Hathercourt

“What?” asked Laurence, philosophically.

“Red noses,” answered Alys, calmly. “Aunt Winstanley has one, you know. She says its neuralgia, but I feel sure it is indigestion.”

Laurence looked up at her with a smile, which broke into a laugh as he observed the preternatural gravity of her expression.

“Come and sit down and have some breakfast, you absurd child,” he said. He was already seated at the table.

Alys walked slowly across the room, and took her place opposite him. She looked blooming enough notwithstanding all the trials she had had to endure. As the Western girls had pronounced her, such she was, very, very pretty – as pretty a girl as one could wish to see. Her soft dark hair grew low, but not too low, on the white, well-shaped forehead; her features were all good, and gave promise of maturing into even greater beauty than that of eighteen; her blue eyes could look up tenderly as well as brightly from under their long black eyelashes, for their colour was not of the cold steel-like shade that is often the peculiarity of blue eyes in such juxtaposition. But the tenderness was more a matter of the future than the present, for hitherto there had been little in her life to call forth the deeper tones of her character; she was happy, trustful and winning, full of life and vigour; incapable of a mean thought or action herself, incapable of suspecting such in others.

Mr Cheviott looked at her critically as she sat opposite him.

“Alys,” he said at last, “I am afraid I have not brought you up well.”

“What makes you think so all of a sudden, Laurence?”

“I am afraid you are spoiled. You are such a baby.”

Alys’s eyes flashed a little.

“Are you in earnest, Laurence?”

“A little, not quite.”

“I think you have got into the habit of thinking other people babies, and it’s a very bad habit. You like them to do just exactly what you tell them, and yet you laugh at them for being babies. You think Arthur is a baby too.”

“There are babies and babies,” Mr Cheviott replied. “Some do credit to those who bring them up, and some don’t.”

“Well, he does, whether I do or not,” said Alys, “he is as kind, and good, and nice, and sensible as he can be. And do you know what I think, Laurence? If there are different kinds of babies, there are different ways of being spoiled, and I sometimes think you are spoiled! I do,” she continued, shaking her head solemnly. “Arthur spoils you, and aunt of course does. I believe I am the only person that does not.”

“And how do you manage to steer clear of so fatal an error?”

“You are not nice, indeed you are extremely disagreeable when you speak like that,” said Alys, “but still I think I will tell you. I don’t spoil you because I don’t think you quite perfect as everybody else does,” and she glanced up at him defiantly.

Mr Cheviott laughed. He was just going to answer, when there came an interruption in the shape of his manservant.

“Letters!” exclaimed Alys, “I do hope there are some for me; they will give me something to do. Are there any for me, Laurence?”

“Yes, two, and only one for me.”

“From aunt and from Arthur,” said Alys. “I will read aunt’s first, there is never anything in hers. She just tells me over again what I told her, and makes little comments upon it. Yes, ‘so sorry, dearest Alys, that the weather in Paris has so spoiled the pleasure of your visit, and that during the last week you have scarcely been able to get out, except in a close carriage, for a miserable attempt at shopping. And so you enjoyed Madame de Briancourt’s ball on the whole, very much, and your pink and white grenadine looked lovely, and Clotilde did your hair the new way.’ Did you ever hear anything so absurd, Laurence? It is like reading all I have written over again in a looking-glass, only then the letters would be all the wrong way, wouldn’t they?”

But Mr Cheviott did not answer, and Alys, looking up, saw that he had not heard her; he was busily reading his own letter, and its contents did not seem to be satisfactory, for a frown had gathered on his brow, and, as he turned the first page, a half-smothered exclamation of annoyance escaped him.

“What is the matter, Laurence?” said Alys. “You don’t seem any better pleased with your letter than I am with mine?”

“How do you mean? What does he say to you?” inquired her brother, quickly.

“Who? Oh, Arthur, you mean. I haven’t opened his yet. I was saying how stupid aunt’s letters are. So yours is from Arthur, too, is it?” said Alys, pricking up her ears, “what’s the matter? Is he going to be married? I do wish he were.”

“Alys!” exclaimed Mr Cheviott, with real annoyance in his tone, “do be careful what you say. You are too old to talk so foolishly. It is unbecoming and unladylike.”

“Why? What do you mean?” said Alys, opening wide her blue eyes in astonishment. “Why shouldn’t I talk of Arthur’s being married? I have noticed before that you seem quite indignant at the thought of such a thing, and I don’t think you have any right to dictate to him. It’s just what I was saying, he has spoiled you by giving in so, and the more inches he gives you the more ells you want to take.”

“I have spoiled you, Alys, by allowing you to speak to me as you do. It is most unjustifiable; and the way you express yourself is worse than unladylike, it is vulgar and coarse.”

He got up and left the room. Never in all her life had Alys been so reproved before, and by him of all people, her dear, dear, Laurence – her father and mother and brother in one, as she often called him. She could not bear it; she threw aside the unlucky letters which in some way or other she felt to have been the cause of her distress, and burst into tears. She cried away quietly for some time, till it occurred to her to wonder more definitely in what way she had really displeased her brother, and the more she thought it over the more convinced she became that Arthur’s letter had been the primary cause of his annoyance, and her own remarks nothing worse than ill-timed and unwise.

“For I very often say much more impertinent things, and he only laughs,” she reflected.

There was some comfort in this. She dried her eyes and resolved to try to make peace on the first opportunity. “Laurence is very seldom angry or unreasonable,” she thought; “but, of course, as I was saying just now, he is not perfect. But I am sure he does not really think me ‘coarse and unladylike.’ What horrible words!” And the tears came back again.

Just then her glance fell on Captain Beverley’s unopened letter. “I wonder if I shall find out, from what he says to me, how he has managed to vex Laurence so,” she thought to herself, tearing open the letter, and quickly running through its contents. It was a pleasant, cousinly letter, amusing and hearty, but with nothing that would, to Alys, have distinguished it from others she had, from time to time, received from Arthur, had not her eyes been sharpened by her brother’s strange annoyance. Instinctively she hit upon the cause of offence; two or three times in the course of the letter allusion was made to the Western family, to their “kindness and hospitality,” their general “likeableness,” and a far less quick-witted person than Miss Cheviott would have been at no loss to discern Captain Beverley’s growing intimacy with the Rectory household, and to suspect the existence of some special attraction, though possibly as yet unsuspected by the young man himself.

“I am sure it is about the Westerns that Laurence is annoyed,” said Alys to herself. “I have noticed that he does not like them, and he is afraid of Arthur falling in love with one of them. But why shouldn’t he? I can’t understand Laurence sometimes. I am sure if ever he marries it will be to please himself, and nobody else. What is the good of a man’s being rich if he can’t do that? And Arthur is rich enough! Yes, the more I think of it the more sure I am that it was something about the Westerns that made Laurence angry.”

She was not long left in doubt. The door opened and Mr Cheviott made his appearance again. He looked grave and preoccupied, but as calm as usual. When, however, his glance fell on Alys’s flushed cheeks and tearful eyes, his expression grew troubled. He came behind her chair and putting his hand on her head, turned her face gently towards him.

“Do you think me very harsh, Alys?” he said, kindly. “I did not mean to be so, but I was annoyed, and, besides that, I cannot bear that habit of joking about marrying, and so on, especially the sort of way girls do so nowadays. It is very offensive.”

“But I wasn’t joking, Laurence. I had no thought of it,” replied Alys. “I will never speak about anything of the kind at all, if you dislike it; but truly you misunderstood me. I don’t think what I said would have annoyed you if you had not been vexed about something else.”

“Perhaps not,” said Mr Cheviott, kindly. “Well, dear, I am sorry for making you cry, but you will forgive me, won’t you?”

Alys smiled up through the remains of her tears.

“Of course,” she replied. “You know you could make me think it all my own fault, if you liked, Laurence. And I understand what you mean about disliking joking about marrying, and so on, but indeed I was quite in earnest. I should very much like Arthur to marry, and I cannot imagine why you should so dislike the idea of it.”

She glanced at her brother questioningly as she spoke – her curiosity strengthening as her courage revived – but his expression baffled her.

“Why do you so much wish Arthur to marry?” he inquired. “You have never seemed to dislike him, Alys.”

“Dislike him!” she repeated, innocently. “Dislike Arthur! Of course not. I like him more than I can tell; indeed, I think I love him next best to you of everybody in the world. How could I dislike him? And if I did, how could that possibly have anything to do with my wishing him to marry? Why, I want you to marry, but I have given it up in despair.”

Mr Cheviott looked slightly self-conscious at his sister’s cross-questioning, but turned it off as lightly as he could.

“You might want to get rid of him,” he said, carelessly. “Of course, if he were married, we should not see so much of him. Why do you want him to marry?”

“Just because it would be nice, that is to say, if his wife were nice, and I don’t think Arthur would marry any one that wasn’t,” said Alys. “She would be in a sort of way like a sister to me, you know, Laurence.”

“Those dreams are seldom realised,” observed Mr Cheviott, cynically. “As nature did not give you a sister, I would advise you to be content with what she did give you, even though it is only a very cross old brother. But what has put all this of Arthur’s marrying into your head just now, Alys? Has he been taking you into his confidence about any nonsense – falling in love, or that kind of thing, I mean?” And he eyed Arthur’s letter suspiciously.

“Oh! dear no. Read his letter for yourself, and you will see there is nothing of the kind,” replied Alys. But she watched her brother’s face rather curiously, as she added, “He seems to like the family at Hathercourt Rectory very much – those pretty girls, you know, that we saw that Sunday. He says they have been very civil to him.”

“Very probably,” said Mr Cheviott, dryly, as he took up the letter. “Pretty girls, do you call them, Alys? One was handsome, but the other wasn’t.”

“I liked them both,” persisted Alys. “One was beautiful, and the other had a sort of noble, good look in her face, better than beauty.”

“What a physiognomist you are becoming, child!” said her brother, from the depths of Arthur’s letter. He read it quickly, and threw it aside; then he went to the window, and stood looking out for a minute or two without speaking. “Alys,” he said at last, so suddenly that Alys started, “you said just now that it was very dull here; so it is, I dare say, for no doubt the weather is horrible. You would not mind, I suppose, if I arranged to go home rather sooner than I intended?”