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The Squire's Daughter: Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons

by Archibald Marshall · English · Gutenberg #31381 · 472,284 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Squire's Daughter: Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons

Author: Archibald Marshall


        
Release date: February 25, 2010 [eBook #31381]

Language: English

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                               THE SQUIRE'S DAUGHTER

             _Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons_

                               BY ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1920

Published October, 1912
by
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

TO
ANSTEY GUTHRIE




[Illustration: Archibald Marshall.]




CONTENTS


I A Court Ball

II In the Bay of Biscay

III The Clintons of Kencote

IV Clintons Young and Old

V Melbury Park

VI A Good Long Talk

VII The Rector

VIII By the Lake

IX The Question of Marriage

X Town Versus Country

XI A Wedding

XII Food and Raiment

XIII Ronald Mackenzie

XIV The Plunge

XV Bloomsbury

XVI The Pursuit

XVII The Contest

XVIII After the Storm

XIX The Whole House Upset

XX Mrs. Clinton

XXI Cicely's Return

XXII The Life




CHAPTER I

A COURT BALL


"I recollect the time," said the Squire, "when two women going to a ball
were a big enough load for any carriage. You may say what you like about
crinolines, but I've seen some very pretty women in them in my time."

There were three people in the carriage passing slowly up the Mall in
the string, with little jerks and progressions. They were the Squire
himself, Mrs. Clinton, and Cicely, and they were on their way to a Court
Ball.

The Squire, big, florid, his reddish beard touched with grey falling
over the red and gold of his Deputy-Lieutenant's uniform, sat back
comfortably beside his wife, who was dressed in pale lavender silk, with
diamonds in her smooth, grey-yellow hair. She was short and rather
plump. Her grey eyes, looking out on the violet of the night sky, the
trees, and the crowd of hilarious onlookers who had not been invited to
Buckingham Palace, had a patient and slightly wistful expression. She
had not spoken since the carriage had left the quiet hotel in which they
were staying for their fortnight in London.

Cicely sat on the back seat of the carriage. On such an occasion as this
she might have been expected to be accorded the feminine privilege of
sitting at the side of her mother, but it had not occurred to the Squire
to offer it to her. She was a pretty girl, twenty-two years of age, with
a fair skin and abundant brown hair. She was dressed in costly white
satin, her gown simply cut. As she had stood before her glass, while her
mother's maid had held for her her light evening cloak, her beautiful
neck and shoulders had seemed warmly flushed by contrast with the dead
pallor of the satin. She also had hardly spoken since they had driven
off from their hotel, which was so quiet and private that it was hardly
like an hotel, and where some of the servants had stood in the hall to
see them get into their carriage, just as they might have done at home
at Kencote.

It was a great occasion for Cicely. Her brothers--Dick, who was in the
Grenadier Guards, and Humphrey, who was in the Foreign Office--were well
enough used to the scenes of splendour offered by a London season, but
Cicely had hardly ever been in London at all. She had been brought up
four years before to be presented, and had been taken home again
immediately. She had seen nothing of London gaieties, either then or
since. Now she was to enjoy such opportunities of social intercourse as
might be open to the daughter of a rich squire who had had all he wanted
of town life thirty years before, and had lived in his country house
ever since. A fortnight was as long as the Squire cared to be away from
Kencote, even in the month of June; and a fortnight was to be the extent
of Cicely's London season. This was to be the crowning night of it.

The Squire chattered on affably. He had had a good dinner and had not
been hurried over it, or afterwards. That was the worst of those
theatres, he would say; they didn't give you time even to drink your
glass of wine; and he had not been affable with his wife and daughter
the evening before, when driving to the play. But now he was rather
pleased with himself. He did not care for all this sort of thing, of
course; he had had quite enough of it as a subaltern, dancing about
London all night, and going everywhere--all very well for a young
fellow, but you got tired of it. Still, there was a certain flavour
about a Court Ball, even for a one-time subaltern in the Blues, who had
taken part in everything that was going on. Other people scrambled for
such things--they had to if they wanted them, and why they should want
them if they didn't come to them naturally, the Squire couldn't tell. To
a man of the importance of Edward Clinton of Kencote, they came as a
matter of course, and he accepted them as his due, but was pleased, too,
at having his social importance recognised in such a way, without his
stirring a finger. As a matter of cold fact, a finger had been stirred
to procure this particular honour, although it had not been his. But of
that he was not aware.

The carriage drove slowly with the rest into the big court-yard, where a
military band was playing bright music. Cicely suddenly felt exhilarated
and expectant. They drove up before the great entrance, red-carpeted,
brightly lit, and went through the hall up the stairs into the
cloak-room. Cicely had a flush on her cheeks now as she waited for her
mother, who seemed to be taking an interminable time to settle her lace
and her jewels. Mrs. Clinton looked her over and her eyes brightened a
little. "Are you nervous, darling?" she asked; and Cicely said, "No,
mother, not a bit." The scent of flowers was in her nostrils, the
strains of the music expectantly in her ears. She was going to dance in
a royal palace, and she was such a country mouse that she was excited at
the prospect of seeing royalty at close quarters. She had been far too
nervous to take in anything when she had been presented, and that had
been four years ago.

They went out and found the Squire waiting for them. He did not ask
them, as he generally did, why they had been so long.

They seemed to go through interminable wide corridors, decorated in red
and gold, with settees against the walls and beautiful pictures hanging
above them, but came at last to the great ball-room.

Cicely drew her breath as she entered. This was better than the
Meadshire County Ball, or the South Meadshire Hunt Ball. The women were
mostly in white, or pale colours, but their jewels were beyond anything
she had ever imagined. The lights from the great lustre chandeliers
seemed to be reflected in those wonderful clusters and strings and
devices of sparkling gems. Cold white and cold fire for the women,
colour for the men. Scarlet and gold pre-dominated, but there were
foreign attaches in uniforms of pale blue and silver, and other
unfamiliar colours, eastern robes and dresses encrusted with jewels or
richly embroidered in silks. It was gorgeous, a scene from fairyland.

There was a sudden ebbing of the tide of chatter. The band in the
gallery began to play "God save the King." Doors were thrown open at the
end of the great room, and the royal party came in slowly, passed down
the open space on the red carpet between the lines of bowing and
curtseying guests, and took their places on the dais. Cicely gazed her
fill at them. They were just as she had seen them a hundred times in
pictures in the illustrated papers, but more royal, and yet, more human.

They danced their opening quadrille, and after that every one could
dance. But of all the people there Cicely knew no one who would be
likely to dance with her. She sat by her mother on one of the raised
settees that ran in four rows the length of the room. The Squire had
found friends and was talking to them elsewhere. Her brother Dick, who
she knew was to have been there, she had not yet seen. Everything
depended upon him. Surely, people did not come casually late to a Court
Ball! If something had prevented his coming at all, it seemed to her
that she would have to sit there all the evening.

Her eyes brightened. There was Dick making his way towards them. He
looked very smart in his guardsman's uniform, and very much at home with
himself, as if the King's ball-room was no more to him than any other
ball-room. He was always provokingly leisurely in his movements, and
even now he stopped twice to talk to people whom he knew, and stood with
them each time as if he would stay there for ever. Really, Dick could be
almost as provoking as the Squire, where their womenfolk were concerned.

But at last he came, smiling very pleasantly. "Hullo, mother!" he said.
"Hullo, Siskin! Now you've seen the Queen in her parlour, eh? Well, how
do you like yourself?"

He was a good-looking fellow, Dick, with his well-shaped, closely
cropped head, his well-trained moustache, his broad, straight shoulders
and lean waist and hips. He was over thirty, but showed few signs as yet
of the passing of youth. It was quite plain by the way he looked at her
that he was fond of his sister. She was nearly ten years younger than he
and still a child to him, to be patronised and petted, if she was taken
notice of at all. He didn't take much notice of his mother, contenting
himself with telling her that she "looked as smart as any of 'em." But
he stood and talked to Cicely, and his eyes rested on her as if he were
proud of her.

In the meantime the delicious strains of a valse were swinging through
the great room, and the smooth floor was full of dancers, except in the
space reserved for the royalties, where only a few couples were
circling. Cicely's feet were moving. "Can't we dance, Dick?" she said.

"Come on," said Dick, "let's have a scurry," and he led her down on to
the floor and floated her out into a paradise of music and movement.
Dick was the best partner she had ever danced with. He had often snubbed
her about her own dancing, but he had danced with her all the same, more
than most brothers dance with their sisters, at country balls, which
were the only balls she had ever been to. He was a kind brother,
according to his lights, and Cicely would have liked to dance with him
all the evening.

That, of course, was out of the question. Dick knew plenty of people to
dance with to-night, if she didn't. In fact, he seemed to know half the
people in the room, although he gave her the impression that he thought
Court Balls rather mixed affairs. "Can't be certain of meeting your
friends here," he said, and added, "of course," as admitting handsomely
that people might be quite entitled to be asked who did not happen to be
his friends. "You're not the only country cousins, Siskin," he said,
which gave Cicely somehow a higher opinion of herself, his dissociation
of himself in this matter of country cousinhood from his family striking
her as nothing unreasonable. Indeed, it was not unreasonable with regard
to the Clintons, the men taking their part, as a matter of course, in
everything to which their birth and wealth entitled them, so long as
they cared to do so, the women living, for the most part, at home, in a
wide and airy seclusion.

"Want to dance, eh?" said Dick, in answer to her little plea. "All
right, I'll bring up some young fellows."

And he did. He brought up a succession of them and delivered them
off-hand to his mother and sister with a slight air of authority, doing
his duty very thoroughly, as a kind brother should.

Most of them were quite young--as young, or younger than Cicely herself.
Some of them wore the uniform of Dick's own regiment, and were
presumably under his orders, professionally if not in private life. Some
of them were amazingly patronising and self-possessed, and these did not
ask Cicely to dance again. She felt, when they returned her to her
mother, that she had not been a success with them. Others were boyish
and diffident, and with them she got on pretty well. With one, a modest
child of nineteen or so with a high-sounding title, she was almost
maternally friendly, and he seemed to cling to her as a refuge from a
new and bewildering world. They ate ices together--he told her that he
had been brought up at home in Ireland under a priest, and had never
eaten enough ices at a sitting until he had joined his regiment a
fortnight before. He could not dance well, indeed hardly at all,
although he confessed to having taken lessons, and his gratitude when
Cicely suggested that they should go and look at some of the rooms
instead, warmed her heart to him and put their temporary friendship on
the best possible footing.

They stayed together during three dances, went out on to the terrace,
explored wherever they were permitted to explore, paid two visits to the
buffet, and enjoyed themselves much in the same way as if they had been
school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of
grown-ups. The boy became volubly friendly and bubbling over with
unexpected humour and high spirits. He tried to persuade Cicely to stay
away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. Nobody would miss them, he
explained. But she said she must go back, and when they joined the crowd
again her partner was haled off with a frightened look to the royal
circle, and she found her mother standing up before the seat on which
she had sat all the evening searching anxiously for her with her eyes,
and her father by her side.

An old man, looking small and shrunken in his heavy uniform, but
otherwise full of life and kindliness, with twinkling eyes and a short
white beard, was with them, and she breathed a sigh of relief, for if
she was not frightened of what her mother might say about her long
absence, she rather dreaded the comments her father might be pleased to
pass on it. But her kinsman, Lord Meadshire, Lord-Lieutenant of the
county, a great magnate in the eyes of the world, was to her just a very
kind and playful old man, whose jokes only, because of their inherent
feebleness, caused her any discomfort. Cousin Humphrey would preserve
her from the results of her fault if she had committed one.

"Well, my dear," he said in an affectionate, rather asthmatical voice,
"you've brought us some of the Meadshire roses, eh, what? Hope you're
enjoying yourself. If you had come a little earlier, I would have asked
you to dance with me."

"Where have you been so long, Cicely?" asked her mother, but the twinkle
in Lord Meadshire's eyes showed that a joke was in progress, and he
broke in hurriedly, "Forty or fifty years earlier, I mean, my dear," and
he chuckled himself into a fit of coughing.

The Squire was not looking quite pleased, but whatever the cause of his
displeasure it was not, apparently, Cicely's prolonged absence, for he
also asked if she was enjoying herself, and looked at her with some
pride and fondness. Going home in the carriage, she learned later that
Lord Meadshire, who would have done a great deal more to provide her
with social gaiety if he had not been living, now, mostly in retirement
with an invalid wife, had procured those commands which had brought them
up to London, and are not generally bestowed unasked on the belongings
of a country squire, however important he may be in the midst of his own
possessions.

Lord Meadshire stayed with them for some little time and pointed out to
her some of the notabilities and the less familiar royalties. Then Dick
came up and took her away to dance again. After that she sat by her
mother's side until the end. She saw the boy with whom she had made
friends eying her rather wistfully. He had danced a quadrille with a
princess, and the experience seemed so to have shattered his nerve that
he was not equal to making his way to her to ask her to bear him company
again, and she could not very well beckon him, as she felt inclined to
do. The ball became rather dull, although she looked a good deal at the
King and Queen and thought how extraordinary it was that she should be
in the same room with them.

Before she had quite realised that it had begun, the ball was over. The
band played "God save the King" again. Everybody stood up and the royal
procession was formed and went away to supper. With the light of royalty
eclipsed, her own supper seemed an ordinary affair. At country dances
she had shirked it whenever she could, taking advantage of a clearer
floor to dance with some willing partner right through a valse or a
two-step from beginning to end. After supper she danced once or twice,
but as she drove back to the very private hotel at about half-past one,
she only felt as if she had not danced nearly enough, and as she
undressed she hardly knew whether she had enjoyed herself or not.




CHAPTER II

IN THE BAY OF BISCAY


On the night on which Cicely Clinton was enjoying herself at the Court
Ball, the _Punjaub_ homeward bound from Australia _via_ Colombo and the
Suez Canal was steaming through the Bay of Biscay, which, on this night
of June had prepared a pleasant surprise for the _Punjaub's_ numerous
passengers by lying calm and still under a bright moon.

Two men were leaning over the side of the upper deck, watching the
phosphorescent gleam of the water as it slid past beneath them, and
talking as intimate friends. They were Ronald Mackenzie, the explorer,
returning home after his adventurous two years' expedition into the
wilds of Tibet, and Jim Graham, whose home was at Mountfield, three
miles away from Kencote, where the Clintons lived. They were not
intimate friends, in spite of appearances. They had joined the ship
together at Colombo, and found themselves occupying the same cabin. But
acquaintanceship ripens so fast on board ship that the most dissimilar
characters may adhere to one another for as long as a voyage lasts,
although they may never meet again afterwards, nor particularly wish to.

Mackenzie was a tall, ruggedly fashioned man, with greying hair and a
keen, bold face. Jim Graham was more slightly built. He had an open,
honest look; he was rather deliberate in speech, and apparently in
thought, for in conversation he would often pause before speaking, and
he sometimes ignored a question altogether, as if he had not heard it,
or had not understood it. There were those who called him stupid; but it
was usually said of him that he was slow and sure. He had a rather ugly
face, but it was that pleasant ugliness which, with a well-knit athletic
body, clear eyes and a tanned skin, is hardly distinguishable, in a man,
from good looks.

They were talking about London. "I can smell it and see it," said
Mackenzie. "I hope it will be raining when I get home. I like the wet
pavements, and the lights, and the jostling crowds. Lord! it will be
good to see it again. How I've pined for it, back there! But I'll be out
of it again in a month. It's no place for a man like me, except to get
back to every now and then."

"That's how most of us take it," said Jim, "unless we have to work
there. I'm glad I haven't to, though I enjoy it well enough for a week
or two, occasionally."

"Do you live in the country all the year round?"

"Yes."

Mackenzie threw him a glance which seemed to take him in from top to
toe. "What do you do?" he asked.

Jim Graham paused for a moment before replying. "I have a good deal to
do," he said. "I've got my place to look after."

"That doesn't take you all your time, does it?"

"It takes a good deal of it. And I'm on the bench."

"That means sending poor devils to prison for poaching your game, I
suppose."

"Not quite that," said Jim, without a smile.

"I suppose what it all does mean is that you live in a big country house
and shoot and hunt and fish to your heart's content, with just enough
work to keep you contented with yourself. By Jove, some men are lucky!
Do you know what my life has been?"

"I know you have been through many adventures and done big things," said
Jim courteously.

"Well, I'm obliged to you for putting it like that. Seems to me I didn't
put my idea of your life quite so nicely, eh?" He stood up and stretched
his tall figure, and laughed. "I'm a rough diamond," he said. "I don't
mind saying so, because it's plain enough for any one to see. I
sometimes envy people like you their easy manners; but I've got to be
content with my own; and after all, they have served my turn well
enough. Look at us two. I suppose I'm about ten years older than you,
but I had made my name when I was your age. You were born in a fine
country house."

"Not so very fine," said Jim.

"Well, pretty fine compared to the house I was born in, which was the
workhouse. You were educated at Eton and Christchurch, and all that sort
of thing----"

"I don't want to spoil any comparison you are going to make," said Jim,
"but I was at Winchester and New College."

"That will do," said Mackenzie. "I was dragged up at the workhouse
school till I was twelve. Then I ran away and sold papers in the
streets, and anything else that I could pick up a few coppers by--except
steal. I never did that. I always made up my mind I'd be a big man some
day, and--I'm glad I didn't steal."

"I didn't either, you know," said Jim, "although I'm not a big man, and
never shall be."

"Ah, that's where the likes of me scores. You've no call to ambition.
You have everything you can want provided for you."

"There have been one or two big men born as I was," said Jim. "But
please go on with your story. When did you go on your first journey?"

"When I was sixteen. I looked much older. I shipped before the mast and
went out to Australia, and home round Cape Horn. By Jove, I shan't
forget that. The devil was in the wind. We were five months coming home,
and nearly starved to death, and worked till we were as thin as hungry
cats. Then I shipped with the Boyle-Geering expedition--you know--North
Pole, and three years trying to get there. Then I tried a change of
climate and went to Central Africa with Freke. I was his servant, got
his bath, shaved him, brushed his clothes--he was always a bit of a
dandy, Freke, and lived like a gentleman, though I don't believe he was
any better than I was when he started; but he could fight too, and there
wasn't his equal with niggers. We had trouble that trip, and the men who
went out with him were a rotten lot. They'd found the money, or he
wouldn't have taken them. He knew a man when he saw one. When we came
home I was second in command.

"It was easy after that. I led that expedition through Uganda when I was
only twenty-five; and the rest--well, the rest I dare say you know."

"Yes, I know," said Jim. "You've done a lot."

"Not so bad, eh, for a workhouse brat?"

"Not so bad for anybody."

"I'm up top now. I used to envy lots of people. Now most people envy
me."

Jim was silent.

Mackenzie turned to him. "I suppose you've had a pretty easy time
travelling," he said. There was a suspicion of a sneer on his long thin
lips.

"Pretty easy," said Jim.

"Ah! Your sort of travelling is rather different from mine. If you had
been roughing it in Tibet for the last two years you would be pretty
glad to be getting back."

"I'm glad to be getting back as it is."

Mackenzie turned and leaned over the rail again. "Well, I don't know
that I don't envy you a bit after all," he said. "I've got no friends in
England. I'm not a man to make friends. The big-wigs will take me up
this time. I know that from what I've seen. I shall be a lion. I suppose
I shall be able to go anywhere I like. But there's nowhere I want to go
to particularly, when I've had enough of London. You've got your country
home. Lord, how I've thought of the English country, in summer time!
Thirsted for it. But it has to belong to you, in a way. I've a good mind
to buy a little place--I shall be able to afford it when my book comes
out. But I should want a wife to keep it warm for me. You're not
married, I suppose?"

"No."

"Going to be?"

Jim made no reply.

Mackenzie laughed. "Mustn't ask questions, I suppose," he said. "I'm a
rough diamond, Graham. Got no manners, you see. Never had any one to
teach 'em to me. I apologise."

"No need to," said Jim.

There was silence for a space. The great round moon shone down and
silvered the long ripples on the water.

"I don't mind answering your question," said Jim, looking out over the
sea. "There are some country neighbours of mine. One of the sons is my
chief pal. We were brought up together, more or less. He's going to
marry my sister. And--well, I hope I'm going to marry his."

His face changed a little, but Mackenzie, looking straight before him
did not notice it. "Sounds a capital arrangement," he said drily.

Jim flushed, and drew himself up. "Well, I think I'll be turning in," he
said.

Mackenzie faced him quickly. "Tell me all about it," he said. "How old
is she? You have known her all your life. When did you first find out
you wanted to marry her? When are you going to be married?"

Jim looked at him squarely. "You are taking liberties," he said.

Mackenzie laughed again--his harsh, unamused laugh. "All right," he
said. "One has to be as delicate as a fine lady talking to fellows like
you. It's not worth it. When you live like a savage half your life, you
sort of hunger after hearing about things like that--people living in
the country, falling in love and getting married, and going to church
every Sunday--all the simple, homely things. A man without all the
nonsense about good form and all that sort of thing--a man who'd done
things--he would know why you asked him, and he would know he couldn't
find anybody better to tell his little happy secrets to."

"Oh, well," said Jim, slightly mollified.

"I dare say you're right, though," said Mackenzie. "One doesn't blab to
every stranger. Even I don't, and I'm a rough diamond, as I've told
you."

"Yes, you've told me that."

"Is the fellow who is going to marry your sister a country gentleman,
too?"

"No. His father is. He's a younger son. He's a doctor."

"A doctor! Isn't that a funny thing for a country gentleman's son to
be?"

"I don't know that it is. He's a clever fellow. He went in for science
at Oxford, and got keen."

"That's good hearing. I like to hear of men getting keen about a real
job. You might tell me about him, if I'm not taking another liberty in
asking."

"Oh, look here, Mackenzie, I'm sorry I said that. I didn't understand
why you asked what you did."

"I've told you. I like to hear about everything that goes on in the
world. It isn't curiosity, and yet in a way it is. I'm curious about
everything that goes on--everywhere. It isn't impertinent curiosity,
anyway."

"I see that. I'll tell you about Walter Clinton. He's a good chap. His
father has a fine place next to mine. He's a rich man. His family has
been there since the beginning of all things. Walter is just my age.
We've always been a lot together."

"Is there a large family? What do his brothers do?"

"There's Dick, the eldest son. He's in the Guards. There's Humphrey in
the Foreign Office, and a younger son, a sailor. And--and there are
three girls--two of them are children--twins."

"Well, now, aren't I right in saying it's odd for a son in a family like
that to become a doctor?"

"Oh, well, I suppose in a way you are, though I can't see why he
shouldn't be. The fact is that they wanted to make a parson of
him--there's a rather good family living. But he wasn't taking any."

"Ah! I thought I knew something about your country gentry. Well, I
admire the doctor. Was there a row?"

"His father was rather annoyed. Perhaps it's not to be wondered at. His
half-brother is Rector at Kencote now, and when he dies they'll have to
give the living to a stranger. Of course they would rather have one of
the family."

"It's like a chapter in a book--one of the long, easy ones, all about
country life and the squire and the parson. I love 'em. And the doctor
is going to marry your sister. Can I give 'em a skin for a wedding
present?"

"I'm sure they would be gratified. You'd better come down and make their
acquaintance."

"I'll do that. I'd like to come and see you, Graham; and you mustn't
mind my roughness peeping out occasionally. I haven't had many chances
in life."

There was a pause, and then Jim said, "Walter Clinton's sister comes
next to him in the family. She's six or seven years younger. Of course,
I've known her ever since she was a baby. When I came back from Oxford
one summer vac., I found her almost grown up. She seemed quite different
somehow. I was always over there all the summer, or she was with my
sister. We fixed it up we would get married some day. They laughed at
us, and said we had better wait a few years; but of course they were
pleased, really, both my people and hers, though they thought it a bit
premature; she was only seventeen. When I went back to Oxford and
thought it over I said to myself it wasn't quite fair to tie her down at
that age. I would wait and see. So we fell back to what we had been
before."

He stopped suddenly. "Is that all?" asked Mackenzie in some surprise.

"It's all at present."

There was a long pause. "It's disappointing, somehow," said Mackenzie.
"I suppose I mustn't ask questions, but there are a lot I'd like to
ask."

"Oh, ask away. When the ice is once broken one can talk. It does one
good to talk sometimes."

"Women talk to each other about their love affairs. Men don't--not the
real ones--except on occasions."

"Well, we'll let this be an occasion, as you have started the subject."
He laughed lightly. "You've got a sort of power, Mackenzie. If any one
had told me yesterday that I should be talking to you to-night about a
thing I haven't mentioned to a soul for five years--except once or twice
to Walter Clinton--I should have stared at them. I'm not generally
supposed to be communicative."

"It's impersonal," said Mackenzie, "like telling things to a priest. I'm
not in the same world as you. Five years, is it? Well, now, what on
earth have you been doing ever since? She's not too young to marry now."

"No. I was at Oxford a year after what I told you of. Then I went for a
year to learn estate management on my uncle's property. When I came home
I thought I would fix it up with my father--he was alive then. He said,
wait a year longer. He was beginning to get ill, and I suppose he didn't
want to face the worry of making arrangements till he got better. But he
never got better, and within a year he died."

"And then you were your own master. That's two years ago, isn't it? And
here you are coming back from a year's trip round the world. You seem to
be pretty slow about things."

"One doesn't become one's own master immediately one succeeds to the
ownership of land. These death duties have altered all that. I shan't be
free for another year. Then I hope you will come to my wedding,
Mackenzie."

"Thanks. Didn't the young lady object to keeping it all hanging on for
so long?"

Jim did not reply for a moment. Then he said a little stiffly, "I wrote
to her from Oxford when I had thought things over. I thought it wasn't
fair to tie her up before I was ready to marry, and she so young."

"And that means that you have never allowed yourself to make love to her
since."

"Yes, it means that."

"And yet you have been in love with her all the time?"

"Yes."

"Well, it shows a greater amount of self-control than most people
possess--certainly a good deal more than I possess, I suppose you are
sure of her."

Jim did not reply to this, but he said presently, "If it wasn't for the
death duties I should have hoped to be married before this."

"I'll tell you what I don't understand," said Mackenzie. "I suppose you
live in much the same way as your father did before you."

"Yes. My mother lives with me, and my sister."

"Well, surely you _could_ get married if you wanted to. You've got your
house and everything, even if there isn't quite so much money to spend
for a bit. And as for ready money--it doesn't cost nothing to travel for
a year as you're doing."

"Oh, an uncle of mine paid for that," said Jim. "I got seedy after my
father's death. There was a lot of worry, and--and I was fond of the old
man. The doctors told me to go off. I'm all right now. As for the
rest--well, there are such things as jointures and dowries. No, I
couldn't marry, giving my wife and my mother and sister everything they
ought to have, before another year. Even then it will be a close thing;
I shall have to be careful."

They fell silent. The dark mass of the ship's hull beneath them slipped
on through the water, drawing ever nearer towards home. The moon climbed
still higher into the sky. "Well, we've had an interesting talk," said
Mackenzie, drawing himself up. "What you have told me is all so entirely
different from anything that would ever happen in my life. If I wanted
to marry a girl I should marry her, and let the money go hang. She'd
have to share and share. But I dare say when I want a thing I want it
for the moment a good deal more than you do; and, generally, I see that
I get it. Now I think I shall turn in. Give me ten minutes."

He went down to the cabin they both occupied. As he undressed he said to
himself, "Rather a triumph, drawing a story like that from a fellow like
that. And Lord, _what_ a story! He deserves to lose her. I should like
to hear her side of it."

Jim Graham smoked another cigarette, walking round the deck. He felt
vaguely dissatisfied with himself for having made a confidant of
Mackenzie, and at the same time relieved at having given vent to what he
had shut up for so long in the secret recesses of his mind.

A day or two later the two men parted at Tilbury. They had not again
mentioned the subject of their long conversation in the Bay of Biscay.




CHAPTER III

THE CLINTONS OF KENCOTE


Cicely was returning home with her father and mother after her short
taste of the season's gaieties. It was pleasant to lean back in a corner
of the railway carriage and look at the rich Meadshire country, so
familiar to her, running past the window. She had not wanted to go home
particularly, but she was rather glad to be going home all the same.

The country in South Meadshire is worth looking at. There are
deep-grassed water-meadows, kept green by winding rivers; woods of beech
and oak; stretches of gorse and bracken; no hills to speak of, but
gentle rises, crowned sometimes by an old church, or a pleasant-looking
house, neither very old nor very new, very large nor very small. The big
houses, and there are a good many of them, lie for the most part in what
may be called by courtesy the valleys. You catch a glimpse of them
sometimes at a little distance from the line, which seems to have shown
some ingenuity in avoiding them, standing in wide, well-timbered parks,
or peeping from amongst thicker trees, with their court of farm and
church and clustered village, in dignified seclusion. For the rest,
there are picturesque hamlets; cottages with bright gardens; children,
and fluttering clothes-lines; pigs and donkeys and geese on the cropped
commons; a network of roads and country lanes; and everywhere a look of
smiling and contented well-being, which many an English county of higher
reputation for picturesque scenery might envy.

The inhabitants of South Meadshire will tell you that it is one of the
best counties for all-round sport. Game is preserved, but not
over-preserved, and the mixture of pasture and arable land and frequent
covert, while it does not tempt the fox-hunting Londoner, breeds stout
foxes for the pleasure of those who know every inch of it; and there is
enough grass, enough water, and stiff enough fences to try the skill of
the boldest, and to provide occasionally such a run as from its
comparative rarity accords a gratification unknown to the frequenter of
the shires. Big fish are sometimes caught in the clear streams of South
Meadshire, and they are caught by the people who own them, or by their
friends. For in this quiet corner of England the life of the hall and
the village still goes on unchanged. At the meets--on lawn, at
cross-road, or by covert-side--everybody knows everybody else, at least
by sight; neighbours shoot with one another and not with strangers; and
the small fry of the countryside get their share of whatever fun is
going on.

In the middle of this pleasant land lies the manor of Kencote, and a
good many fat acres around it, which have come to the Clintons from time
to time, either by lucky marriages or careful purchase, during the close
upon six hundred years they have been settled there. For they are an old
family and in their way an important one, although their actual
achievements through all the centuries in which they have enjoyed wealth
and local consideration fill but a small page in their family history.

The Squire had, in the strong room of the Bathgate and Medchester Bank,
in deed-boxes at his lawyers, and in drawers and chests and cupboards in
his house, papers worthy of the attention of the antiquary. From time to
time they did engage the antiquary's attention, and, scattered about in
bound volumes of antiquarian and genealogical magazines, in the
proceedings of learned societies, and in county histories, you may find
the fruits of much careful and rewarding research through these various
documents. When the Squire was approached by some one who wished to
write a paper or read a paper, or compile a genealogy, or carry out any
project for the purposes of which it was necessary to gain access to the
Clinton archives, he would express his annoyance to his family. He would
say that he wished these people would let him alone. The fact was that
there were so few really old families left in England, that people like
himself who had lived quietly on their property for eight or nine
hundred years, or whatever it might be, had to bear all the brunt of
these investigations, and it was really becoming an infernal nuisance.
But he would always invite the antiquary to Kencote, give him a bottle
of fine claret and his share of a bottle of fine port, and every
facility for the pursuit of his inquiries.

_A History of the Ancient and Knightly Family of Clinton of Kencote in
the County of Meadshire_, was compiled about a hundred years ago by the
Reverend John Clinton Smith, M.A., Rector of Kencote, and published by
Messrs. Dow and Runagate of Paternoster Row. It is not very accurate,
but any one interested in such matters can, with due precaution taken,
gain from it valuable information concerning the twenty-two generations
of Clintons who have lived and ruled at Kencote since Sir Giles de
Clinton acquired the manor in the reign of Edward I.

The learned Rector devoted a considerable part of his folio volume to
tracing a connection between the Clintons of Kencote and other families
of Clintons who have mounted higher in the world. It is the opinion of
later genealogists that he might have employed his energies to better
purpose, but, in any case, the family needs no further shelter than is
supplied by its own well-rooted family tree. You will find too, in his
book, the result of his investigations into his own pedigree, in which
the weakest links have to bear the greatest strain, as is often the case
with pedigrees.

It remains only to be said that the Squire, Edward Clinton, had
succeeded his grandfather, Colonel Thomas, of whom you may read in
sporting magazines and memoirs, at the age of eighteen, and had always
been a rich man, and an honest one.

Kencote lies about six miles to the south-west of the old town of
Bathgate. The whole parish, and it is an exceptionally large one,
belongs to the Squire, with a good deal more land besides in
neighbouring parishes. Kencote House is a big, rather ugly structure,
and was built early in the eighteenth century after the disastrous fire
which destroyed the beautiful old Tudor hall and nearly all its hoarded
treasures. This catastrophe is worth a brief notice, for nowadays an
untitled family often enjoys some consideration from the possession of
an old and beautiful house, and the Clintons of Kencote would be better
known to the world at large if they did not live in a comparatively new
one.

It happened at the dead of a winter night. Young William Clinton had
brought home his bride, Lady Anne, only daughter and heiress of the Earl
of Beechmont, that afternoon, and there had been torches and bonfires
and a rousing welcome. Nobody knew exactly how it happened, but they
awoke to find the house in flames, and most of the household too
overcome by the results of their merry-making to be of any use in saving
it. The house itself was burnt to a shell, but it was long enough in the
burning to have enabled its more valuable contents to have been saved,
if the work had been set about with some method. The young squire, in
night-cap, shirt, and breeches, whether mindful of his pedigree at that
time of excitement, or led by the fantastic spirit that moves men in
such crises, threw as much of the contents of his muniment room out of
the window as he had time for, and the antiquarians bless him to this
day. Then he went off to the stables, and helped to get out his horses.
My Lady Anne, who was only sixteen, saved her jewels and one or two of
her more elaborate gowns, and then sat down by the sun-dial and cried.
The servants worked furiously as long as the devouring flames allowed
them, but when there was nothing left of Kencote Hall but smouldering,
unsafe walls, under a black, winter sky, and the piled-up heap of things
that had been got out into the garden came to be examined, it was found
to be made up chiefly of the lighter and less valuable pieces of
furniture, a few pictures and hangings, many tumbled folios from the
library, kitchen and house utensils, and just a few pieces of plate and
other valuables to salt the whole worthless mass.

So perished in a night the chief pride of the Clintons of Kencote, and
the noble house, with its great raftered hall, its carved and panelled
chambers, its spoil of tapestries and furniture, carpets, china, silver,
pictures, books, all the possessions that had been gathered from many
lands through many years, was only a memory that must fade more and more
rapidly as time went on.

The young couple went back to her ladyship's father, not many miles
away, and Kencote was left in its ruins for ten years or so. Then my
Lord Beechmont died, sadly impoverished by unfortunate dealings with the
stock of the South Sea Company, the house and land that remained to him
were sold, and Kencote was rebuilt with the proceeds, much as it stands
to-day, except that Merchant Jack, the father of Colonel Thomas, bitten
with the ideas of his time, covered the mellow red brick with a coating
of stucco and was responsible for the Corinthian porch, and the
ornamental parapet surmounted by Grecian urns.

Merchant Jack had been a younger son and had made his fortune in the
city. He was modern in his ideas, and a rich man, and wanted a house as
good as his neighbours. Georgian brick, and tall, narrow, small-paned
windows had gone out of fashion. So had the old formal gardens. Those at
Kencote had survived the destruction of the house, but they did not
survive the devastating zeal of Merchant Jack. They were swept away by a
pupil of Capability Brown's, who allowed the old walls of the kitchen
garden to stand because they were useful for growing fruit, but
destroyed walls and terraces and old yew hedges everywhere else, brought
the well-treed park into relation, as he thought, with the garden, by
means of sunk fences, planted shrubberies, laid down vast lawns, and
retired very well pleased with himself at having done away with one more
old-fashioned, out-of-date garden, and substituted for it a few more
acres of artificial ugliness.

He did just one thing that turned out well; he made a large lake in a
hollow of the park and ringed it with rhododendrons, which have since
grown to enormous size. At the end of it he caused to be built a stucco
temple overhung with weeping ashes, designed "to invite Melancholy."
There is no showing that Merchant Jack had any desire to respond to such
an invitation, but it was the fashion of the time, and no doubt he was
pleased with the idea.

Merchant Jack also refurnished the house when his architect had had his
way with it and the workmen had departed. A few good pieces he kept, but
most of the furniture, which had been brought into the house when it was
rebuilt after the fire, disappeared, to make way for heavy mahogany and
rosewood. Some of it went down to the dower house, a little Jacobean
hall in a dark corner of the park, and there is reason to fear that the
rest was sold for what it would fetch.

In all these lamentable activities, good, rich, up-to-date Merchant Jack
was only improving his property according to the ideas of his time, and
had no more idea of committing artistic improprieties than those people
nowadays who buy a dresser from a farm-house kitchen to put in their
drawing-room, and plaster the adjacent walls with soup plates. His
memorial tablet in Kencote church speaks well of him and his memory must
be respected.

But we have left Edward Clinton with his wife and daughter sitting for
so long in the train between Ganton and Kencote, that we must now return
to them without any further delay.

Having got into the railway carriage at the London terminus as a private
gentleman, of no more account than any other first-class passenger, and
weighed only by his potential willingness to pay handsomely for
attentions received, as the successive stages of his journey were
accomplished, he seemed to develop in importance. At Ganton, where a
change had to be made, although it was twenty miles and more from his
own parcel of earth, peaked caps were touched to him, and the
station-master himself, braided coat and all, opened his carriage door,
expressing, as he did so, a hope that the present fair weather would
continue. One might almost, until one had thought it over, have imagined
him to be appealing to the Squire as one who might take a hand in its
continuance if he were so minded, at any rate in the neighbourhood of
Kencote.

At Kencote itself, so busy was the entire station staff in helping him
and his belongings out of the train, that the signal for starting was
delayed a full minute, and then given almost as an after-thought, as if
it were a thing of small importance. Heads were poked out of carriage
windows, and an impertinent stranger, marking the delay and its cause,
asked the station-master, as he was carried past him, where was the red
carpet. The answer might have been that it was duly spread in the
thoughts of all who conducted the Squire from the train to his carriage,
and was as well brushed as if it had been laid on the platform.

The Squire had a loud and affable word for station-master and porters
alike, and another for the groom who stood at the heads of the two fine
greys harnessed to his phaeton. He walked out into the road and looked
them over, remarking that they were the handsomest pair he had seen
since he had left home. Then he took the reins and swung himself up on
to his seat, actively, for a man of his age and weight. Mrs. Clinton
climbed up more slowly to her place by his side, Cicely sat behind, and
with a jingle and clatter the equipage rolled down the road, while the
groom touched his hat and went back to the station omnibus in which Mrs.
Clinton's maid was establishing herself in the midst of a collection of
wraps and little bags. For, unless it was unavoidable, no servant of the
Clintons sat on the same seat of a carriage as a member of the family.

It was in the drowsiest time in the afternoon. The sun shone on the
hay-fields, from which the sound of sharpened scythes and the voices of
the hay-makers came most musically. Great trees bordered the half-mile
of road from the station to the village, and gave a grateful shade. The
gardens of the cottages were bright with June flowers, and the broad
village street, lined with low, irregular buildings, picturesque, but
not at all from neglected age, seemed to be dozing in the still, hot
air. A curtsy at the lodge gates, a turn of the Squire's wrist, and they
were bowling along the well kept road through the park.

A minute more, and they had clattered on to the stones under the big
porch.

"Well, here we are again, Probin," said the Squire to his head coachman,
who himself took the reins from his hands. "And here, please God, we'll
stay for the present."




CHAPTER IV

CLINTONS YOUNG AND OLD


The family tradition of the Clintons, whereby the interests and
occupations of the women were strictly subordinated to those of the men,
had not yet availed to damp the spirits or curb the activities of Joan
and Nancy, of whom Mrs. Clinton had made a simultaneous and somewhat
belated present to the Squire thirteen years before. Frank, the sailor,
the youngest son, had been seven at the time the twins were born, and
Dick a young man at Cambridge. Joan and Nancy were still the pets of the
household, strong and healthy pets, and unruly within the limits
permitted them. Released from their schoolroom, they now came rushing
into the hall, and threw themselves on to their parents and their sister
with loud cries of welcome.

The Squire kissed them in turn--they approached him first as in duty
bound. It had taken him three or four years to get used to their
presence, and during that time he had treated them as the sort of
unaccountable plaything a woman brings into a house and a male
indulgently winks his eye at, a thing beneath his own notice, like a new
gown or a new poodle, or a new curate, but one in which she must be
permitted, in the foolish weakness of her sex, to interest herself. Then
he had gradually begun to "take notice" of them, to laugh at their
childish antics and speeches, to quote them--he had actually done this
in the hunting-field--and finally to like to have them pottering about
with him when duties of investigation took him no further than the
stables or the buildings of the home farm. He had always kept them in
order while they were with him; he had never lost sight of the fact that
they were, after all, feminine; and he had never allowed them to
interfere with his more serious pursuits. But he had fully accepted them
as agreeable playthings for his own lighter hours of leisure, just as he
might have taken to the poodle or the curate, and so treated them still,
although their healthy figures were beginning to fill out, and if they
had been born Clintons of a generation or two before they would have
been considered to be approaching womanhood.

He now greeted them with hearty affection, and told them that if they
were good girls they might come and look at the pheasants with him when
he had read his letters and they had had their tea, and then took
himself off to his library.

Mrs. Clinton's greeting was less hearty, but not less affectionate. She
lingered just that second longer over each of them which gives an
embrace a meaning beyond mere convention, but she only said, "I must go
and see Miss Bird. I suppose she is in the schoolroom." She gathered up
her skirts and went upstairs, but when the twins had given Cicely a
boisterous hug, they went back to their mother, and walked on either
side of her. She was still the chief personage in their little world,
although their father and even their brothers were of so much more
importance in the general scheme of things. And not even in the presence
of their father and brothers did they "behave themselves" as they did
with their mother.

The schoolroom was at the end of a long corridor, down two steps and
round a corner. It was a large room, looking on to the park from two
windows and on to the stableyard from a third. There were shelves
containing the twins' schoolbooks and storybooks, a terrestrial and a
celestial globe, purchased many years ago for the instruction of their
great-aunts, and besides other paraphernalia of learning, signs of more
congenial occupations, such as bird-cages and a small aquarium, boxes of
games, a big doll's house still in tenantable repair though seldom
occupied, implements and materials for wood-carving, and in a corner of
the room a toy fort and a surprising variety of lead soldiers on foot or
on horseback. Such things as these might undergo variation from time to
time. The doll's house might disappear any day, as the rocking-horse had
disappeared, for instance, a year before. But the furniture and other
contents of the room were more stable. It was impossible to think of
their being changed; they were so much a part of it. The Squire never
visited the room, but if he had done so he would have recognised it as
the same room in which he had been taught his own letters, with
difficulty, fifty years before, and if any unauthorised changes had been
made, he would certainly have expressed surprise and displeasure, as he
had done when Walter had carried off to Oxford the old print of Colonel
Thomas on his black horse, Satan, with a view of Kencote House, on a
slight eminence imagined by the artist, in the background. Walter had
had to send the picture back, and it was hanging in its proper place
now, and not likely to be removed again.

Miss Bird, commonly known as "the old starling," to whom Mrs. Clinton
had come to pay an immediate visit upon entering the house, as in duty
bound, was putting things away. She was accustomed to say that she spent
her life in putting things away after the twins had done with them, and
that they were more trouble to her than all the rest of the family had
been. For Miss Bird had lived in the house for nearly thirty years, and
had acted as educational starter to the whole race of young Clintons, to
Dick, Humphrey, Walter, Cicely, and Frank, and had taken a new lease of
life when the twins had appeared on the scene with the expectation of a
prolonged period of service. She was a thin, voluble lady, as old as the
Squire, to whom she looked up as a god amongst mankind; her educational
methods were of an older generation and included the use of the globes
and the blackboard, but she was most conscientious in her duties, her
religious principles were unexceptionable, and she filled a niche at
Kencote which would have seemed empty without her.

"O Mrs. Clinton I am so glad to see you back," she said, almost
ecstatically, "and you too Cicely dear--oh my a new hat and such a
pretty one! You look quite the town lady, upon my word and how did you
enjoy the ball? you must tell me all about it every word now Joan and
Nancy I will not put away your things for you once more and that I
declare and you hear me say it you are the most shockingly untidy
children and if I have told you that once I have told you a hundred
times O Mrs. Clinton a new bonnet too and I declare it makes you look
five years younger _at_ least."

Mrs. Clinton took this compliment equably, and asked if the twins had
been good girls.

"Well, good!" echoed the old starling, "they know best whether they have
been good, of their lessons I say nothing and marks will show, but to
get up as you might say in the dead of the night and let themselves down
from a window with sheets twisted into a rope and not fit to be seen
since, all creased, _most_ dangerous, besides the impropriety for great
girls of thirteen if any one had been passing as I have told them and
should be _obliged_ to report this behaviour to you Mrs. Clinton on the
first opportunity."

Joan and Nancy both glanced at their mother tentatively. "We were only
playing Jacobites and Roundheads," said Joan. "It makes it more real."

"And it wasn't in the middle of the night," added Nancy. "It was four
o'clock, and quite light."

"Why, you might have killed yourselves!" exclaimed Cicely.

"_Exactly_ what I said the very words," corroborated the old starling.

"We tied the sheets very tight," said Joan.

"And tested them thoroughly," added Nancy.

"And we won't do it again, mother," said Joan coaxingly.

"Really, we won't," said Nancy impressively.

"But what else will you do?" asked Mrs. Clinton. "You are getting too
big for these pranks. If your father were to hear of it, I am sure I
don't know what he would say."

She knew pretty well that he would have laughed boisterously, and told
her that he didn't want the children molly-coddled. Time enough for that
by and by when they grew up. And the twins probably knew this too, and
were not unduly alarmed at the implied threat. But there was a quality
in their mother's displeasure, rare as it was, which made them
apprehensive when one of their periodical outbursts had come to light.
They were not old enough to perceive that it was not aroused by such
feats as the one under discussion, which showed no moral delinquency,
but only a certain danger to life and limb, now past. But their
experience did tell them that misbehaviour which caused her displeasure
was not thus referred to their father, and with many embraces and
promises of amendment they procured future oblivion of their escapade.

"Well, I have done my duty," said the old starling, "and very unpleasant
it was to have to welcome you home with such a story, Mrs. Clinton, and
now it is all over and done with I will say and am glad to say that it
is the only _blot_. And that is what I said to both Joan and Nancy that
it was _such_ a pity to have spoilt everything at the last moment, for
otherwise two better behaved children it would have been impossible to
find anywhere."

At which Joan and Nancy both kissed the old starling warmly, and she
strained them to her flat but tender bosom and called them her precious
pets.

They went with Cicely into her bedroom while she "took off her things."
They betrayed an immense curiosity for every detail of her recent
experiences, particularly that crowning one of the Court Ball. She was
exalted in their eyes; she had long been grown up, but now she seemed
more grown up than ever, a whole cycle in advance of their active,
sexless juvenility.

"I don't know," said Joan doubtfully, fingering the new hat which Cicely
had taken off, "but I almost think it must be rather fun to wear pretty
things sometimes."

But Nancy, the younger by some minutes, rebuked that unwholesome
weakness. "What rot, Joan," she said indignantly. "Sis, we have made up
our minds to ask mother if we may wear serge knickerbockers. Then we
shall be able to do what we like."

When this sartorial revolution had been discussed, Cicely asked, "Has
Muriel been over while I have been away?"

"Yes," replied Joan. "Walter was at Mountfield on Sunday, and they came
over in the afternoon. They prowled about together. Of course they
didn't want us."

"But they had us all the same," said Nancy, with a grin. "We stalked
them. They kissed in the Temple, and again in the peach-house."

"But there were lucid intervals," said Joan. "They have made up their
minds about something or other; we couldn't quite hear what it was. They
were in the kitchen garden, and we were on the other side of the wall."

"You weren't listening, darling?" hazarded Cicely.

"Oh, rather not! We wouldn't do such a thing. But Nancy and I like to
pace up and down the yew walk in contemplation, and of course if they
liked to pace up and down by the asparagus beds at the same time, we
couldn't help hearing the murmur of their voices."

"It is something very serious," said Nancy. "Walter is going to tackle
Edward about it at once. And Muriel is quite at one with him in the
matter. She said so."

"How they do go on together, those two!" said Joan. "You would think
they had never met in their lives until they got engaged six months ago.
When they came out of the peach-house Nancy said, 'And this is love!'
Then she ran away."

"Only because Walter ran after me," said Nancy.

"And Muriel put her arm round my neck," continued Joan, "and said, 'O
Joan, _darling_! I am so happy that I don't care _who_ sees me.'
Positively nauseating, I call it. You and Jim don't behave like that,
Sis."

"I should think not," said Cicely primly.

"Well, you're engaged--or as good as," said Nancy. "But I do rather
wonder what Walter is going to tackle Edward about. It can't be to hurry
on the wedding, for it's only a month off now."

"We shall know pretty soon," said Joan. "Father doesn't keep things to
himself."

"No, I expect Edward will make a deuce of a row," said Nancy.

"Nancy!" said Cicely sharply, "you are not to talk like that."

"Darling!" said Nancy in a voice of grieved expostulation. "It is what
Walter said to Muriel. I thought there _couldn't_ be any harm in it."

The twins--they were called "the twankies" by their brothers--went off
after tea in the schoolroom to see the young pheasants with their
father. They were lively and talkative, and the Squire laughed at them
several times, as good-humoured men do laugh at the prattle of innocent
childhood. Arrived at the pens he entered into a long and earnest
conversation with his head keeper, and the twins knew better than to
interrupt him with artless prattle at such a time as that. But going
home again through the dewy park, he unbent once more and egged Nancy on
to imitate the old starling, at which he roared melodiously. He was a
happy man that evening. He had come back to his kingdom, to the serious
business of life, which had a good deal to do with keepers and broods of
pheasants, and to his simple, domestic recreations, much enhanced by the
playful ways of his "pair of kittens."

The mellow light of the summer evening lay over the park, upon the thick
grass of which the shadows of the trees were lengthening. Sheep were
feeding on it, and it was flat round the house and rather uninteresting.
But it was the Squire's own; he had known every large tree since the
earliest days of his childhood, and the others he had planted, seeing
some of them grow to a respectable height and girth. He would have been
quite incapable of criticising it from the point of view of beauty. The
irregular roofs of the stables and other buildings, the innumerable
chimneys of the big house beyond them, seen through a gap in the trees
which hemmed it in for the most part on three sides, were also his own,
and objects so familiar that he saw them with eyes different from any
others that could have been turned upon them. The sight of them gave
him a sensation of pleasure quite unrelated to their æsthetic or even
their actual value. They meant home to him, and everything that he
loved in the world, or out of it. The pleasure was always there
subconsciously--not so much a pleasure as an attitude of mind--but this
evening it warmed into something concrete. "There's plenty of little
dicky-birds haven't got such a nest as my two," he said to the twins,
who failed to see that this speech, which they wriggled over, but
privately thought fatuous, had the elements of both poetry and religion.

In the meantime Cicely had made her way over the park in another
direction to visit her aunts in the dower-house, for she knew they would
be itching for an account of her adventures, and she had not had time to
write to them from London.

Aunt Ellen and Aunt Laura were the only surviving representatives of the
six spinster daughters of Colonel Thomas Clinton, the Squire's
grandfather. One after the other Aunt Mary, Aunt Elizabeth, Aunt Anna
and Aunt Caroline had been carried out of the dark house in which they
had ended their blameless days to a still darker and very narrow house
within the precincts of Kencote church, and the eldest sister, now an
amazingly aged woman, but still in the possession of all her faculties,
and the youngest, who although many years her junior, was well over
seventy, were all that were left of the bevy of spinster ladies.

On their father's death, now nearly forty years ago, they had removed in
a body from the big house in which they had lived in a state of subdued
self-repression to the small one in which, for the first time, they were
to taste independence. For their father had been a terrible martinet
where women were concerned, and would as readily have ordered Aunt Ellen
to bed, at the age of fifty, if he had been displeased with her, as if
she had been a child of ten. And if he had ordered her she would have
gone.

Some of the rooms in the dower-house had been occupied by the agent to
the Kencote estate who at that time was a bachelor, and the rest had
been shut up. The six sisters spent the happiest hours they had hitherto
known in the arrangement of their future lives and of the beautiful old
furniture with which the house was stocked. The lives were to be active,
regular, and charitable. Colonel Thomas, who had allowed them each
twenty pounds a year for dress allowance and pocket-money during his
lifetime, had astonished everybody by leaving them six thousand pounds
apiece in his will, which had been made afresh a year before his death.
He had just then inherited the large fortune of his younger brother, who
had succeeded to the paternal business in Cheapside, lived and died a
bachelor, and saved a great deal of money every year. By his previous
will they would have had a hundred a year each from the estate, and the
use of the dower-house. But even that would have seemed wealth to these
simple ladies as long as they remained together, and all of them alive.
For Colonel Thomas had forgotten, in that first will, to make provision
for the probability of one of them outliving the rest and being reduced
to a solitary existence on a hundred pounds a year. However, with
fifteen hundred a year or so between them, and no rent to pay, they were
exceedingly well off, kept their modest carriage, employed two men in
their garden, and found such pleasures in dividing their surplus wealth
amongst innumerable and deserving charities that the arrival by post of
a nurseryman's catalogue excited them no more than that of an appeal to
subscribe to a new mission.

The beautiful old furniture, huddled in the disused rooms and in the
great range of attics that ran under the high-pitched roof, gave them
immense happiness in the arrangement. They were not in the least alive
to its value at that time, though they had become so in some degree
since, but kept rather quiet about it for fear that their nephew might
wish to carry some of it off to the great house. They thought it very
old-fashioned and rather absurd, and they also held this view of the
beautifully carved and panelled rooms of their old house, which were
certainly too dark for perfect comfort. But they disposed everything to
the best advantage, and produced without knowing it an effect which no
diligent collector could have equalled, and which became still more
delightful and satisfying as the years went on.

Cicely walked across the level park and went through a deep wood,
entering by an iron gate the garden of the dower-house, which seemed to
have been built in a clearing, although it was older than the oldest of
the trees that hemmed it round. On this hot summer afternoon it stood
shaded and cool, and the very fragrance of its old-fashioned garden
seeming to be confined and concentrated by the heavy foliage. There was
not a leaf too many. But in the autumn it was damp and close and in the
winter very dark. A narrow drive of about a hundred yards led straight
from the main road to the porch and showed a blue telescopic glimpse of
distant country. If all the trees had been cut down in front to the
width of the house it would have stood out as a thing of beauty against
its green background, air and light would have been let into the best
rooms and the pleasant view of hill and vale opened up to them. But the
Squire, tentatively approached years before by his affectionate and
submissive aunts, had decisively refused to cut down any trees at all,
and four out of the six of them had taken their last look of this world
out of one or other of those small-paned windows and seen only a great
bank of laurels--even those they were not allowed to cut down--across a
narrow space of gravel, and the branches of oaks not quite ripe for
felling, above them.

Cicely went through a garden door opening on to a stone-floored passage
which ran right through the house, and opened the door of her aunts'
parlour. They were sitting on either side of the fireless grate with
their tea-table not yet cleared between them. Aunt Ellen, ninety-three
years of age, with a lace cap on her head and a white silk shawl over
her shoulders, was sitting upright in her low chair, knitting. She wore
no glasses, and her old hands, meagre, almost transparent, with large
knuckles, and skin that looked as if it had been polished, fumbled a
little with her needles and the thick wool. Her eyesight was failing,
though in the pride of her great age she would not acknowledge it; but
her hearing was almost perfect. Aunt Laura, who was seventy-five,
looked, except for her hair, which was not quite white, the older of the
two. She was bent and frail, and she had taken to spectacles some years
before, to which Aunt Ellen alluded every day of her life with contempt.
They said the same things to each other, on that and on other subjects,
time after time. Every day for years Aunt Ellen had said that if dear
Edward had only been able to cut down the trees in front of the house it
would give them more light and open up the view, and she had said it as
if it had only just occurred to her. And Aunt Laura had replied that she
had thought the same thing herself, and did Ellen remember how dear
Anne, who was always one to say out what she wanted, had asked him if he
thought it might be done, but he had said--quite kindly--that the trees
had always been there, and there they would stay.

The two old ladies welcomed Cicely as if she had been a princess with
whom it was their privilege to be on terms of affectionate intimacy. She
was, in fact, a princess in their little world, the daughter of the
reigning monarch, to whom they owed, and gave, loyal allegiance. Aunt
Laura had been up to the house that morning and heard that they were to
return by the half-past four o'clock train. They had been quite sure
that Cicely would come to see them at once and tell them all her news,
and they had debated whether they would wait for their own tea or not.
They had, in fact, waited for a quarter of an hour. They told her all
this in minute detail, and only by painstaking insistence was Aunt Ellen
herself prevented from rising to ring the bell for a fresh supply to be
brought in. "Well, my dear, if you are quite sure you won't," she said
at last, "I will ring for Rose to take the things away."

Cicely rang the bell, and Rose, who five-and-thirty years before had
come to the dower-house as an apple-cheeked girl from the village
school, answered the summons. She wore a cap with coloured ribbons--the
two sisters still shook their heads together over her tendency to
dressiness--and dropped a child's curtsey to Cicely as she came in. She
had been far too well-trained to speak until she was spoken to, but Aunt
Ellen said, "Here is Miss Clinton returned from London, Rose, where she
has seen the King and Queen." And Rose said, "Well, there, miss!" with a
smile at Cicely, and before she removed the tea-tray settled the white
shawl more closely round Aunt Ellen's shoulders.

"Rose is a good girl," said Aunt Ellen, when she had left the room, "but
I am afraid more fond of admiration than she should be. Well, dear, now
tell us all about what you have seen and done. But, first of all, how is
your dear father?"

"Oh, quite well, thank you, Aunt Ellen," replied Cicely, "and very
pleased to get home, I think."

"Ah!" said Aunt Ellen. "We have all missed him sorely. I am sure it is
wonderful how he denies himself all kinds of pleasure to remain here and
do his duty. It is an example we should all do well to follow."

"When he was quite a young man," said Aunt Laura, "there was no one who
was gayer--of course in a _nice_ way--and took his part in everything
that was going on in the higher circles of the metropolis. Your dear
Aunt Elizabeth used to cut out the allusions to him in the _Morning
Post_, and there was scarcely a great occasion on which his name was not
mentioned."

"But after two years in his regiment he gave it all up to settle down
amongst his own people," said Aunt Ellen. "All his life has been summed
up in the word 'duty.' I wish there were more like him, but there are
not."

"It seems like yesterday," said Aunt Laura, "that he joined the Horse
Guards Blue. We all wished very much to see him in his beautiful
uniform, which so became him, and your dear Aunt Anne, who was always
the one to make requests if she saw fit, asked him to bring it down to
Kencote and put it on. Dear Edward laughed at her, and refused--quite
kindly, of course--so we all took a little trip to London--it was the
occasion of the opening of the International Reformatory Exhibition at
Islington by the Prince of Wales, as he was then--and your dear father
was in the escort. How noble he looked on his black horse! I assure you
we were all very proud of him."

Cicely sat patiently silent while these reminiscences, which she had
heard a hundred times before, were entered upon. She looked at Aunt
Ellen, fumbling with her knitting-needles, and wondered what it must be
like to be so very old, and at Aunt Laura, who was also knitting, with
quick and expert fingers, and wondered if she had ever been young.

"Did the King show your dear father any special mark of esteem?" asked
Aunt Ellen. "It did occur to your Aunt Laura and myself that, not
knowing how heavy are the duties which keep him at Kencote, His Majesty
might have been--I will not say annoyed, because he would not be
that--but perhaps disappointed at not seeing him more often about his
Court. For in the days gone by he was an ornament of it, and I have
always understood, though not from him, that he enjoyed special
consideration, which would only be his due."

"The King didn't take any notice of father," said Cicely, with the
brusque directness of youth, and Aunt Ellen seemed to be somewhat
bewildered at the statement, not liking to impute blame to her
sovereign, but unable for the moment to find any valid excuse for him.

"I thought," she said hesitatingly, "that sending specially--the
invitation for all of you--but I suppose there were a great many people
there."

Cicely took her opportunity, and described what she had seen and done,
brightly and in detail. She answered all her aunts' questions, and
interested them deeply. Her visits, and those of her mother, or the
twins with Miss Bird, were the daily enlivenment of the two old ladies,
and were never omitted. The Squire seldom went to the dower-house, but
when he did look in for a minute or two, happening to pass that way,
they were thrown into a flutter of pleasure and excitement which lasted
them for days.

When Cicely took her leave an hour later, Aunt Ellen said: "The
consideration with which dear Edward's family treats us, sister, is
something we may well be thankful for. I felt quite sure, and I told
you, that some one would come to see us immediately upon their return.
Cicely is always so bright and interesting--a dear girl, and quite takes
after her father."

"Dear Anne used to say that she took after her mother," said Aunt Laura;
to which Aunt Ellen replied: "I have not a word to say against Nina; she
has been a good wife to dear Edward, though we all thought at the time
of their marriage that he might have looked higher. But compared with
our nephew, quiet and unassuming as she is, she has very little
character, while Cicely _has_ character. No, sister, Cicely is a
Clinton--a Clinton through and through."




CHAPTER V

MELBURY PARK


Family prayers at Kencote took place at nine o'clock, breakfast
nominally at a quarter past, though there was no greater interval
between the satisfaction of the needs of the soul and those of the body
than was necessary to enable the long string of servants to file out
from their seats under the wall, and the footmen to return immediately
with the hot dishes. The men sat nearest to the door and frequently
pushed back to the dining-room against the last of the outflowing tide;
for the Squire was ready for his breakfast the moment he had closed the
book from which he had read the petition appointed for the day. If there
was any undue delay he never failed to speak about it at once. This
promptness and certainty in rebuke, when rebuke was necessary, made him
a well-served man, both indoors and out.

Punctuality was rigidly observed by the Clinton family. It had to be;
especially where the women were concerned. If Dick or Humphrey, when
they were at home, missed prayers, the omission was alluded to. If
Cicely, or even Mrs. Clinton was late, the Squire spoke about it. This
was more serious. In the case of the boys the rebuke hardly amounted to
speaking about it. As for the twins, they were never late. For one thing
their abounding physical energy made them anything but lie-abeds, and
for another, they were so harried during the ten minutes before the gong
sounded by Miss Bird that there would have been no chance of their
overlooking the hour. If they had been late, Miss Bird would have been
spoken to, and on the distressing occasions when that had happened, it
had put her, as she said, all in a twitter.

When it still wanted a few minutes to the hour on the morning after the
return from London, Cicely was standing by one of the big open windows
talking to Miss Bird, the twins were on the broad gravel path
immediately outside, and two footmen were putting the finishing touches
to the appointments of the table.

It was a big table, although now reduced to the smallest dimensions of
which it was capable, for the use of the six people who were to occupy
it. But in that great room it was like an island in the midst of a waste
of Turkey carpet. The sideboards, dinner-wagon, and carving-table, and
the long row of chairs against the wall opposite to the three windows
were as if they lined a distant shore. The wallpaper of red flock had
been an expensive one, but it was ugly, and faded in places where the
sun caught it. It had been good enough for the Squire's grandfather
forty years before, and it was good enough for him. It was hung with
portraits of men and women and portraits of horses, some of the latter
by animal painters of note. The furniture was all of massive mahogany,
furniture that would last for ever, but had been made after the date at
which furniture left off being beautiful as well as lasting. The
mantelpiece was of brown marble, very heavy and very ugly.

At one minute to nine Mrs. Clinton came in. She carried a little
old-fashioned basket of keys which she put down on the dinner-wagon,
exactly in the centre of the top shelf. Cicely came forward to kiss her,
followed by Miss Bird, with comma-less inquiries as to how she had spent
the night after her journey, and the twins came in through the long
window to wish her good morning. She replied composedly to the old
starling's twittering, and cast her eye over the attire of the twins,
which was sometimes known to require adjustment. Then she took her seat
in one of the big easy-chairs which stood on either side of the
fireplace, while Porter, the butler, placed a Bible and a volume of
devotions, both bound in brown leather, before the Squire's seat at the
foot of the table, and retired to sound the gong.

It was exactly at this moment that the Squire, who opened his letters in
the library before breakfast, was accustomed to enter the room, and,
with a word of greeting to his assembled family, perch his gold-rimmed
glasses on his fine straight nose, and with the help of two book-markers
find the places in the Bible and book of prayers to which the year in
its diurnal course had brought him. The gong would sound, either
immediately before or immediately after he had entered the room, the
maids and the men who had been assembling in the hall would file in, he
would throw a glance towards them over his glasses to see that they were
all settled, and then begin to read in a fast, country gentleman's voice
the portion of Scripture that was to hallow the day now officially
beginning.

The gong rolled forth its sounding reverberation, Miss Bird and the
three girls took their seats, and then there was a pause. In a house of
less rigid habits of punctuality it would have been filled by small
talk, but here it was so unusual that when it had lasted for no more
than ten seconds the twins looked at one another in alert curiosity and
Cicely's eyes met those of her mother, which showed a momentary
apprehension before they fixed themselves again upon the shining steel
of the fire bars. Another ten seconds went by and then the library door
was heard to open and the Squire's tread, heavy on the paved hall.

Four pairs of eyes were fixed upon him as he entered the room, followed
at a short but respectful interval by the servants. Mrs. Clinton still
looked inscrutably at the grate. The Squire's high colour was higher
than its wont, his thick grizzled eyebrows were bent into a frown, and
his face was set in lines of anger which he evidently had difficulty in
controlling. He fumbled impatiently with the broad markers as he opened
the books, and omitted the customary glance towards the servants as he
began to read in a voice deeper and more hurried than usual. When he
laid down the Bible and took up the book of prayers he remained
standing, as he sometimes did if he had a touch of rheumatism; but he
had none now, and his abstention from a kneeling position amounted to a
declaration that he was willing to go through the form of family prayers
for routine's sake but must really be excused from giving a mind to it
which was otherwise occupied.

It was plain that he had received a letter which had upset his
equanimity. This had happened before, and the disturbance created made
manifest in much the same way. But it had happened seldom, because a man
who is in possession of an income in excess of his needs is immune from
about half the worries that come with the morning's post, and any
annoyance arising from the administration of his estate was not usually
made known to him by letter. The Squire's letter-bag was normally as
free of offence as that of any man in the country.

The twins, eying one another with surreptitious and fearful pleasure,
conveyed in their glances a knowledge of what had happened. The thing
that Walter and Muriel had made up their minds about, whatever it
was--that was what had caused the Squire to remain behind a closed door
until he had gained some slight control over his temper, and led him now
to prefer the petitions appointed in the book bound in brown leather in
a voice between a rumble and a bark. Perhaps everything would come out
when Porter and the footman had brought in the tea and coffee service
and the breakfast dishes, and left the room. If it did not, they would
hear all about it later. Their father's anger held no terrors for them,
unless it was directed against themselves, and even then considerably
less than might have been supposed. He was often angry, or appeared to
be, but he never did anything. Even in the memorable upheaval of seven
years before--when Walter had finally refused to become a clergyman and
announced his determination of becoming a doctor--which had been so
unlike anything that had ever happened within their knowledge that it
had impressed itself even upon their infant minds, and of which they had
long since worried all the details out of Cicely, he had made a great
deal of noise but had given way in the end. He would give way now,
however completely he might lose his temper in the process. The twins
had no fear of a catastrophe, and therefore looked forward with
interest, as they knelt side by side, with their plump chins propped on
their plump hands, to the coming storm.

The storm broke, as anticipated, when the servants had finally left the
room, and the Squire had ranged over the silver dishes on the side-table
for one to his liking, a search in which he was unsuccessful.

"I wish you would tell Barnes that if she can't think of anything for
breakfast but bacon, and scrambled eggs, and whiting, and mushrooms, she
had better go, and the sooner the better," he said, bending a terrifying
frown on his wife. "Same thing day after day!" But he piled a plate with
bacon and eggs and mushrooms and carried it off to his seat, while his
daughters and Miss Bird waited round him until he had helped himself.

"I have just had a letter from Walter," he began directly he had taken
his seat, "which makes me so angry that, 'pon my word, I scarcely know
what to do. Nina, this milk is burnt. Barnes shall go. She sends up food
fit for the pig-tub. Why can't you see that the women servants do their
duty? I can't take _everything_ on my shoulders. God knows I've got
enough to put up with as it is."

"Joan, ring the bell," said Mrs. Clinton.

"Oh--God's sake--no, no," fussed the Squire. "I don't want the servants
in. Give me some tea. Miss Bird, here's my cup, please. Take it, please,
_take_ it, Miss Bird. I don't know when I've felt so annoyed. You do all
you can and put yourself to an infinity of trouble and expense for the
sake of your children, and then they behave like this. Really, Walter
wants a good thrashing to bring him to his senses. If I had nipped all
this folly of doctoring in the bud, as I ought to have done, I might
have been able to live my life in peace. It's too bad; 'pon my word,
it's too bad."

The twins, sustaining their frames diligently with bacon and eggs and
mushrooms--the whiting was at a discount--waited with almost too obvious
expectation for the full disclosure of Walter's depravity. Cicely,
alarmed for the sake of Muriel, ate nothing and looked at her father
anxiously. Miss Bird was in a state of painful confusion because she had
not realised effectively that the Squire had wanted his cup of coffee
exchanged for a cup of tea, and might almost be said to have been
"spoken to" about her stupidity. Only with Mrs. Clinton did it rest to
draw the fire which, if she did it unskilfully, might very well be
turned upon herself. A direct question would certainly have so turned
it.

"I am sorry that Walter has given you any further cause of complaint,
Edward," she said.

This was not skilful enough. "Cause of complaint!" echoed the Squire
irritably. "Am I accustomed to complain about anything without good
reason? You talk as if I am the last man in the world to have the right
to expect my wishes to be consulted. Every one knows that I gave way to
Walter against my better judgment. I allowed him to take up this
doctoring because he had set his mind on it, and I have never said a
word against it since. And how now does he reward me when he has got to
the point at which he might begin to do himself and his family some
credit? Coolly writes to me for money--_to me_--_for money_--to enable
him to buy a practice at Melbury Park, if you please. Melbury _Park_!
Pah!!"

The Squire pushed his half-emptied plate away from him in uncontrollable
disgust. He was really too upset to eat his breakfast. The utterance of
the two words which summed up Walter's blind, infatuated stampede from
respectability brought back all the poignant feelings with which he had
first read his letter. For the moment he was quite beside himself with
anger and disgust, and unless relief had been brought to him he would
have left his breakfast unfinished and stalked out of the room.

Nancy brought the relief with the artless question, "Where is Melbury
Park, father?"

"Hold your tongue," said the Squire promptly, and then drew a lurid
picture of a place delivered over entirely to the hovels of nameless
people of the lower middle classes, and worse, a place in which you
would be as effectually cut off from your fellows as if you went to live
in Kamschatka. Indeed, you would not be so cut off if you went to
Kamschatka, for you might be acknowledged to be living there, but to
have it said that you lived at Melbury Park would _stamp_ you. It would
be as easy to say you were living in Halloway Goal. It was a place they
stopped you at when you came into London on the North Central Railway,
to take your tickets. The Squire mentioned this as if a place where they
took your tickets was of necessity a dreadful kind of a place. "Little
have I ever thought," he said, "when I have been pulled up there, and
looked at those streets and streets of mean little houses, that a son of
mine would one day want to go and _live_ there. 'Pon my word, I think
Walter's brain must be giving way."

It was Cicely who asked why Walter wanted to live at Melbury Park, and
what Muriel said about it.

"He doesn't say a word about Muriel," snapped the Squire. "I suppose
Muriel is backing him up. I shall certainly speak to Jim and Mrs. Graham
about it. It is disgraceful--positively disgraceful--to think of taking
a girl like Muriel to live in such a place. She wouldn't have a soul to
speak to, and she would have to mix with all sorts of people. A doctor's
wife can't keep to herself like other women. Oh, I don't know why he
wants to go there. Don't ask me such questions. I was ready to start him
amongst nice people, whatever it had cost, and he might have been in a
first-class position while other men of his age were only thinking about
it. But no, he must have his own silly way. He shan't have his way. I'll
put my foot down. I won't have the name of Clinton disgraced. It has
been respected for hundreds of years, and I don't know that I've ever
done anything to bring it down. It's a little too much that one of my
own sons should go out of his way to throw mud at it. I've stood enough.
I won't stand any more. Melbury Park! A pretty sort of _park_!"

Having thus relieved his feelings the Squire was enabled to eat a fairly
good breakfast, with a plateful of ham to follow his bacon and eggs and
mushrooms, a spoonful or two of marmalade, and some strawberries to
finish up with. It came out further that Walter was coming down by the
afternoon train to dine and sleep, and presumably to discuss the
proposal of which he had given warning, and that the Squire proposed to
ask Tom and his wife to luncheon, or rather that Mrs. Clinton should
drop in at the Rectory in the course of the morning and ask them, as he
would be too busy.

Then Cicely asked if she might have Kitty, the pony, for the morning,
and the Squire at once said, "No, she'll be wanted to take up food for
the pheasants," after which he retired to his room, but immediately
returned to ask Cicely what she wanted the pony for.

"I want to go over to Mountfield," said Cicely.

"Very well, you can have her," said the Squire, and retired again.

Mrs. Clinton made no comment on the disclosures that had been made, but
took up her basket of keys and left the room.

"Now, Joan and Nancy, do not linger but get ready for your lessons at a
quarter to ten punctually," Miss Bird broke forth volubly. "Every
morning I have to hunt you from the breakfast table and my life is spent
in trying to make you punctual. I am sure if your father knew the
trouble I have with you he would speak to you about it and then you
would see."

"Melbury Park!" exclaimed Nancy in a voice of the deepest disgust, as
she rose slowly from the table. "'Pon my word, Joan, it's too bad. I
spend my life in trying to make you punctual and then you want to go to
Melbury Park! Pah! A nice sort of a _park_!"

"Are you going to see Muriel, Cicely?" asked Joan, also rising
deliberately. "Starling, _darling_! Don't hustle me, I'm coming. I only
want to ask my sister Cicely a question."

"Yes," said Cicely. "If I couldn't have had Kitty I should have walked."

"How unreasonable you are, Cicely," said Nancy. "The pony is wanted to
take chickweed to the canaries at Melbury Park."

"Find out all about it, Cis," said Joan in process of being pushed out
of the room. "Oh, take it, Miss Bird, _please_, take it."

Cicely drove off through the park at half-past ten. Until she had passed
through the lodge gates and got between the banks of a deep country
lane, Kitty went her own pace, quite aware that she was being driven by
one whose unreasonable inclinations for speed must subordinate
themselves to the comfort of pony-flesh as long as she was in sight of
house or stables. Then, with a shake of her head, she suddenly quickened
her trot, but did not escape the cut of a whip which was always
administered to her at this point. With that rather vicious little cut
Cicely expressed her feelings at a state of things in which, with
fourteen or fifteen horses in the stable and half a dozen at the home
farm, the only animal at the disposal of herself and her sisters was
always wanted for something else whenever they asked for it.

The Squire had four hunters--sometimes more--which nobody but himself
ever used, and the price of a horse that would carry a man of his weight
comfortably ran into treble figures more often than not. Dick kept a
couple always at Kencote, even Walter had one, and Humphrey and Frank
could always be mounted whenever they wanted a day with the South
Meadshire. There were nine or ten horses, standing in stalls or loose
boxes or at grass, kept entirely for the amusement of her father and
brothers, besides half a dozen more for the carriages, the station
omnibus, the luggage cart, and all the dynamic demands of a large
household. The boys had all had their ponies as soon as their legs could
grip a saddle. This very pony that she was driving was really Frank's,
having been rescued for him from a butcher's cart in Bathgate fourteen
years before, and nobody knew how old she was. She was used for the
mowing machine and for every sort of little odd job about the garden,
and seemed as if she might go on for ever. It was only when Cicely or
the twins drove her that the reminder was given that she was not as
young as she had been, and must not be hustled.

And she was all they were ever allowed to drive, and then only when she
was not wanted for something else. It was a Clinton tradition, deriving
probably from Colonel Thomas and his six stay-at-home daughters, that
the women of the family did not hunt. They were encouraged to drive and
allowed to ride to the meets of hounds if there was anything to carry
them, and in Cicely's childhood there had been other ponies besides
Kitty, left-offs of her elder brothers, which she had used. But she had
never been given a horse of her own, and the hunters were far too
precious to be galled by a side-saddle. What did she want to ride for?
The Squire hated to see women flying about the country like men, and he
wasn't going to have any more horses in the stable. The men had more
than enough to do as it was. It was part of the whole unfair scheme on
which life at Kencote was based. Everything was done for the men and
boys of the family, and the women and girls must content themselves with
what was left over.

Pondering these and other things, Cicely drove along the country lanes,
between banks and hedges bright with the growth of early summer, through
woods in which pheasants, reared at great expense that her father and
brothers and their friends might kill them, called one another hoarsely,
as if in a continual state of gratulation at having for a year at least
escaped their destined end; between fields in which broods of partridges
ran in and out of the roots of the green corn; across a bridge near
which was a deep pool terrifically guarded by a notice-board against
those who might have disturbed the fat trout lying in its shadows;
across a gorse-grown common, sacred home of an old dog-fox that had
defied the South Meadshire hounds for five seasons; and so, out of her
father's property on to that of Jim Graham, in which blood relations of
the Kencote game and vermin were protected with equal care, in order
that the Grahams might fulfil the destiny appointed for them and the
Clintons and the whole race of squirearchy alike.

The immediate surroundings of Mountfield were prettier than those of
Kencote. The house stood at the foot of a wooded rise, and its long
white front showed up against a dark background of trees. It was older
in date than Georgian Kencote, and although its walls had been stuccoed
out of all resemblance to those of an old house, its high-pitched roof
and twisted chimney stacks had been left as they were. The effect was so
incongruous that even unæsthetic Alexander Graham, Jim's father, had
thought of uncovering the red brick again. But the front had been
altered to allow for bigger windows and a portico resembling that at
Kencote, and the architect whom he had consulted, had pressed him to
spend more money on it than he felt inclined to. So he had left it alone
and spent none; and Jim, who was not so well off as his father by the
amount of Muriel's portion and the never-to-be-forgiven Harcourt duties,
was not likely to have a thousand pounds to spare for making his rooms
darker for some years to come.

The old stable buildings, untouched by the restorer, flanked the house
on one side and the high red brick wall of the gardens on the other. The
drive sloped gently up from the gates through an undulating park more
closely planted than that of Kencote. There were some very old trees at
Mountfield and stretches of bracken here and there beneath them. It was
a pity that the house had been spoilt in appearance, but its amenities
were not wholly destroyed. Cicely knew it almost as well as she knew
Kencote, but she acknowledged its charm now as she drove up between the
oak and the young fern. Under the blue June sky strewn with light
clouds, it stood for a peaceful, pleasant life, if rather a dull one,
and she could not help wondering whether her friend would really be
happier in a house of her own in Melbury Park, which, if painted in
somewhat exaggeratedly dark colours by Cicely's father, had not struck
her, when she had seen it from the railway, as a place in which any one
could possibly live of choice. Perhaps Walter had over-persuaded her.
She would know very soon now, for Muriel told her everything.




CHAPTER VI

A GOOD LONG TALK


Mrs. Graham--she was the Honourable Mrs. Graham, a daughter of the
breeder of Jove II. and other famous shorthorns--came out of the door
leading to the stableyard as Cicely drove up. She had been feeding young
turkeys, and wore a shortish skirt of brown tweed, thick boots and a
green Tyrolean hat, and was followed by three dogs--a retriever, a
dachshund, and one that might have been anything. She was tall and
spare, with a firm-set, healthy face, and people sometimes said that she
ought to have been a man. But she was quite happy as a woman, looking
after her poultry and her garden out of doors, and her dogs and her
household within. She had hardly moved from Mountfield since her
marriage thirty years before, and the only fly in the ointment of
content in which she had embalmed herself was that she would have to
leave it when Jim married. But she greeted Cicely, who was expected to
supplant her, with bright cordiality, and lifted up a loud voice to
summon a groom to lead off Kitty to the stable.

"My dear," she said; "such a nuisance as this wedding is you never knew.
It's as much as I can do to keep the birds and the animals fed, and how
_I_ shall look in heliotrope and an aigrette the Lord only knows. But I
suppose nobody will look at me, and Muriel will be a picture. Have you
heard that Walter is going to take her to live at Melbury Park? It seems
a funny place to go to live in, doesn't it? But I suppose they won't
mind as long as they are together. I never saw such a pair of
love-birds."

"Walter wrote to father about it this morning," said Cicely, "and he is
coming down this afternoon. Father is furious with him."

"Well, I'm sure I don't know why," said Mrs. Graham equably. "I
shouldn't care to live in Melbury Park myself, and I don't suppose Mr.
Clinton would. But nobody asks him to. If _they_ want to, it's their own
affair. I'm all for letting people go their own way--always have been. I
go mine."

"Why does Walter choose such a place as that to take Muriel to?" asked
Cicely, who had not remained quite unimpressed by the Squire's diatribe
against the unfortunate suburb.

"Oh, it's convenient for his hospital and gives him the sort of practice
he wants for a year or two. _I_ don't know. They won't live there for
ever. I don't suppose it will kill them to know a few people you
wouldn't ask to dinner. It hasn't killed me. I get on with farmers'
wives better than anybody--ought to have been one."

"Father is going to ask you to put your foot down and say Muriel shan't
go there," said Cicely.

"Well then, I won't," replied Mrs. Graham decisively. "I'm not a snob."
Then she added hurriedly, "I don't say that your father is one either;
but he does make a terrible fuss about all that sort of thing. I should
have thought a Clinton was good enough to be able to know anybody
without doing himself any harm. But you had better go and talk to Muriel
about it, my dear. You will find her upstairs, with her clothes. Oh,
those clothes! I must go and look after the gardeners. They are putting
liquid manure on the roses, and I'm afraid they will mix it too strong."

Mrs. Graham went off to attend to her unsavoury but congenial task, and
Cicely went indoors and up to Muriel's room, where she found her friend
with a maid, busy over some detail of her trousseau. They greeted one
another with coolness but affection, the maid was sent out of the room,
and they settled down in chintz-covered easy-chairs by the window for
the usual good long talk.

Muriel was a pretty girl, less graceful than Cicely, but with her big
brown eyes and masses of dark hair, a foil to her friend's fair beauty.
She had her mother's sensible face, but was better-looking than her
mother had ever been.

"Now you must tell me every word from the beginning," she said. "You
said nothing in your letters. You didn't make me see the room, or any
one in it."

Cicely had a good deal to say about her late experiences, but her
friend's own affairs were of more recent interest. "But I want to hear
about Walter and Melbury Park first," she said. "There is a rare to-do
about it at Kencote, I can tell you, Muriel."

"Is there?" said Muriel, after a short pause, as if she were adjusting
her thoughts. "That was what Walter was afraid of."

"Don't you mind going to live in a place like that?" asked Cicely.
"Father thinks it is a shame that Walter should take you there."

"O my dear," said Muriel, with a trifle of impatience, "you know quite
well what I think about all that sort of thing. We have talked it over
hundreds of times. Here we are, stuck down in the middle of all this,
with nothing in the world to do but amuse ourselves, if we can, and
never any chance of pushing along. We have _got_ it all; there is
nothing to go for. That's what I first admired about my darling old
Walter. He struck out a line of his own. If he had been content just to
lop over the fence into Kencote Rectory, I don't think I should ever
have fallen in love with him. I don't know, though. He _is_ the sweetest
old dear."

"Oh, don't begin about Walter," urged Cicely.

"Yes, I will begin about Walter," replied Muriel, "and I'll go on with
Walter. He says now that the only thing he is really keen about--except
me--is his work. He always liked it, in a way, but when he made up his
mind to be a doctor it was only because he knew he must have some
profession, and he thought he might as well have one that interested
him. But now it takes up all his thoughts, except when he comes down
here for a holiday, and you know how the old pet enjoys his holidays.
Well, I'm going to do all I can to help him to get on. He says this
practice at Melbury Park is just what he wants, to get his hand in; he
won't be worried with a lot of people who aren't really ill at all, but
have to be kept in a good humour in case they should go off to another
doctor. It will be hard, sound work, and he will be in touch with the
hospital all the time. He is immensely keen about it. I don't want to
say anything against Mr. Clinton, but why _can't_ he see that Walter is
worth all the rest of your brothers put together, because he has set out
to do something and they are just having a good time?"

"Oh, well, Muriel, I can't allow that," said Cicely. "Dick is quite a
good soldier. He got his D.S.O. in the war. And besides, his real work
is to look after the property, and he knows as much about that as
father. And Humphrey _has_ to go about a lot. You must, in the Foreign
Office. And Frank--he is doing all right. He was made doggy to his
Admiral only the other day."

"Well, at any rate," replied Muriel, "they start from what they are. And
you can't say that their chief aim isn't to have a good time. Walter has
gone in against men who _have_ to work, whether they want to or not, and
he has done as well as any of them. He owes nothing to being the son of
a rich man. It has been against him, if anything."

"Father hoped he was going to set up as a consulting physician," said
Cicely.

"Yes, and why?" asked Muriel. "Only because he wants him to live amongst
the right sort of people. He doesn't care a bit whether he would make a
good consultant or not. Walter says he isn't ready for it. He wants more
experience. It will all come in time. He is not even quite sure what he
wants to specialise on, or if he wants to specialise at all. At present
he only wants to be a G.P., with plenty of work and time for the
hospital."

"What is a G.P.?" asked Cicely.

"Oh, a general practitioner. It's what Walter calls it."

"Then why can't he be a G.P. in a nicer place than Melbury Park? It is
rather hard on you, Muriel, to take you to a place where you can't know
anybody."

"O my dear, what _do_ I care for all that nonsense about knowing people?
Surely there's enough of that here! Is this person to be called on, who
has come to live in a house which nobody ever called at before, or that
person, because nobody has ever heard of her people? I'm sick of it.
Even mother won't call on Bathgate people, however nice they may be, and
she's not nearly so stuck up as most of the county women."

"Yes, I know all that, and of course it's nonsense. But you must admit
that it is different with people who aren't gentle-people at all."

"I'm not a fool, and I don't pretend that I'm going to make bosom
friends of all Walter's patients, though I _am_ going to do what I can
to make things pleasant all round. We shall see our friends in London,
of course. Jim is going to give us a jolly good motor-car, and we shall
be able to dine out and go to the play and all that if we want to, and
people ask us. But it is all so unimportant, Cicely, that side of it.
Walter wants to get out of it. He'll be very busy, and the best times we
shall have will be in our own little house alone, or going right away
when we get a holiday."

"I dare say you are quite right," said Cicely. "Of course it will be
jolly to have your own house and do what you like with it. Has Walter
got a house yet?"

"There is quite a decent one we can have where the man who wants to sell
the practice lives. It is really bigger than we want, although it's only
a semi-detached villa. I should be able to have my friends to stay with
me. Cicely, you _must_ come directly we move in, and help to get things
straight, if we go there."

"Oh, you'll go there all right, if Walter has made up his mind about
it," said Cicely. "Father thinks he will hold out, but he knows, really,
that he won't. That's what makes him so wild."

Both the girls laughed. "He is a funny old thing," said Muriel
apologetically, "but he has been very nice to me."

"Only because you have got ten thousand pounds, my dear, and are the
right sort of match for Walter. He wouldn't be very nice to you if
Walter had found you at Melbury Park; not even if you had your ten
thousand pounds. Oh dear, I wish I had ten thousand pounds."

"What would you do with it?"

"I should travel. At any rate I should go away from Kencote. Muriel, I
am sick to death of it."

"Ah, that is because it seems dull after London. You haven't told me a
word about all that you have been doing, and I have been talking about
myself all the time."

"I didn't care a bit about London. I didn't enjoy it at all--except the
opera."

"Don't try to be _blasée_, my dear girl. Of course you enjoyed it."

"I tell you I didn't. Look here, Muriel, really it _is_ unfair the way
the boys have everything in our family and the girls have nothing."

"I do think it is a shame you are not allowed to hunt."

"It isn't only that. It is the same with everything. I have seen it much
more plainly since I went to London."

"Well, my dear, you went to a Court Ball, and to all the best houses.
The boys don't do more than that. I shouldn't do as much if I went to
London in the season."

"Yes, I went. And I went because Cousin Humphrey took the trouble to get
cards for us. He is an old darling. Do you suppose father would have
taken the smallest trouble about it--for me and mother?"

"He knows all the great people. I suppose a Clinton is as good as
anybody."

"Yes, a _man_ Clinton. That is just it. Dick and Humphrey go everywhere
as a matter of course. I saw enough of it to know what society in London
means. It is like a big family; you meet the same people night after
night, and everybody knows everybody else--that is in the houses that
Cousin Humphrey got us invited to. Dick and Humphrey know everybody like
that; they were part of the family; and mother and I were just country
cousins who knew nobody."

"Well, of course, they are there all the time and you were only up for a
fortnight. Didn't they introduce you to people?"

"O yes. Dick and Humphrey are kind enough. They wanted me to have a good
time. But you are not supposed to want introductions in London. You are
supposed to know enough men to dance with, or you wouldn't be there. And
the men don't like it. I often heard Dick and Humphrey apologising to
their friends for asking them to dance with me. You know the sort of
thing, Muriel: 'You might take a turn with my little sister, old man, if
you've nobody better. She's up here on the spree and she don't know
anybody.'"

"O Cicely, they wouldn't give you away like that."

"Perhaps not quite as bad as that. Dick and Humphrey are nice enough as
brothers, and I believe they're proud of me too, in a way. They always
danced with me themselves, and they always noticed what I was wearing,
and said I looked a topper. I know I looked all right, but directly I
opened my mouth I gave myself away, just like a maid in her mistress's
clothes."

"O Cicely!"

"Well, it was like that. I had nothing to talk about. I don't know
London; I can't talk scandal about people I don't know. Of course I had
to tell them I had always lived in the country, and then they began to
talk about hunting at once. Then I had to say that I didn't hunt, and
then they used to look at me through their eyeglasses, and wonder what
the deuce I did do with myself. The fact is, that I can't do anything.
Even the ones with brains--there _were_ a few of them--who tried me with
things besides hunting, couldn't get anything out of me, because there
is nothing to get. I've never been anywhere or seen anything. I don't
know anything--nothing about books or pictures or music or plays. Why on
earth _should_ they want to talk to me? Hardly any of them did twice,
unless it was those who thought I was pretty and wanted to flirt with
me. I felt such a _fool_!"

She was almost in tears. Her pretty face under its white motor-cap was
flushed; she twisted her gloves in her slender hands.

"O Cicely, darling!" said Muriel sympathetically, "you are awfully
bright and clever, really. You've many more brains than I have."

"I'm not clever, but I've got as many brains as other girls. And what
chance have I ever had of learning anything? Dick and Humphrey and
Walter were all sent to Eton and Oxford or Cambridge. They have all had
the most expensive education that any boys could have, and as long as
they behaved themselves pretty well, nobody cared in the least whether
they took advantage of it or not. What education have _I_ had? Miss
Bird! I don't suppose she knows enough to get a place as teacher in a
village school. I suppose I know just about as much as the girls who do
go to a village school. I haven't even had lessons in drawing or music,
or anything that I might perhaps have been good at. I'm an ignorant
_fool_, and it's all father's fault, and it isn't fair."

She had talked herself into actual tears now. Muriel said, in a dry
voice which did not accord with her expression of face, "This sudden
rage for learning is a new thing, my dear."

Cicely dabbed her eyes impatiently and sat up in her chair. "I dare say
I am talking a lot of nonsense," she said, "but I have been wondering
what I _do_ get for being the daughter of a rich country gentleman;
because father _is_ rich, as well as being the head of an important
family, as he is always reminding us, though he pretends to think
nothing of it. He has never gone without anything he wanted in the whole
of his life, and the boys have everything they want too, that can be got
for money."

"Your allowance was just twice as much as mine, when father was alive,"
Muriel reminded her.

"Oh, I know I can have plenty of nice clothes and all that," said
Cicely, "and I have nice food too, and plenty of it, and a nice room,
and a big house to live in. But I don't call it living, that's all.
Father and the boys can live. We can't. Outside Kencote, we're nobody at
all--I've found that out--and mother is of no more importance than I am.
We're just the women of the family. Anything is good enough for us."

"I don't think you are quite fair, Cicely. Mrs. Clinton doesn't care for
going about, does she? It would depend more upon her than your father
and brothers."

"What would depend on her?"

"Well, I mean you grumble at Dick and Humphrey knowing more people than
you do."

"I suppose what you do mean is that the Birkets aren't as good as the
Clintons."

There was the slightest pause. Then Muriel said, a little defiantly,
"Well, the Grahams aren't as good as the Conroys."

"I know that mother isn't only as good as father; she is a great deal
better."

Cicely spoke with some heat, and Muriel made a little gesture with her
hands. "Oh, all right, my dear," she said, "if you don't want to talk
straight." It was a formula they used.

Cicely hesitated. "If you mean," she began, but Muriel interrupted her.
"You know quite well what I mean, and you know what I don't mean. You
know I would never say that Mrs. Clinton wasn't as good as anybody in
the world, in the sense you pretended to take my words. We were talking
of something quite different."

"Sorry, Muriel," replied Cicely. This was another formula. "We did go to
a dance at Aunt Emmeline's, you know. If I hadn't been to all those
other houses I should have enjoyed it immensely. Well, I did enjoy
it--better, really. Aunt Emmeline saw that I had heaps of partners and I
got on well with them. They were mostly barristers and people like that.
They took the trouble to talk, and some of them even made me talk. It is
a lovely house--of course not like one of the great London houses, but
with two big drawing-rooms, and Iff's band, and everything done very
well. If I had gone straight up from here to that ball, it would have
been one of the best I had ever gone to."

"Well, Mr. Birket is a famous barrister, and I suppose is very well off
too. I should think he knows as many interesting people as anybody."

"Interesting people, yes; but there wasn't a soul there that I had seen
at the other houses, except Dick and Humphrey."

"Were they there?"

"There!" cried Cicely triumphantly. "You see you are quite surprised at
that."

"Well," said Muriel firmly, "they _were_ there. And how did they
behave?"

"Oh, they behaved all right. Humphrey went away early, but Dick stayed
quite a long time. Dick can be very sweet if he likes, and he doesn't
give himself airs, really--he only takes it for granted that he is a
great personage. And so he is; you would say so if you saw him in
London. Do you know, Muriel, I was next to the Duchess of Pevensey at
Dunster House, and I heard her whisper to her daughter, quite sharply,
'Evelyn, keep a valse for Captain Clinton, in case he asks you.' Of
course she hadn't an idea that I was Captain Clinton's sister. She had
looked down her nose at me just before, and wondered what I was doing
there."

"I suppose she didn't say so."

"Her nose did. You should have seen her face when Dick came up the
moment after and said, 'Here you are, Siskin; come and have a spin'; and
didn't take any notice of dear Evelyn, who must have been at least
thirty."

"Well, go on about Mrs. Birket's."

"Yes, well, Dick said, 'Now, Siskin, I don't know any of the pretty
ladies here, and I'm going to dance with you.' But when Aunt Emmeline
came up and insisted upon introducing him to a lot of girls, he went off
as nicely as possible and danced with the whole lot of them. And, you
know, a man like Dick isn't supposed to have to do that sort of thing."

Muriel laughed; and Cicely, who had recovered her good humour, laughed
too. "Of course, it wasn't anything to fuss about, really," she said,
"but you see what I mean, Muriel, don't you?"

"No, I don't," said Muriel, "unless you mean exactly what I said just
now, and you bit my head off for. Mr. Clinton is what some people call a
swell, and Dick is a swell too. The Grahams aren't swells, and the
Birkets aren't either. And if you want it quite straight, my dear,
neither you nor I are swells; we're only what they call county."

"You're so sensible, Muriel darling!" said Cicely.

"And you've had your head turned, Cicely darling!" retorted Muriel. "You
have been taken up by your great relations, and you have come back to
your simple home discontented."

"It's all very well, though," said Cicely, becoming serious again, "but
I'm a Clinton just as much as the boys are, and just as much as you are
a Graham. You say the Grahams are not swells--you do use horrible
language, Muriel dear--but I suppose Lord Conroy is, and so, according
to your argument, you ought to be."

"Uncle Blobs isn't a swell--he's only a farmer with a title."

"Oh! then I don't know what you mean by a swell."

"Well, of course the Conroys _are_ swells in a way, but they don't care
about swelling. If mother had liked--and father had let her--she could
have been a fashionable lady, and dear Muriel could have been a
fashionable girl, with her picture in the illustrated papers, sitting in
front of a lattice window with a sweet white frock and a bunch of
lilies. 'We give this week a charming photograph of Miss Muriel Graham,
the only daughter of the Honourable Mrs. Graham. Mrs. Graham is a
daughter of' and so on. As it is, dear Muriel is just the daughter of a
country squire."

"That is all dear Cicely is, though you said just now that father was a
swell. I don't see, really, that he is much more of a swell than Mr.
Graham was--here."

"No--he isn't--here. That's just it. That is what you are running your
head against, my dear. Perhaps he isn't really a swell at all, now. But
he could be if he liked, and he was when he was young. It is because he
likes being a country squire best that you have got to put up with being
a country squire's daughter. I'm sorry for you, as you seem to feel it
so much, but I'm afraid there's no help for it. I don't think, really,
you have much to grumble at, but I suppose if you live for a fortnight
exclusively amongst dukes and duchesses, you _are_ apt to get a little
above yourself. Now tell me all about the Court Ball."

Cicely told her all about the Court Ball; then they talked about other
things, and Muriel said, "You have never asked about Jim. His ship is
due in London next Wednesday and he will be home the day after."

"Dear old Jim," said Cicely--she was at work on some embroidery for
Muriel. "It will be jolly to see him back again. But it doesn't seem
like a year since he went away."

"_You_ don't seem to have missed him much."

"O yes, I have. But it was like when the boys went back to school or to
Cambridge--frightfully dull at first, and then you got used to it, and
they were back before you knew where you were."

"Yes, I know. But I don't feel like that about Walter now. I don't know
what I should do if he were to go off for a year."

"Oh, that's quite different. You are deeply in love, my dear."

"So were you once."

"Never in the world, Muriel, and you know that quite well. I was a
little donkey. I had only just put my hair up and I thought it a fine
thing to be engaged. Not that that lasted long. Dear old Jim soon
repented, and I don't blame him."

"Jim is pretty close about things, but I sometimes doubt whether he has
repented."

"You mean that he still cherishes a tender passion for sweet Cicely
Clinton."

"I shouldn't wonder."

"Well, I should. Anyway, it isn't returned. I love Jim, but if I heard
that he had come home engaged, as I dare say he will, I shouldn't mind
in the very least. I should be the first to congratulate him."

"No, you wouldn't. He would tell mother and me first. And you needn't
give yourself airs, you know. Jim would be a very good match for you.
You would be mistress of Mountfield. I'm not making half such a
brilliant alliance."

"Brilliant! I'm quite sure you would rather be going to marry somebody
who had his way to make, like Walter, than trickle off from one big,
dull country house to another. Wouldn't you, now?"

"Well, yes, I would. But it wouldn't make any difference to me, really,
if I had Walter. If Dick were to die, which I'm sure I hope he won't,
and Walter were to succeed to Kencote, I should like it just as much."

"Well, I dare say it would be all right when one got older. At present I
think it would be burying yourself alive when you ought to have the
chance of doing something and seeing something. No, Muriel, dear. I have
been a squire's daughter all my life, and there's no money in it, as
Humphrey says. The last thing I want to be at present is a squire's
wife. I believe Jim has forgotten all that silliness as much as I have.
If I thought he hadn't, I shouldn't be so glad as I am at the prospect
of seeing him back."

"I dare say he has. You're not good enough for him."

"And he isn't good enough for me. I must be going home, or father will
accuse me of over-driving Kitty. I always do over-drive her, but he
doesn't notice unless I am late. Good-bye, Muriel. It has done me good
to talk to you."




CHAPTER VII

THE RECTOR


The Rector was shown into the library where the Squire was reading the
_Times_, for which a groom rode over to Bathgate every morning at eleven
o'clock, and woe betide him if he ever came back later than half-past
twelve. It was a big room lined with books behind a brass lattice which
nobody ever opened. Though the Squire used it every day, and had used it
for five-and-thirty years, he had never altered its appointments, and
his grandfather had not lived in it. Merchant Jack had furnished it
handsomely for a library, and the Reverend John Clinton Smith, the
historian of Kencote, had bought the books for him, and read most of
them for him too. If he had returned from the tomb in which he had lain
for a hundred years to this room where he had spent some of the happiest
hours of his life, he would only have had to clear out a boxful or two
of papers from the cupboards under the bookshelves and the drawers of
the writing-tables, and remove a few photographs and personal
knick-knacks, and there would have been nothing there that was not
familiar, except the works of Surtees and a few score other books, which
he would have taken up with interest and laid down again with contempt,
in some new shelves by the fireplace. The Squire had no skill with a
room. He hated any alteration in his house, and he had debated this
question of a new bookcase to hold the few books he did read from time
to time with as much care as the Reverend John Clinton Smith, book-lover
as he was, had devoted to the housing of the whole library.

"Ah, my dear Tom," said the Squire heartily, "I'm glad you came up. I
should have come down to you, but I've been so busy all the morning that
I thought you wouldn't mind a summons. Have you brought Grace?"

"She is with Nina," said the Rector, and sat heavily down in the
easy-chair opposite to that from which the Squire had risen. He was a
big man, with a big face, clean shaven except for a pair of abbreviated
side whiskers. He had light-blue eyes and a mobile, sensitive mouth. His
clothes were rather shabby, and except for a white tie under a
turned-down collar, not clerical. His voice, coming from so massive a
frame, seemed thin, but it was of a pleasant tenor quality, and went
well with the mild and attractive expression of his face. All the
parishioners of Kencote liked the Rector, though he was not at all
diligent in visiting them. Perhaps they liked him the better on that
account.

The Rector was the Squire's half-brother. Colonel Thomas Clinton, the
Squire's grandfather, had followed, amongst other traditions of his
family, that of marrying early, and marrying money. His wife was a city
lady, daughter of Alderman Sir James Banket, and brought him forty
thousand pounds. Besides his six daughters, he had one son, who was
delicate and could not support the fatigue of his own arduous pursuit of
sport. He was sent to Eton and to Trinity College, and a cornetcy was
bought for him in the Grenadier Guards. He also married early, and
married, following an alternative tradition, not money, but blood. His
wife was a sister of a brother officer, the Marquis of Nottingham, and
they were happy together for a year. He died of a low fever immediately
after the birth of his son, Edward, that Squire of Kencote with whom we
have to do.

Colonel Thomas took a great deal more pride in his sturdy grandson than
ever he had been able to take in his weakly son. He taught him to ride
and to shoot, and to tyrannise over his six maiden aunts, who all took a
hand in bringing him up. His own placid, uncomplaining wife had died
years before, and Lady Susan Clinton, tired of living in a house where
women seemed to exist on sufferance, had married again, but had not been
allowed to take her child to her new home. She had the legal right to do
so, of course, but was far too frightened of the weather-beaten,
keen-eyed old man, who could say such cutting things with such a sweet
smile upon his lips, to insist upon it. Her second husband was the
Rector of a neighbouring parish, who grew hot to the end of his days
when he thought of what he had undergone to gain possession of his
bride. He did not keep her long, for she died a year later in giving him
a son. That son was now the Reverend Thomas Beach, Rector of Kencote, to
which preferment the Squire had appointed him nearly thirty years
before, when he was only just of canonical age to receive it. And in the
comfortable Rectory of Kencote, except for a year's curacy to his
father, he had lived all his clerical life.

The Squire and the Rector were not altogether unlike in appearance. They
were both tall and well covered with flesh, and there was a family
resemblance in their features. But the Squire's bigness and ruddiness
were those of a man who took much exercise in the open air, the Rector's
of a man physically indolent, who lived too much indoors, and lived too
well.

But if they were not unlike in appearance, they were as dissimilar as
possible in character. The Squire's well-carried, massive frame
betokened a man who considered himself to have a right to hold his head
high and plant his footsteps firmly; the Rector's big body disguised a
sensitive, timorous character, and a soul never quite at ease in its
comfortable surroundings. That ponderous weight of soft flesh, insistent
on warmth and good food and much rest, had a deal to answer for. Spare
and active, with adventures of the spirit not discouraged by the
indolence of the flesh, the Rector of Kencote might have been anything
in the way of a saint that his Church encourages. He would certainly not
have been Rector of Kencote for thirty years, with the prospect of being
Rector of Kencote for thirty years more if he lived so long. He had a
simple, lovable soul. It told him that he did nothing to speak of in
return for his good income and the fine house in which he lived in such
comfort, and troubled him on this score more than it would have troubled
a man with less aptitude for goodness; and it omitted to tell him that
he had more direct influence for righteousness than many a man who would
have consciously exercised all the gifts with which he might have been
endowed. He simply could not bring himself to visit his parish
regularly, two or three afternoons a week, as he had made up his mind to
do when he was first ordained. The afternoons always slipped away
somehow, and there were so many of them. The next would always do. So it
had been for the first years of his pastorate, and he had long since
given way altogether to his indolence and shyness in respect of visiting
his flock; but his conscience still troubled him about it. He was a
great reader, but his reading had become quite desultory, and he now
read only for his own entertainment. His sermons were poor; he had no
delivery and no gift of expression; he could not even give utterance to
the ideas that did, not infrequently, act on his brain, nor hardly to
the human tenderness which was his normal attitude towards mankind. But
he did go on writing fresh ones, stilted and commonplace as they were.
Mental activity was less of a burden to him than bodily activity, and he
had kept himself up to that part of what he thought to be his clerical
duty.

For the rest, he was fond of his books and his garden, fond of his
opulent, well-appointed house, and all that it contained, and fond of
the smaller distractions of a country life, but no sportsman. He had no
children, but a graceful, very feminine wife, who reacted pleasantly on
his intellect and looked well after the needs of his body. He sometimes
went to London for a week or two, and had been to Paris; but he liked
best to be at home. He watched the progress of the seasons with
interest, and knew something about birds, something about flowers and
trees, was a little of a weather prophet, and often thought he would
study some branch of natural science, but had lacked the energy to do
so. He liked the winter as well as the summer, for then his warm house
called him more seductively. He liked to tramp home along muddy country
roads in the gloaming, drink tea in his wife's pretty drawing-room, chat
to her a little, and then go into his cosy, book-lined study and read
till dinner-time. He would have been a happy man as a layman, relieved
of that gnawing conviction that his placid, easy life was rather far
from being apostolic. And nobody, not even his wife, had any idea that
he was not quite contented, and grateful for the good things that he
enjoyed.

"Well, Tom," said the Squire, "I'm infernally worried again. It's that
boy Walter. What do you think he wants to do now?" He spoke with none of
the heat of the morning. It might have been thought that he had already
accepted the inevitable and was prepared to make the best of it.

"I don't know, Edward," said the Rector; and the Squire told him.

"And you have a particular objection to this place, Melbury Park?"
inquired the Rector guilelessly.

"O my dear Tom," said the Squire impatiently, "have you ever seen the
place?"

"From the railway only," admitted the Rector; "and chiefly its
back-gardens. It left an impression of washing on my mind."

"It left an impression of _not_ washing on mine," said the Squire, and
leant back in his chair to laugh heartily at his witticism.

The Rector also did justice to it, perhaps more than justice, with a
kind smile. "Well, Edward," he said, "it may be so, but it is,
otherwise, I should say, respectable. It is not like a slum. Has Walter
any particular reason for wishing to go there?"

The Squire gave a grudging summary of the reasons Walter had advanced
for wishing to go there, and made them appear rather ridiculous reasons.
He also produced again such of the arguments he had advanced at
breakfast-time as seemed most weighty, and managed to work himself up
into a fair return of his morning's feeling of being very badly treated.

"Well, Edward," said the Rector gently, when he had come to an end, "I
think if I were you I should not make any objections to Walter's going
to Melbury Park."

"You wouldn't?" asked the Squire, rather weakly.

"No, I don't think I would. You see, my dear Edward, some of us are
inclined to take life too easily. I'm sometimes afraid that I do
myself."

"You do your duty, Tom. Nobody is asked to do more than that."

"Well, you may be right, but I am not sure. However, what I was going to
say was that one cannot help respecting--perhaps even envying--a young
fellow like Walter who doesn't want to take life easily."

"He has stuck to his work," said the Squire. "I will say that for the
boy; and he's never come to me for money to pay bills with, as Humphrey
has, and even Dick--though, as far as Dick goes, he'll have the property
some day, and I don't grudge him what he wants now within reason."

"You see, Edward, when a man has congenial work which takes up his time,
he is not apt to get into mischief. I think, if I may say so, that you
ought to admit now, however much you may have objected to Walter's
choice of a profession in the first instance, that he has justified his
choice. He put his hand to the plough and he has not looked back. That
is a good deal to say for a young man with Walter's temptations towards
an easy, perhaps idle, life."

"Well," said the Squire, "I do admit it. I do admit it, Tom. I have my
natural prejudices, but I'm the last man in the world that any one has a
right to call obstinate. I objected to Walter becoming a doctor in the
first instance. It was natural that I should. He ought to have succeeded
you, as Dick will succeed me. And none of our family have ever been
doctors. But I gave way, and I've every wish, now, that he should
succeed in his profession. And the reason I object to this move so
strongly is that as far as my judgment goes it is not a step in the
right direction. It might be so for the ordinary doctor--I don't know
and I can't say--but I'm willing to help a son of mine over some of the
drudgery, and it will be very disagreeable for me to have Walter
settling down to married life in a place like Melbury Park, when he
might do so much better. You must remember, Tom, that he is the first of
the boys to get married. Dick will marry some day soon, I hope and
trust, and Humphrey too, but until they do, Walter's son, if he has one,
will be heir to this property, eventually. He ought _not_ to be brought
up in a place like Melbury Park."

"There is a good deal in what you say, Edward," replied the Rector, who
privately thought that there was very little; "but the contingency you
mention is a very unlikely one."

"I don't lay too much stress on it. If I thought that Walter was right
from the point of rising in his profession to go to this place I would
leave all that out of the question."

"Well, I'll tell you what, Edward," said the Rector, with an engaging
smile, "supposing you keep an open mind on the question until you have
heard what Walter has to say about it. How would that be?"

The Squire hummed and ha'd, and thought that on the whole it might be
the best thing to do.

"You see," said the Rector in pursuance of his bright idea, "it is just
possible that there may be reasons which Walter has considered, and may
wish to urge, that _might_ make it advisable for him, even with the
exceptional advantages you could give him, to go through the training
afforded by just such a practice as this. I should let him urge them,
Edward, if I were you. I should let him urge them. You can but repeat
your objections, if they do not appeal to your judgment. You will be in
a better position to make your own views tell, if you dispose your mind
to listen to his. I should take a kindly tone, I think, if I were you.
You don't want to set the boy against you."

"No, I don't want that," said the Squire. "And I should have done what
you advise, in any case. It's the only way, of course. Let us go in and
have some luncheon. Then you don't think, Tom, that there would be any
serious objection to my giving way on this point, if Walter is
reasonable about it?"

"Well, Edward, do you know, I really don't think there would," replied
the Rector, as they crossed the hall to the dining-room.

The ladies were already there. Mrs. Beach was by the window talking to
the twins, who adored her. She was getting on for fifty, but she was
still a pretty woman, and moved gracefully as she came across the room
to shake hands with her brother-in-law. "It is very nice to see you back
again, Edward," she said, with a charming smile. "You do not look as if
London had disagreed with you."

"My dear Grace," said the Squire, holding her white, well-formed hand in
his big one. "I'll tell you my private opinion of London, only don't let
it go any further. It can't hold a candle to Kencote." Then he gave a
hearty laugh, and motioned her to a seat on his right. The twins cast a
look of intelligence at one another, and Cicely glanced at her mother.
The Squire had recovered his good humour.

"For these an' all his mercies," mumbled the Squire, bending his
head.--"Oh, beg your pardon, Tom," and the Rector said grace.

"Have you heard what that silly fellow Walter wants to do, Grace?" asked
the Squire.

"Nothing except that he hopes to get married next month," replied Mrs.
Beach, helping herself to an omelette, "and I hope that he will make a
better husband than Tom."

The Rector, already busy, spared her a glance of appreciation, and the
twins giggled at the humour of their favourite.

"Yes, he is going to be married, and he proposes to take Muriel to live
at Melbury Park, of all places in the world."

"Then in that case," replied Mrs. Beach equably, "Tom and I will not
give them the grand piano we had fixed upon for a wedding present. They
must content themselves with the railway whistles."

The twins laughed outright and were ineffectively rebuked by Miss Bird.
That they were to be seen and not heard at table was a maxim she had
diligently instilled into them. But they were quite right to laugh. Aunt
Grace was surpassing herself. She always kept the Squire in a good
humour, by her ready little jokes and the well-disguised deference she
paid him. The deference was not offered to him alone, but to all men
with whom she came in contact, even her husband, and men liked her
immensely. She teased them boldly, but she deferred to their manhood.
Women sometimes grew tired of her sweetness of manner, which was
displayed to them too, and quite naturally. She was a sweet woman, if
also, in spite of her ready tongue, rather a shallow one. Mrs. Clinton
did not like her, but did not show it, except in withholding her
confidence, and Mrs. Beach had no idea that they were not intimate.
Cicely was indifferent towards her, but had loved her as a child, for
the same reason that the twins thought her the most charming of
womankind, because she treated them as if they were her equals in
intelligence, as no doubt they were. It had never occurred to them to
mimic her, which was a feather in her cap if she had known it. And
another was that Miss Bird adored her, being made welcome in her house,
and, as she said, treated like anybody else.

By the time luncheon was over the Squire had so overcome his bitter
resentment at the idea of Walter's going to live at Melbury Park, that
he could afford to joke about it. Aunt Grace had suggested that they
should all go and live there, and had so amused the Squire with a
picture of himself coming home to his villa in the evening and eating
his dinner in the kitchen in his shirt sleeves, with carpet slippers on
his feet, which was possibly the picture in her mind of "how the poor
live," that he was in the best of humours, and drank two more glasses of
port than his slightly gouty tendency usually permitted.

The twins persuaded Miss Bird to take them to the station to meet Walter
in the afternoon. They were not allowed to go outside the park by
themselves, and walked down the village on either side of the old
starling, each of them over-topping her by half a head, like good girls,
as she said herself. They wore cool white dresses, and shady hats
trimmed with poppies, and looked a picture. When they reached the
by-road to the station, Joan said, "One, two, three, and away," and they
shot like darts from the side of their instructress, arriving on the
platform flushed and laughing, not at all like good girls, while Miss
Bird panted in their rear, clucking threats and remonstrances, to the
respectful but undisguised amusement of the porter, and the groom who
had preceded them with the dog-cart.

Walter got out of a third-class carriage when the train drew up and
said, "Hullo, twanky-diddleses! Oh, my adorable _Sturna vulgaris vetus_,
embrace me! Come to my arms!"

"Now, Walter, do behave," said Miss Bird sharply. "What will people
think and Joan 'n Nancy I shall certainly tell Mrs. Clinton of your
_disgraceful_ behaviour I am quite ashamed of you running off like that
which you _know_ you are not allowed to do you are very _naughty_ girls
and I am seriously displeased with you."

"Ellen Bird," said Walter, "don't try and put it on to the twankies. I
looked out of the carriage window and saw you sprinting along the
station road yourself. You have had a little race and are annoyed at
being beaten. I shall put you up in the cart and send you home, and I
will walk back with the twankies." And in spite of Miss Bird's almost
frenzied remonstrances, up into the cart she was helped, and driven off
at a smart pace, with cheers from the twins, now entirely beyond her
control.

"Well, twanky dears," said Walter, starting off at a smart pace with a
twin on either side, "I suppose there's a deuce of a bust up, eh? Look
here, you can't hang on. It's too hot."

"It wouldn't be too hot for Muriel to hang on," said Joan, her arm
having been returned to her.

"There was a bust up this morning at breakfast," said Nancy. "Edward
came in purple with passion two minutes late for prayers."

"Eh?" said Walter sharply. "Look here, you mustn't speak of the governor
like that."

"It's only her new trick," said Joan. "She'll get tired of it."

"You're not to do it, Nancy, do you hear?" said Walter.

"Oh, all right," said Nancy. "Mr. Clinton of Kencote, J.P., D.L., was so
put out that he wouldn't kneel down to say his prayers."

"Annoyed, eh?" said Walter.

"Yes," said Joan, "but he's all right now, Walter. Aunt Grace came to
lunch, and beat Bogey."

"What!"

"It's only her new trick," said Nancy. "She'll get tired of it. She
means put him in a good humour."

"Really, you twankies do pick up some language. Then there's nothing
much to fear, what?"

"No, we are all coming to live at Melbury Park, and Aunt Grace is going
to take in our washing."

"Oh, that's the line taken, is it?" said Walter. "Well, I dare say it's
all very funny, but I can't have you twankies giving yourselves airs,
you know. I don't know why they talk over things before you. The
governor might have kept it to himself until he had seen me."

"Mr. Clinton doesn't keep things to himself," said Nancy. "You might
know that by this time; and Joan and I are quite old enough to take an
intelligent interest in family affairs. We do take the deepest interest
in them, and we know a lot. Little pitchers have long ears, you know."

"So have donkeys, and they get them pinched if they're not careful,"
retorted Walter. "How are you getting on with your lessons, twankies?"

"I believe our progress is quite satisfactory, thank you, Dr. Clinton,"
replied Joan. "Perhaps you would like to hear us a few dates, so that
our afternoon walk may not pass entirely unimproved."

"You had much better look at Joan's tongue," said Nancy. "Starling said
last night that her stomach was a little out of order, and we rebuked
her for her vulgarity."

"You are a record pair, you two," said Walter, looking at them with
unwilling admiration. "I don't believe any of us led that poor old woman
the dance that you do. Do you want some jumbles, twankies?"

"Ra-_ther_," said the twins with one voice, and they turned into the
village shop.

The tea-table was spread on the lawn, and the Squire came out of the
window of the library as Walter reached the garden. "Well, my boy," he
said, "so you're going to settle down at Melbury Park, are you? That's a
nice sort of thing to spring on us; but good luck to you! You can always
come down here when you want a holiday."




CHAPTER VIII

BY THE LAKE


Whitsuntide that year fell early in June, and the weather was glorious.
Cicely awoke on Friday morning with a sense of happiness. She slept with
her blinds up, and both her windows were wide open. She could see from
her pillow a great red mass of peonies backed by dark shrubs across the
lawn, and in another part of the garden laburnums and lilacs and
flowering thorns, and all variations of young green from trees and grass
under a sky of light blue. Thrushes and blackbirds were piping sweetly.
She loved these fresh mornings of early summer, and had often wakened to
them with that slight palpitation of happiness.

But, when she was fully awake, it had generally happened that the
pleasure had rather faded, at any rate of late years, since she had
grown up. In her childhood it had been enough to have the long summer
day in front of her, especially in holiday time, when there would be no
irksome schoolroom restraint, nothing but the pleasures and adventures
of the open air. But lately she had needed more, and more, at Kencote,
had seldom been forthcoming. Moreover she had hardly known what the
"more" was that she had wanted. She had never been unhappy, but only
vaguely dissatisfied, and sometimes bored.

This morning her waking sense of well-being did not fade as she came to
full consciousness, but started into full pleasure as she remembered
that her cousins, Angela and Beatrice Birket, with their father and
mother, were in the house. And Dick and Humphrey had come down with them
the evening before. Guests were so rare at Kencote that to have a party
of them was a most pleasurable excitement. Dick and Humphrey would see
that there was plenty of amusement provided, quiet enough amusement for
them, no doubt, but for Cicely high pleasure, with something to do all
the day long, and people whom she liked to do it with.

And--oh yes--Jim had returned home from his travels the day before, and
would be sure to come over, probably early in the morning.

She jumped out of bed, put on her dressing-gown, and went to the window.
The clock from the stable turret struck six, but she really could not
lie in bed on such a morning as this, with so much about to happen. She
would dress and go out into the garden. A still happier thought--she
would go down to the lake and bathe from the Temple of Melancholy. It
was early in the year, but the weather had been so warm for the last
month that it was not too early to begin that summer habit. Perhaps the
twins would come with her. They were early risers.

She was just about to turn away from the window when she saw the twins
themselves steal round the corner of the house. Their movements were
mysterious. Although there was nobody about, they trod on tiptoe across
the broad gravel path and on to the dewy lawn. Joan--she could always
tell them apart, although to the outside world they were identical in
form and feature--carried a basket which probably contained provisions,
a plentiful supply of which was generally included in the elaborate
arrangements the twins made for their various games of adventure. There
was nothing odd in this, but what was rather odd was that she also held
a long rope, the other end of which was tied around Nancy's neck, while
Nancy's hands were knotted behind her.

When they got on to the grass they both turned at the same moment to
glance up at the windows of the house, and caught sight of Cicely, who
then perceived that Joan's features were hidden by a mask of black
velvet. She saw them draw together and take counsel, and then, without
speaking, beckon her insistently to join them. She nodded her head and
went back into the room, smiling to herself, while the twins pursued
their mysterious course towards the shrubberies. She thought she would
not bathe after all; but she dressed quickly and went down into the
garden, a little curious to learn what new invention the children were
busying themselves with.

It proved to be nothing more original than the old game of buccaneers.
Nancy had awakened to find herself neatly trussed to her bed and Joan in
an unfinished state of attire, but wearing the black velvet mask,
brandishing in her face a horse pistol, annexed from the collection of
old-fashioned weapons in the hall. Thus overpowered she had succumbed
philosophically. It was the fortune of war, and if she had thought of it
she might just as well have been kneeling on Joan's chest, as Joan was
kneeling, somewhat oppressively, on hers. Given her choice of walking
the plank from the punt on the lake or being marooned on the
rhododendron island, she had accepted the latter alternative,
stipulating for an adequate supply of food; and a truce having been
called, while pirate and victim made their toilets and raided together
for the necessary rations, she had then allowed herself to be bound and
led off to the shore where the pirate ship was beached.

All this was explained to Cicely--the search for provisions having no
particular stress laid on it--when she joined them, and she was awarded
the part of the unhappy victim's wife, who was to gaze across the water
and tear her hair in despair at being unable to go to the rescue.

"You must rend the air with your cries," Joan instructed her, "not too
loud, because we don't want any one to hear. The pirate king will then
appear on the scene, and stalking silently up behind you--well, you'll
see. I won't hurt you."

Nancy was already comfortably marooned. She could be seen relieved of
her bonds seated amongst the rhododendrons, which were in full flower on
the island and all round the lake, making her first solitary meal off
cold salmon and a macedoine of fruit, and supporting her painful
situation with fortitude.

Cicely accepted her rôle, but dispensed with the business of tearing her
hair. "O my husband!" she cried, stretching her arms across the water.
"Shall I never see thee more? What foul ruffian has treated thee thus?"

"Very good," said Nancy, with her mouth full--she was only twenty yards
away--"keep it up, Sis."

"I will not rest until I have discovered the miscreant and taken his
life," proceeded Cicely.

"Shed his blood," corrected Nancy. "Say something about my bones
bleaching on the shore."

"Thy bones will bleach on the shore," Cicely obeyed. "And I, a
disconsolate widow, will wander up and down this cruel strand--oh,
don't, Joan, you are hurting."

For she found herself in the grip of the pirate king, who hissed in her
ear, "Ha, ha, fair damsel! Thou art mine at last. 'Twas for love of thee
I committed this deed. Thy lily-livered husband lies at my mercy, and
once in Davy Jones's locker will be out of my path. Then the wedding
bells shall ring and we will sail together over the bounding main.
Gently, gently, pretty dove! Do not struggle. I will not hurt thee."

"Unhand me, miscreant," cried Cicely. "Think you that I would forget my
brave and gallant husband for such as thou, steeped in crime from head
to foot? Unhand me, I say. Help! Help!"

"Peace, pretty one!" cooed the pirate king. "Thou art in my power and
thy cries do not daunt me. I have only to lift my voice and my brave
crew will be all around me. Better come with me quietly. There is a
cabin prepared for thee in my gallant barque. None shall molest thee.
Cease struggling and come with me."

Urged towards the shore by the pirate king, Cicely redoubled her cries
for assistance, but no one was more surprised than she to see an elderly
gentleman in a grey flannel suit and a straw hat bound from behind the
bushes, level a latch-key at the head of the masked bandit, and cry,
"Loose her, perjured villain, or thy brains shall strew the sand."

Nancy's clear, delighted laugh came from the island, Joan giggled and
said, "O Uncle Herbert!"

"Uncle me no Herberts," said Mr. Birket. "Put up your hands or I shoot.
(Cicely, if you will kindly swoon in my arms--Thank you.) Know, base
buccaneer, that I represent his Britannic Majesty on these seas, and
wherever the British flag flies there is liberty. Allow me to disarm you
of your weapon."

"I yield to superior force," said the bold buccaneer in stately tones.

"Very wise of you. I should fold my arms and scowl if I were you.
Behold, the lady cometh to. She is, yes she is, the daughter I have
mourned these many years. And you, base marauder, though you know it
not, are the long-lost brother of that luckless wight starving, if I
mistake not, to death on the island. Well for you that your hands are
not imbrued in his gore. Put off at once in your stout ship--and be
careful not to tumble overboard--and restore him to his hapless bride."

"I will obey your bidding," said the pirate king proudly. "The claims of
relationship are paramount."

"Well put. I have hopes of you yet. I am also hungry. Bring back the
victim's basket, and we will eat together and forget this unfortunate
occurrence."

Joan punted across to the island and the marooned Nancy was brought to
the mainland with her somewhat depleted store of provisions. Mr. Birket
dropped his rôle while the embarkation proceeded, and mopped his brow
with a bandana handkerchief. He was a short, grey-haired man with a keen
lawyer's face. "Well, my dear," he said to Cicely, "I think that went
off very well, but it is somewhat exhausting."

Cicely laughed. "The twins will never forget it," she said. "Did you see
them come out?"

"I saw them come on to the lake. I was in the Temple, getting through a
little work."

"What ever time did you get up?"

"Oh, half-past five. My regular hour in the summer. I'm kept pretty
busy, my dear. But I don't generally have such a charming place as this
to work in. Now then, pirate, hurry up with those victuals. Your uncle
is hungry."

They picnicked on the shore--the twins' provisioning having fortunately
been ample--and Mr. Birket proved himself an agreeable companion. Joan
said to Nancy afterwards that the practice of the law seemed to brighten
people's brains wonderfully. He smoked a cigar, told them stories, and
made them laugh. At half-past eight he fetched his papers from the
Temple and they went indoors to get ready for breakfast. "I think," he
said, as they crossed the lawn, "we had better say nothing about the
startling occurrences of the morning. They might come as a shock to our
elders and betters." And Joan and Nancy, remembering the contents of the
basket and the source from which they had been derived, agreed.

Herbert Birket was Mrs. Clinton's only brother. Their father had been a
Colonel in the Indian Army, and had retired to end his days in a little
house on the outskirts of Bathgate, desiring nothing more than to read
the _Times_ through every morning and find something in it to disagree
with, walk so many miles a day, see his son well started in the
profession he had chosen, and his daughter well, but not splendidly,
married. He had gained his desires in all but the last item. The young
Squire of Kencote, in all the glory of his wide inheritance and his
lieutenancy in the Household Cavalry, had ridden past the little house
on his way to Bathgate and seen a quiet, unassuming, fair-haired girl
watering her flowers in the garden, had fallen in love with her, met her
at a county ball, fallen still more deeply in love, and finally carried
her off impetuously from the double-fronted villa in the Bathgate Road
to rule over his great house at Kencote.

South Meadshire had rung with the romance, and old Colonel Birket had
not been altogether delighted with his daughter's good fortune, wishing
to spend his last days in peace and not in glory. The wedding had taken
place in London, with a respectable show of relations on the bride's
side and all the accompaniments of semi-military parade on the
bridegroom's. There was no talk of a misalliance on the part of his
friends, nor was there a misalliance, for the Birkets were good enough
people; but the young Squire's six maiden aunts had returned to the
dower-house at Kencote after the wedding and shaken their respective
heads. No good would come of it, they said, and had, perhaps, been a
little disappointed ever afterwards that no harm had come of it, at any
rate to their nephew.

The old Colonel had long since been laid in his grave, and the little
house in the Bathgate Road, now in the respectable occupancy of a
retired druggist, would have seemed as strange a dwelling-place to the
daughters of Herbert Birket, who had prospered exceedingly, as to the
children of Mrs. Clinton of Kencote.

Angela and Beatrice Birket were handsome girls, both of them younger
than Cicely, but with their assured manners and knowledge of the world,
looking older. They had been brought up strictly by their mother, who
had paid great attention to their education. They might have been seen
during their childhood on any reasonably fine afternoon walking in
Kensington Gardens or Hyde Park with a highly priced French governess,
two well, but plainly dressed children with long, straight hair and
composed faces. They never appeared in their mother's drawing-room when
visitors were there, being employed in a room upstairs either at
lessons, or consuming the plainest variety of schoolroom tea. They were
taken sometimes to an afternoon concert, and on very rare occasions to a
play. When they were at home in London, their days were given to their
lessons, with the requisite amount of regular exercise to keep them in
good health. In holiday time, in the summer, at Christmas and at Easter,
they were allowed to run quite wild, in old clothes at some
out-of-the-way seaside place, in country farmhouses, where they
scrambled about on ponies and amongst ducks and chickens, or in the
country houses of their friends and relations, where there were other
children of their age for them to play with. So they had loved the
country and hated London, and had never been so surprised in their lives
as when they were duly presented and launched in society to find that
London was the most amusing place in the world and that all the pains
and drudgery to which they had been put there had prepared them for the
enjoyment of the manifold interests and pleasures that came in their
way. They had developed quickly, and those who had known them in their
rather subdued childhood would hardly have known them now.

Of all the places in which they had spent their holidays in days gone by
they had liked Kencote best. It had been a paradise of fun and freedom
for them; they and Cicely had been happy from morning till night. The
elder boys home from school or college had been kind to them, and Frank,
the sailor, who was about their own age, and not too proud to make a
companion of his sister and cousins, had led the way in all their happy
adventures. And they had loved the twins, whom they had seen grow up
from babyhood. No, there had been no place like Kencote in the old days,
and the pleasure of a visit there still persisted, although it was no
longer the most congenial house at which they visited.

All the party assembled for prayers in the dining-room. That was
understood to be the rule. The twins were there, very clean and well
brushed and very demure. Mr. Birket wished them good-morning solemnly
and hoped that they had slept well, at which they giggled and were
rebuked by Miss Bird, when their uncle turned away to ask the same
question of Cicely. As Miss Bird said,--What would their uncle think of
them if they could not answer a civil question without behaving in that
silly fashion? At which they giggled again. Angela and Beatrice, tall
and glossy-haired, dressed in white, made a handsome quartet with Dick
and Humphrey, the one in smart grey flannel, the other in white.

"This little rest will do you both good," said Dick. "You shall lie
about, and Miss Bird shall read to you. You will go back to the
excitements of the metropolis thoroughly refreshed."

"Oh, we are going to be very energetic," said Angela. "We want to play
lawn tennis, for one thing. One never gets a chance nowadays, and we
both hate croquet."

"We'll get up a tournament," said Humphrey, "and invite the
neighbourhood. You'll see some queer specimens. I hear you're writing a
book, Trixie."

Beatrice laughed, and blushed a little. "I've left off," she said.

"Ah, I've heard stories about you," said Dick. "Soon have something else
to do, eh? Don't blush. I won't tell anybody. Look here, we'll play golf
this morning. We laid out quite a decent little course in the park last
autumn. And in the afternoon we'll have a picnic."

"Oh, preserve us!" said Humphrey.

"Oh, do let us have a picnic," said Angela.

"It will be like old times," said Beatrice.

"We'll go to Blackborough Castle," said Dick, "and take the twankies. We
must give them a little fun. Siskin, how about a picnic?"

Mrs. Birket was telling Mrs. Clinton that Beatrice's engagement would be
announced when they returned to London. "She is young," she said, "but
both the girls are older in mind than in age."

"You have educated them well," Mrs. Clinton said. She looked across the
room at the two handsome, smiling girls, and at her own pretty daughter,
who had not been very well educated and was not older in mind than in
age. But just then the gong sounded, every one took their seats, the
Squire came in with a hearty "Good-morning! Good-morning!" which
greeting his assembled family and guests might take and divide amongst
them, and the proceedings of the day began.

Later in the morning Angela and Beatrice, Dick and Humphrey were
actively engaged at lawn tennis. Cicely was sitting under a great lime
on the lawn waiting for her turn. The twins, having discovered an
unusually congenial companion in their uncle, had carried him off
somewhere out of sight, and Cicely was alone for the moment. A voice
behind her, "Hullo, Cicely!" made her start, and then she sprang up.
"Jim!" she cried. "How jolly to see you back! I thought you would come
over this morning."

The game had to be interrupted while the returned traveller was
welcomed. "You look as fit as a fiddle, old boy," said Dick. "You'll be
able to stay at home and enjoy yourself now, I hope. Will you play when
we've finished this? I can lend you a pair of shoes."

"No thanks," said Jim. "I'll talk to Cicely." So the others went back on
to the lawn.

"Come and have a stroll round," Jim suggested; and Cicely, with a
half-regretful glance at the tennis lawn, rose to go with him.

They went to the rhododendron dell round the lake. It was where every
one went naturally if they wanted to walk and talk at the same time.
Jim's honest, weathered face was very frequently turned towards Cicely's
fair, young one, and there was a light in his eyes which made her turn
hers away a little confusedly when they met it. But Jim's voice was
level enough, and his speech ordinary. "I'm jolly glad to get back
again," he said. "I've never liked Mountfield half so well. I was up at
six o'clock this morning, and out and about."

"So was I," said Cicely, and she told him, laughing, of the events of
the morning.

"I expect they've grown, those young beggars," said Jim, alluding thus
disrespectfully to the twins. "I've often thought of them while I've
been away, and of everybody at Kencote--you especially."

"We've all thought of you, too," said Cicely, "and talked about you. You
haven't been forgotten, Jim."

"I hoped I shouldn't be," he said simply. "By Jove, how I've looked
forward to this--coming over here the first moment I could. I wish you
hadn't got all these people here, though."

"All these people!" echoed Cicely. "Why, Jim, you know them as well as
we do."

"Yes, I'm a selfish beggar. I wanted to have you all to myself."

Cicely was a little disturbed in her mind. Jim had not talked to her
like this for five years. Ever since that long, happy summer when he and
she had been together nearly every day, when he had made love to her in
his slow, rather ponderous way, and she, her adolescence flattered, had
said "yes" when he had asked her to marry him--or rather ever since he
had written to her from Oxford to say that he must wait for some years
before he could expect to marry and that she was to consider herself
quite free--he had never by word or sign shown whether he also
considered himself free, or whether he intended, when the time came, to
ask her again to be his wife. When he had come back to Mountfield at
Christmas he had been in all respects as he had been up to six months
before, friendly and brotherly, and no more. It made it easier for her,
for her pride had been a little wounded. If he had held aloof, but shown
that, although he had given her her freedom, he hoped she had not
accepted it, she would have felt irked, and whatever unformed love she
had for Jim would quickly have disappeared. But, as it was, his equable
friendship kept alive the affection which she had always felt for him;
only it seemed to make the remembrance of their love passages a little
absurd. She was not exactly ashamed of what had happened, but she never
willingly thought of it, and after a year or so it became as much a part
of her past life as the short frocks and pinafores of her childhood. She
had been mildly chaffed about Jim on occasions, and there was no doubt
that in the minds both of her family and of Jim's the expectation of an
eventual marriage had never altogether subsided. Nor, strangely enough,
had it altogether subsided in hers, although if she had ever asked
herself the question as to whether she was in love with Jim in the
slightest degree she would have answered it forcibly in the negative.
But--there it was, as it is with every young girl--some day she would be
married; and it might happen that she would be married to Jim.

"Do you remember," Jim asked her when they had walked the length of the
lake and come out in front of the Temple, "how you used to try to teach
me to draw here?"

Yes, it was obviously Jim's intention to open up a buried subject, and
she was not by any means prepared for that. The sketching lessons had
been a shameless subterfuge for obtaining privacy, for Jim had about as
much aptitude for the arts as a dromedary, and his libels on the lake
and the rhododendrons would have made old Merchant Jack and his
landscape gardener turn in their graves.

Cicely laughed. "Have you brought back any sketches from your travels?"
she asked.

"No. I've got lots of photographs, though." Jim was always literal.

"Angela and Beatrice paint beautifully," Cicely said. "We are going to
make sketches at Blackborough this afternoon. Will you come with us,
Jim? We are all going."

"Yes, I'll come," said Jim. "Cicely, are you glad to see me home again?"

"Yes, of course, I'm glad. We have all missed you awfully, Jim."

"You can't think how bucked up I am to think that I need never leave
Mountfield again as long as I live. That's what's so jolly about having
a place of your own. It's part of you. You feel that, don't you,
Cicely?"

"Well, as I haven't got a place of my own, Jim, I don't know that I do."

"When those beastly death duties are paid off," Jim began, but Cicely
would not let him finish. "Anyhow," she said, "I should hate to think I
was going to stay in one place all my life, however much I liked it. Of
course, it is natural that you should feel as you do when you have been
travelling for a year. If I ever have the chance of travelling for a
year perhaps I shall feel like that about Kencote." She laughed and
looked him in the face, blushing a little. "Let us go back and play
tennis," she said.

His face fell, and he walked by her side without speaking. Cicely little
knew how keen was his disappointment. This was the hour he had been
looking forward to every day for the last year, and this the place, with
the sun glinting through the young green of beech and ash and lighting
up those masses and drifts of brilliant colour everywhere about them. It
was true that he had meant to come to no conclusions with the girl he
loved with all his heart. The time for that would not be for another
year at least, according to the decision he had long since come to. But
he had so hungered for her during his long exile, for such it had seemed
to him in spite of the various enjoyments and interests he had gained
from it, that the thought had grown with him that he would take just a
little of the sweetness that a word from her, to show that she was his
as he was hers, would give him. She had not spoken the word, and Jim's
heart was heavy as he walked back to the garden by her side.




CHAPTER IX

THE QUESTION OF MARRIAGE


"Blackborough Castle?" said the Squire at luncheon. "Well, if you
like--but you'll take your tea in the company of Dick, Tom and Harry,
and I think you would be more comfortable at home."

"I don't suppose there'll be anybody else there to-day," said Dick, "and
the spirit of youth cries aloud for tea on the floor." So it was
settled. Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Birket went in the carriage, Angela rode
with Humphrey, and Dick drove the rest of the party, which did not
include the Squire, in the brake.

"You look like bean-feasters," said Humphrey, as they drove past him and
Angela. "But you need not behave as such," said Miss Bird to the twins,
who, one on each side of their uncle, were inclined to be a trifle
uproarious.

They had the old keep of the castle pretty well to themselves, spread
their cloth on the green turf by the battlements, where centuries ago
men-at-arms had tramped the now covered stones, and made merry in true
picnic style. There was a footman to clear away, and the party broke up
into little groups, and explored the ruins, and wandered in the thick
woods which surrounded them.

Jim looked a little wistfully at Cicely as she went away with her arm in
that of Beatrice Birket, but made no attempt to join her, and presently
allied himself to the storming party which Joan was collecting to rescue
Miss Bird, confined in the deepest dungeon.

"Now, Trixie, you have got to tell me all about it," Cicely said, when
the two girls were out of hearing of the rest.

"My dear," said Beatrice, laughing, "I told you last night that he had
asked me and I had said yes, and that I am very happy."

"Oh, I know. But that was before Angela, and she said we were to have no
raptures. I want raptures, please."

"Well, I'm afraid you won't get them. I'm too well drilled. You know,
Cicely, I rather envy you being brought up as you were. You're more
natural, somehow, than Angela and I."

"Well, I envy _you_; so we're quits. But never mind about that now.
Trixie, is Angela just the least bit jealous?"

"No, not a bit," said Beatrice loyally. "But you see she's a year older,
and ever so much cleverer, and prettier too."

"She's none of those things except a year older. But she's a dear all
the same, and so are you. I don't wonder at anybody falling in love with
you. Are you very much in love too?"

"Well, Cicely, I don't mind telling you in strict confidence that I am.
But, perhaps, it's in a way you would not sympathise with particularly."

"Tell me in what way, and you'll see."

"Of course George isn't especially good-looking; in fact he isn't
good-looking at all, except for his eyes. I used to think I should never
love anybody unless he was as handsome as--as, well, Dick is, for
instance--that sort of man--you know--smart and well set up, and"--with
a laugh--"rather ignorant."

"Dick isn't ignorant," said Cicely indignantly.

"My dear, compared to George he is a monument of ignorance, a pyramid of
it; so are most men. It was just that; George is so clever, and he's
making such use of his brains too. He is one of the youngest men in
parliament, and is in office already. It was looking up to him as a
pillar of wisdom, and then finding that he looked to me of all people,
to help him on."

"I'm sure you will help him on. I heard some one say in London that many
politicians owed a great deal of their success to their wives."

"I don't mean quite in that way. I don't think George is ambitious,
though I am for him. He wants to get things done. Father says it is
because he is so young. He tells me about everything, and it makes me
grateful--you know, I think when you are very grateful, that is being in
love."

"You dear thing!" said Cicely, squeezing her arm. "Does Uncle Herbert
like him? They are not on the same side in politics, are they?"

"No. But it doesn't seem to matter. It doesn't matter in the least to
me. Of course, there _are_ things. George is a tremendous churchman, you
know, and I have never thought much about religion--not deeply, I mean.
But it is a real thing with him, and I'm learning. You see, Cicely, we
are rather a different engaged couple from most, although we don't
appear so to the world at large. Outside our two selves, George is a
coming man, and I am a lucky girl to be making such a match."

"I'm glad you have told me about it all," Cicely said. "It must be
splendid to be looking forward to helping your husband in all the good
things he is going to do."

"Oh, it is. I am ever so happy. And George is the dearest soul--so kind
and thoughtful, for all his cleverness. Cicely, you must meet him."

"I should love to," said Cicely simply. "I never meet anybody
interesting down here." Her incipient sense of revolt had died down for
the time; she was young enough to live in the present, if the present
was agreeable enough, as it was with this mild, unwonted, holiday stir
about her. She only felt, vaguely, a little sorry for herself.

"It is lovely," said Beatrice; "but I own I shouldn't care for it all
day and every day. It is rather jolly to feel you're in the middle of
things."

"Oh, I know it is," said Cicely, laughing. "_I_ was in the middle of
things in London, and I enjoyed it immensely."

Beatrice's engagement was the subject of another conversation that
evening. When the party got back from the picnic, Cicely set out for the
dower-house. Nobody had been near the old aunts that day; it was seven
o'clock, and there was just time to pay them a short visit. Mr. Birket
was in the hall as she passed through, and she asked him to go with her.

"I should like to pay my respects to those two admirable ladies," he
said. "They make me feel that I am nobody, which is occasionally good
for the soul of man."

"Ah," said Cicely, as they went across the garden together, "you are a
wicked Radical, you see, and you want to disestablish their beloved
Church."

"Do I?" said Mr. Birket. "How truly shocking of me. My dear, don't
believe everything you hear. I am sure that my chief fault is that I
don't possess land. Cicely, how much land must you possess if you really
want to hold your head up? Would a hundred acres or so do the trick? I
suppose not. Two hundred acres, now! I might run to that if the land was
cheap."

"Two hundred acres, I should think, uncle," said Cicely, "with a
manor-house, and, say, a home farm. And if you could get the advowson of
a living, it would be all to the good."

"Would it? Thank you for telling me. But then I should have to ask the
parson to dinner, and we might not get on. And I should have to go to
church. I like going to church when I'm not obliged to--that is if
they'll preach me a good sermon. I insist upon a good sermon. But if I
had to go to set an example--well, I shouldn't go; and then I should get
into trouble."

"Yes, I think you would, uncle. You can't live your own life entirely in
the country. There are responsibilities."

"Ah, you've thought of that, have you? You do think things over?"

"Yes. I do think things over. There's nothing much else to do."

Mr. Birket cast a side glance at her. The sun striking through the trees
of the park flushed translucently the smooth, fair flesh of her cheek
and her ungloved hand. In her white frock, moving freely, with the
springy grace of a young animal, she attracted the eye. Her head, under
her wide hat-brim, was pensive, but she looked up at him with a smile.
"If you could bring yourself to it, you know," she began, and broke off.
"I mean," she began again, "I think you must either be a man, or--or
very young, or not young at all."

Mr. Birket was a man of very quick perception. His face softened a
little. "My dear," he said, "when you are very young things are
happening every day, when you are a little older anything may happen,
and when you are older still happenings don't matter. But you haven't
got to the third stage yet."

"No," Cicely said, "I suppose not. Happenings do matter to me; and there
aren't enough of them."

The two old ladies received Mr. Birket courteously. He was accidentally
allied to the Clintons, and in his own path of life had striven, not
without success, to make himself worthy of the alliance. He came to see
them, two old ladies who had lived all their long lives in a small
country village, had hardly ever been to London, and never out of
England, who had been taught to read and write and to add up pounds,
shillings and pence, and had never felt the lack of a wider education.
He came with his great reputation, his membership of Parliament, his
twenty thousand a year of income earned by the exercise of his brain,
and a judgeship looming in the near future, and as far as they were
concerned he came straight out of the little house on the Bathgate Road,
now fitly occupied by a retired chemist. But far be it from them to show
a brother of their nephew's wife that he was not welcome among them.

They talked of the weather, of Blackborough Castle, of Jim Graham's
return, and of Walter's coming marriage with Muriel.

"Well, that will be the first wedding in the new generation," said Mr.
Birket. "But there will be another very soon. Have you heard that my
girl, Beatrice, is going to be married?"

The old ladies had not heard this piece of news and expressed their
interest. Privately they thought it a little odd that Mr. Birket should
talk as if there were any connection between the two events, although,
of course, it was true that Walter was of the new Birket generation as
well as the new Clinton generation.

"She is rather young," pursued Mr. Birket, "but George Senhouse is a
steady fellow as well as a successful one. It is George Senhouse she is
going to marry--you have heard of him?"

"Any relation, if I may ask, to Sir George Senhouse of whom we read in
the House of Parliament?" asked Aunt Ellen.

"Yes--George Senhouse--that's the man. Not on my side, you know, Miss
Clinton, but I'm sure you won't think that a drawback."

Indeed it was not. Mr. Birket was a Liberal, and therefore a deadly foe
to the true religion of the Church of England as by compromise
established, and to all the societies for raising mankind to a just
appreciation of that religion which the Misses Clinton supported. And
Sir George Senhouse, a capable and earnest young man, with an historic
name, had early devoted his powers to the defence of those things in the
outside world which they held dear. It was, indeed, a surprising piece
of good fortune for Mr. Birket--and no wonder that he was so evidently
pleased.

"I hope your daughter will be strengthened to assist him in all the good
work he does," said Aunt Ellen.

"I sincerely hope she will," said Mr. Birket. "The engagement is not
announced yet; but I tell _you_, Miss Clinton--and Miss Laura."

"Oh, we should not say a word before the proper time," said Aunt Laura.

When Cicely and Mr. Birket had gone, Aunt Ellen said, "You may take my
word for it, sister, that it is owing to the Clinton connection. We have
lived a retired life, but I know very well how these things tell."

As Cicely dressed for dinner--it was the first time she had been alone
during the day--she thought about Jim, and what he had said to her, or
tried to say to her, early in the morning. He had disturbed her mind and
given her something that she had to think about. She had told Mr. Birket
that she thought things over, and it was true; she had courage in that
way. With but little in her education or scope of life to feed it, her
brain was active and inquiring. It worked on all matters that came
within her ken, and she never shirked a question. She was affectionate,
loyal, and naturally light-hearted, but she was critical too, of herself
no less than of others. It would have been easy for her, if she had had
less character, to put away from her, as she had done for the last five
years, the consideration of her relationship to Jim, to have ignored his
approach to her, since she had stopped him from coming closer, and to
have deferred searching her own mind until he should have approached her
again and in such a way that she could no longer have avoided it. But
she had locked up the remembrance of the happenings of five years before
in a cupboard of her brain, and locked the key on it. If she had thought
of it at all, she would have had to think of herself as having made a
present to Jim which he had returned to her. And because she could not
altogether escape from the memory of it, she had come to look upon
herself as a rather foolish and very immature young person in those
days, who had not in the least known what she was about when she allowed
herself to be made love to.

With regard to Jim her thoughts had been even less definite. His
attitude to her had been so entirely brotherly that she had never felt
the necessity of asking herself whether he was still keeping his
expressed love for her alive, although he would not show it, or whether
he, too, thought of their love-making as a piece of rather childish
folly, and had put it completely behind him. Beyond the first slight
awkwardness of meeting him when he came back from Oxford after his
letter to her, she had felt none in his presence, and until this very
morning her attitude towards him had been frank and her feelings
affectionate. He had made that possible by showing the same attitude and
apparently the same feelings.

But what she now had to consider was whether he had actually been so
frank towards her as she to him; whether he had not been keeping
something back, and, in effect, playing a part. If it were so, their
relationship was not as she had thought it, and would have to be
adjusted.

She turned her mind to this point first. It would really be rather
surprising if Jim had been in love with her all this time and she had
not known it. She thought she must have known if it were so, and she
rejected the idea. What she could not get away from--it hardly needed
stating in her mind--was that he had tentatively made love to her that
morning. Or rather--and here she rather congratulated herself on making
the distinction, as a process of pure thought--he had seemed to show her
that marriage was in his mind, perhaps as a thing already settled
between them, although she, for her part, had long since given up
thinking of it as a matter to be considered, however loosely, settled.
Of course she knew he was fond of her, as she was of him. If he was not
in love with her, as once he had been, he might still want to marry her,
as the nicest person he could find, and the requisite impulsion might
come from his return after a long absence. She would be included in his
heightened appreciation of all his home surroundings. These
considerations passed through her mind, in no logical sequence of
thought, but at various points of her self-questioning, and when she was
also thinking further of her own part in what might follow, trying to
discover what she wanted and to decide what she should do. The fact that
he had opened and would probably open again the subject of their
marriage was all that really mattered, and she knew that without
thinking.

She knew, too, without thinking, that she did not want to engage herself
again to marry Jim, at any rate not yet; and, in fact, she would not do
so. What her honesty of mind impelled her to was the discovery of the
root from which this femininely instinctive decision had flowered. What
were her reasons for not wanting to marry Jim now, or soon; and would
they take from her, when examined, that always present but always
unstated possibility of some day finding herself living at Mountfield as
his wife? She a little dreaded the conclusion, which may have shown that
she had already made up her mind; but it was here that an answer had to
be found, and she faced it bravely.

She was not ready to marry Jim now, or soon, because in the first place
she did not love him--not in that way--and in the second place because
she did not love, in any way, what he stood for.

When she said to herself that she did not love Jim her mind recoiled a
little. He was such a good sort, so kind, so reliable. It was just as if
she had said that she did not love her brothers. It was ungracious, and
ungrateful. She did love him. Dear old Jim! And she would be sorry to
cause him pain. But, if she did not want him to make love to her--and
certainly she didn't--she couldn't possibly love him as a girl ought to
love her prospective husband--as Beatrice, for instance, loved her young
parliamentarian. That seemed settled. And because she did think things
over, and was no longer very young indeed, she saw that the change of
circumstances in a girl's life when she was going to be married counted
for something, something of the pleasure, something of the excitement.
It was so with Beatrice, and with Muriel. They loved the men they were
going to marry, but they also got a great deal of satisfaction out of
the change in their surroundings, quite apart from that. What sort of
change would she have as Jim's wife? She would step straight out of one
large house into another, and she would no more be the mistress of
Mountfield than she had been of Kencote. So she told herself. For the
mistresses of houses like Kencote and Mountfield were really a sort of
superior housekeeper, allowed to live with the family, but placed where
they were with the sole object of serving their lords and masters, with
far less independence than a paid housekeeper, who could take her money
and go if she were dissatisfied with her position.

What a prospect! To live out the rest of her life in the subjection
against which she had already begun to rebel, in exactly similar
surroundings and in exactly the same atmosphere! If she married Jim she
would not even have the pleasure of furnishing her own house. It would
be Jim's house, and the furniture and all the appurtenances of it were
so perfect in Jim's eyes that she knew he would never hear of her
altering a thing. She would not be able to rearrange her drawing-room
without his permission. That was what it meant to marry a country
gentleman of Jim's sort, who disliked "gadding about," and would expect
his wife to go through the same dull round, day after day, all her life
long, while he amused himself in the way that best suited him.

When she had reached this point, and the end of her toilet together,
Cicely suddenly determined that she would _never_ marry Jim, and if he
pressed her she would tell him so. She didn't want to marry anybody. If
only she could get away from Kencote and be a hospital nurse, or
something of the sort, that was all she wanted. With this rather
unsatisfactory conclusion she cleared her mind, ran downstairs, and
found Jim himself alone in the drawing-room.




CHAPTER X

TOWN _versus_ COUNTRY


"Hullo!" said Jim. "You're down early."

"I didn't know you were here," said Cicely, and was annoyed at herself,
and blushed in consequence.

But whatever conclusion Jim may have drawn from her hurried, rather
eager entrance, her denial, and her blush, he only said, "Mother and
Muriel are upstairs."

"I wonder why Muriel didn't come to my room," said Cicely. "I think I'll
go and find her."

"All right," said Jim, and Cicely went out of the room again.

Jim took up a book from a table, turned over a few leaves, and then
threw it down and went to the window, where he stood looking out, with
his hands in his pockets.

By and by Mr. Birket came in, and joined him. "Shame to be indoors on an
evening like this," he said. "I should like to dine at nine o'clock in
the summer."

"What about the servants?" asked Jim.

"Ah, yes," said Mr. Birket. "Is it true you are a Free Trader, Graham?"

"Yes, I am," said Jim, with a shade of defiance.

"So am I," said Mr. Birket.

Jim smiled. "Well, you've got to be in your party," he said.

"Not at all. It isn't a question of party. It's a question of
common-sense."

"That's just what I think. I've looked into it with as much intelligence
as I'm capable of--they say about here that isn't much--and I can't see
why you shouldn't be a Tory as good as any of 'em and still stick to
Free Trade."

"Nor can I," said Mr. Birket. "But they won't let you. You had better
join us, Graham. Anybody with any dawning of sense must be very
uncomfortable where you are."

"I should be a jolly sight more uncomfortable with you," said Jim. "And
I've got keen on the Empire since I've been travelling."

"Oh, if you've seen it," said Mr. Birket, somewhat cryptically, and then
the door opened, and Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Birket came in together.

Mrs. Birket was a tall, good-looking woman, who held herself upright,
was well dressed and well informed. She had a good manner, and in mixed
company never allowed a drop in the conversation. But as she talked well
this was not so tiresome as it might have been. She was quoted amongst
her circle, which was a wide one, as an excellent hostess, and the
tribute was deserved, because, in addition to her conversational
aptitude, she had the art of looking after her guests without apparent
effort. She had been strict with her daughters, but they were now her
companions, and devoted to her. Mrs. Clinton talked to her, perhaps more
than to any other woman she knew, and the two were friends, although the
circumstances of their lives were wide apart.

The two ladies were followed by the four girls, who came in chattering,
and by Mrs. Graham, who, even in evening clothes, with a necklace of
diamonds, looked as if she liked dogs. Then came Humphrey,
extraordinarily well dressed, his dark hair very sleek; and Dick, very
well dressed too, but with less of a town air; and then the Squire, just
upon the stroke of eight, obviously looking forward to his dinner.

"Nina, what on earth can have become of Tom and Grace?" he asked when he
had greeted Mrs. Graham and Muriel. "No sign of 'em anywhere. We can't
wait, you know."

Mrs. Clinton glanced at the ormolu clock, representing Time with a
scythe and hour-glass, on the mantelpiece, but said nothing. As it began
to chime the door opened and the Rector and Mrs. Beach were announced.

"Grace! Grace!" said the Squire, holding up a warning finger, but
smiling affably. "I've never known you run it so fine before."

"My dear Edward," said Mrs. Beach, with her sweet smile, "Tom broke a
collar stud. It is one of those little accidents that nobody can foresee
and nobody can guard against."

"Except by laying in a stock," said Mrs. Graham.

"Well, my dear Grace, you were just _not_ late," said the Squire, "I
will forgive you."

So they all went in to dinner amicably, and a very good dinner it was,
although there was an entire absence of what the Squire called French
fal-lals. English _versus_ French cooking was a favourite dinner-table
topic of his, and he expatiated on it this evening. "It stands to
reason," he said, "that natural food well cooked--of course it must be
well cooked, before an open range, and so on--is better than made-up
stuff. Now what have we got this evening?" He put on his gold-rimmed
glasses and took up a menu-card. A shade of annoyance passed over his
face when he discovered that it was written in French. "Who wrote this
rubbish?" he asked, looking over his glasses at Mrs. Clinton.

"I did, father," said Cicely, blushing.

"Good for you, Siskin!" broke in Dick. "Very well done. It gives the
entertainment an air."

"I helped with the accents," said Angela.

"Well," said the Squire, "I don't like it. As far as I can make out it's
a purely English dinner, except, perhaps, the soup, and it ought to be
described in English. What's the good of calling roast lamb 'agneau
rôti'?" He pronounced it "rotty," with an inflection of scorn. "There's
no sense in it. But as I was saying--where are you going to find better
food than salmon and roast lamb, new potatoes, asparagus, peas--of
course they're forced, but they're English--and so on?" He threw down
the card and took off his glasses. "Everything grown on the place except
the salmon, which old Humphrey Meadshire sent me."

"You've left out the 'Pêche à la Melba'," said Mrs. Beach. "It is the
crowning point of the whole dinner. But I quite agree with you, Edward,
you couldn't have a better one anywhere."

"Rather on the heavy side," commented Humphrey.

"Not at all," said Mr. Birket. "The fruits of the earth in due season,
or, if possible, a little before it; that's the best dinner any man can
have."

"Every country has its own cooking," said Mrs. Birket. "I really think
the English is the best if it is well done."

"Which it very seldom is," said Mrs. Graham.

"Of course this is the very best time of all the year for it," said the
Rector. "Did you bring back any new curry recipes from India, Jim?"

Jim replied that he had not, and the Squire said, "By the bye, Jim, I
see that fellow Mackenzie came home in the _Punjaub_. The papers are
full of him this evening. Did you happen to meet him?"

Jim said that he had shared the same cabin, and that Mackenzie had
promised to spend a week-end at Mountfield some time or other.

"We are going to make a lion of him in London," said Humphrey. "We
haven't had an explorer for a long time. I believe he's shaggy enough to
be a great success."

"You must bring him over to dine, Jim," said the Squire. "It's
interesting to hear about these fellows who trot all over the world. But
heavens, what a life!"

"A very good life, I think," said Mr. Birket. "Not much chance to get
moss-grown."

"Now, I'm sure that is a dig at us people who live in the country," said
Mrs. Beach. "Because _you_ don't get moss-grown, Mr. Birket."

"He would if he lived in the country," said Mrs. Birket. "He would lie
on his back all day long and do nothing at all. He has an unequalled
power of doing nothing."

"Not at all," said Mr. Birket. "I'm a very hard worker. Cicely caught me
at it at six o'clock this morning, didn't you, my dear?"

"You've no responsibilities, Herbert," the Squire broke in. "If you
owned land you wouldn't want to lie on your back."

"He is trying to make the land lie on _our_ backs," said Dick. "We
shan't have any left soon."

"All you Radicals," began the Squire; but Mrs. Beach had something to
say: "Mr. Birket, you despise us country folk at the bottom of your
heart. I'm sure you do."

"Not at all," said Mr. Birket. "I think you live a peaceful and idyllic
existence, and are much to be envied."

"Peaceful!" the Squire snorted. "That's all you Radicals know about it.
I assure you we work as hard as anybody, and get less return for it. I
wish you'd tell your precious leaders so, Herbert."

"I will," said Mr. Birket.

"What with one thing and another," proceeded the Squire, "the days are
gone as soon as they are begun."

"But when they are finished something has always been done," said Mrs.
Beach. "That is the difference between a town life and a country life.
In London you are immensely busy and tire yourself to death, but you've
nothing to show for it."

"Your brains are sharpened up a bit," said Humphrey.

"If you have any," suggested Mrs. Graham.

"Mother, don't be rude," said Muriel.

"The remark had no personal bearing," said Humphrey, with a grin.

"I didn't say so," retorted Mrs. Graham.

"I think it is a matter of temperament," said Mrs. Birket. "Everybody
who lives in London likes the country, and everybody who lives in the
country likes London--for a change. But if you had to live in one or the
other all the year round----"

"I would choose the country," said Mrs. Beach, "and I'm sure you would,
Edward."

"Of course I would," said the Squire. "I do live in the country all the
year round. I've had enough of London to last me all my life."

"Two for the country," said Dick. "Now we'll go round the table. Mother,
where do your tastes lie?"

Mrs. Clinton did not reply for a moment; then she said, "I don't think I
should mind which it was if I had my family round me."

"Oh, come now, Nina," said the Squire, "that's no answer. Surely _you_
don't want to become a town madam."

"You mustn't bring pressure, Edward," said Mrs. Beach. "We shall have
quite enough on our side."

"Mother neutral," said Dick. "Jim?"

"Oh, the country," said Jim.

"Three for the country. Angela?"

"London."

"You must give a reason," said Mrs. Beach.

Angela laughed. "I like music, and plays," she said, "and hearing people
talk."

"Well, surely you can hear people talk in the country," said the Squire.

"And such talk!" added Mrs. Graham, at which everybody laughed except
the Squire, who saw no humour in the remark.

"Three to one," said Dick. "Aunt Grace, you've had your turn. Now it's
mine. I don't want to bury myself yet awhile, but when the time comes I
expect I shall shy at London as the governor does. I'm country."

"Why?" asked Angela.

"Oh, because there's more to do. Now then, Beatrice. You're London, I
suppose."

"Yes," said Beatrice. "Because there's more to do."

"Good for you! That's four to two. Mrs. Graham!"

"Can you ask?" said that lady. "And I won't give any reasons. I like the
country best because I like it best."

"Father is country. Five to two."

"And my reason," said the Squire, "is that every man who doesn't like
the country best, when he can get it, isn't a man at all. He's a
popinjay."

"Well, at the risk of being called the feminine for popinjay," said Mrs.
Birket, with a smile, "I must choose London."

"Oh, but I don't include the women, my dear Emmeline," said the Squire.
"And I don't include men like Herbert either, who've go

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