancestress, she found time to whisper to her sister, —

“Mamma knows that papa has asked him to stay to tea. I don’t think she minds much.”

“But what will there be for tea?” said Lilias, in consternation.

“Oh! that will be all right,” replied Mary, reassuringly.

And, somewhat to Lilias’s surprise, her mother showed herself far more amiably disposed for Captain Beverley, on further acquaintance, than might have been anticipated.

“Though, indeed,” said Mary, when, at night, they were talking over in their own room the pleasant evening they had had, “it would be difficult not to feel amiably disposed to him! He is so unaffected and hearty, and yet not by any means a goose. He liked talking to papa about sensible things, I could see.”

“He talked sensibly to me, too,” said Lilias, dryly, “though, of course, I cannot answer for what he may have said to you.”

“Lilias!” exclaimed Mary, “don’t be so silly. You know – ”

“What do I know?”

“That I am not the sort of girl likely to have anything but sensible things said to me, especially when you are there.”

Lilias laughed merrily. “Really, Mary, you are very complimentary. You trust to me to absorb all the nonsense, and leave the sense for you! I think I shall keep out of the way, if Captain Beverley comes here again.”

“Then he wouldn’t come any more,” said Mary. “Lily, I’m sleepy, say good-night, please.”

“Good-night, though I am not sleepy at all,” said Lilias, cheerfully.

What had become of all her low spirits? thought Mary, with a little bewilderment Lilias was not usually so changeable. The evening had certainly been a very pleasant one; even the younger girls had somehow shown to advantage; and Captain Beverley had not merely ignored, he had seemed perfectly unconscious of the homeliness of their way of living – the crowded tea-table, the little countrified waiting-maid, the absence of the hundred and one small luxuries which to him could not but be matters of course. And his unconsciousness had reached favourably on his entertainers; Mr Western lost his nervousness, Mrs Western her gentle coldness, and every one seemed at ease and happy. Any stranger glancing in would have thought them all old friends, instead of new acquaintances, of the handsome young man who was the life and soul of the party.

“Mary,” said Lilias again, just as Mary was falling asleep, “Captain Beverley will be at the Brocklehurst ball this year. He is to be staying at Romary.”

“I thought you said you were never going again,” said Mary, who had her wits about her, sleepy though she was.

“But you would hot like to go without me, I know,” replied Lilias, meekly. “Oh, Mary, I do wish we could have new dresses for once!”

Mary did not consider this observation worth waking up to answer. But her dreams were a strange medley – Captain Beverley dancing at a ball with his great grandmother Mawde, dressed all in scarlet, as if she were Red Riding-hood, but with a face like Lilias’s. And what Lilias’s dreams were, who can say?

But the Brocklehurst ball was three weeks off as yet, and there was no lack of opportunities of discussing it with Captain Beverley.

Surely November this year must have been an exceptionally fine one, for there seemed few days on which Arthur Beverley did not find his way through the woods, or by the road, to the Rectory, with some excuse in the shape of further plans to be shown to Mr Western, or a book to lend to the girls or their mother, or without any, save the sight of his own bright face, and an eager proposal that they should all set off on a long ramble somewhere or other, instead of wasting one of the few fine days of late autumn, moping in the house. And by degrees it came to be a matter of course that, if the owner of Hathercourt Edge chose to drop in at any or every meal, he should be welcome, and that if he stayed away he should be missed, and Mrs Western’s fears and vague apprehensions gradually softened, now that this terrible wolf had actually taken up his quarters in the midst of her flock without, so far, any of them being the worse!

“He seems like a sort of elder brother among them all,” she said to her husband. “I wish Basil had been at home – contact with such a man would have done him good.”

Mr Western agreed with her, for he, too, had greatly “taken” to the young stranger. It was pleasant to him to find that he had not altogether fallen out of the ways of his class, that cares, and small means, and living out of the world had not crusted over his former self past recognition. Arthur Beverley had not been at college, but he, as well as his host, had been an Eton boy, and poor George, to whom the name of Eton was that of a forbidden Paradise, listened with delight to the many reminiscences in common of his father and his guest, notwithstanding the quarter of a century which divided their experiences. So everybody in his or her own way felt pleased with Captain Beverley, and his coming seemed to have brought new life and sunshine into the Rectory. Lilias alone spoke little of him, and Mary sometimes lay awake at night “thinking.”

Chapter Six

Marrying or Giving in Marriage

“If there’s no meaning in it,” said the king, “that saves a world of trouble, as we needn’t try to find any. And yet I don’t know.”

    Alice in Wonderland.

November was not bright everywhere, however. In Paris everything, out of doors, that is to say, was looking extremely dull, and Alys Cheviott many times, during the four weeks her brother had arranged to stay there, wished herself at home again at Romary. For Paris, though people who have only visited it in spring or summer (when the sunshine, and the heat, and the crowds, and the holiday aspect of everything are almost overwhelming) can hardly perhaps realise the fact, can be exceedingly dull, and hotel life at all times requires bright weather, and plenty of outside interests, to make it endurable. Alys did not care particularly about balls or parties; she was too young to have acquired much taste for such amusements, though young enough to enjoy heartily the two or three receptions at which Mr Cheviott had allowed her to “assist.” But it was the day-time she found so long and dreary. She wanted to go out, to shop and to look about her, and to take long walks in the Bois de Boulogne in the morning, and drives with her brother in the afternoon, and every day the weather put all expeditions of the kind out of the question. It rained incessantly, or, at least, as she complained piteously, “when it didn’t rain it did worse – it looked so black and gloomy that no one had the heart to do anything.” Alys had been in Paris several times before, she had seen all the orthodox lions, and had not, therefore, the interest and excitement of the perfect novelty of her surroundings to support her, and as day after day passed, with no improvement to speak of, she began sorely to regret having teased her brother into allowing her to accompany him on this visit, in this case necessitated by the business arrangements of a friend.

“I’ll never come with you again, Laurence, anywhere, when it has anything to do with business,” she declared.

“Who is ‘it’?” inquired Mr Cheviott, calmly.

“Laurence, you are not to tease me. I am too worried to stand it, I am, really,” she replied.

”‘It’ again! Alys, you are growing incorrigible. I really think my best plan would be to send you to a good school for a year or two – the sort of place where ‘young ladies of neglected education’ are taken in hand.”

He spoke so seriously that for a quarter of a second Alys wondered if he could be in earnest. She turned sharply round from the window against which she had been pressing her pretty face in a sort of affectation of babyish discontent, staring out at the leaden sky, and the wet street, and the dreary-looking gardens in the distance.

“Laurence!” she exclaimed. But Laurence’s next remark undeceived her.

“You should not flatten your face against the window-pane. You will spoil the shape of your nose, and you have made it look so red,” he observed, gravely. “Would you care to live, Alys, do you think, if you had a red nose?”

Alys gently stroked the ill-treated member as she answered, thoughtfully:

“I hardly think I should. Laurence, do you know there have been times when I have been afraid they might run in the family.”