IT was nearly a week before Kate was permitted to leave her bed, and during that time she had learned a great deal about the economy of Fanshawe Regis. She lay among the pillows every day a little higher, with her natural colour coming back, looking more and more like the Greuze, and listened to all the domestic revelations that flowed from Mrs Mitford’s lips. The kind woman was pleased with so lively a listener, and thus there gradually unrolled itself before Kate a moving panorama of another existence, which the girl, perhaps, had not sufficient imagination or sympathy to enter fully into, but which interested her much in bits, and amused her, and to which she lent a very willing ear. Sometimes the door of the room would be opened, and Kate would hear the footsteps in the house of which she was now a recognised inmate, but which she knew nothing of. There was one solemn step that creaked and went slowly, gravely, up and down stairs, as if life were a weighty ceremonial to be accomplished very seriously, which was evidently the step of Dr Mitford, the Rector of Fanshawe Regis, and rural dean; and there was a lighter springy masculine foot, which came to the very door sometimes with flowers and letters and books for the invalid, and which Kate did not need to be told was “my John.” In the languor of her illness, and in the absence of other objects of interest, this step became quite important to Kate. She was not, we are obliged to confess, by any means a very good young woman. She was a spoiled child, and she had been born a flirt, which could scarcely be said to be her fault. From three years old to nineteen, which was her present age, it had been the occupation of her existence to prey upon mankind. Whether it was sugar-plums she played for or hearts had not mattered very much to her. She had put forth her wiles, her smiles, her thousand little fascinations, with a spontaneous, almost unconscious, instinct. It was necessary to her to be pleasing somebody—to be first in some one’s regard, whoever that some one might be. Before she had been half a day under Mrs Mitford’s care, that good soul was her slave; and when that innocent little bit of captivation was complete, and when the doctor, too, showed symptoms of having put on her chains, Kate felt her hands free, and longed for the hunting-grounds and the excitement of the sport. John was the most likely victim, and yet she could not get at him, being chained up here out of reach. It filled her invalid existence with a little touch of excitement. She sent him pretty messages in return for his roses, and listened to all his mother’s stories of him. Not that John in himself interested the girl. He was her natural victim, that was all, and she smiled with a vague satisfaction at thought of the mischief which she knew she could do.
The life she lived in her room in this strange house of which she knew nothing, yet with which she was so familiar, was the strangest amusing episode to Kate. After the first two days Mrs Mitford kept by her less closely, and a fresh country housemaid, full of wonder and sympathy and admiration for the pretty young lady, came into the room as soon as she was awake to put it in order for the day. Lizzie had a round fresh apple-blossom face which pleased Kate’s eye, and was full of that wondering worship for the creature so like herself in age and nature, so infinitely above her in other matters, possessed of so many incomprehensible fascinations and refinements, which one young woman so often entertains for another. There had been great calculations in the kitchen about Kate’s probable age and her beauty, the colour of her hair, the shape of her hat, her father’s wealth, and everything about her. The cook at Fanshawe Regis came from Camelford, where Mr Crediton lived, and knew that his bank was the Bank of England to all the country round, and that he was rolling in money, and spared nothing on his only child. Lizzie had listened with open eyes to all the details her fellow-servant knew, or could recollect or invent, of the fairy existence of this wonderful young lady. About twenty, cook concluded Miss Crediton was—and Lizzie was just over twenty. And she too had blue eyes like Kate, and apple-blossom cheeks, and was about the same height—but yet what a difference! “You’ve seen Miss Parsons as was her maid—a stuck-up thing with her fine bonnets; her mother keeps a millinery shop down Thistle-field way, leading out o’ Camelford,” said cook. “She was lady’s-maid to this Miss Crediton, and a fine thing for her too. She might take a fancy to you, Liz, if you were to flatter her a bit.” “Laws, I never dare open my lips,” said Lizzie; “she’ll lie there a-noticing everything with them eyes, as looks you through and through. Them as is no skolards has no chance.” But Lizzie’s heart beat as the morning came, and she went softly into Miss Crediton’s room, and set the windows open, and dusted and settled and put everything to rights. Kate watched her, saying nothing at first, not without a little natural interest on her side in the young woman of her own age, in all the roundness, and softness, and whiteness, and rosiness of youth. She saw the girl’s awe-stricken looks at herself, and was amused, and even a little flattered, by Lizzie’s admiration,—and being weary of silence, began to draw her out. It was chiefly from Lizzie’s account that Kate identified all the movements of the house, and found out the hours at which Mrs Mitford visited the schools, and when she went to see her poor people. “When she leaves you, miss, to have a little rest after your dinner, it’s time for the school,” said Lizzie. “Missis never misses a day, not so long as I can remember, except now and again, when Mr John’s been ill.”
“Is Mr John often ill?” said Kate.
“Oh no, miss; never, so to speak; but missis makes an idol of him. Mother thinks as she makes too much an idol on him. He’s her only son, like—it aint like having nine or ten, as most folks have,” said Lizzie, apologetically, as she arranged the little table by Kate’s bed-side, where there was, as usual, a bouquet of John’s roses, freshly gathered.
“That is true,” said Kate, with a laugh which Lizzie could not understand.
“But I’d rather have one like Mr John, than a dozen like most folks,” Lizzie added, with energy; “most of ’em in the village is nought but trouble to them they belongs to. It’s hard to tell of ’em what they’re made for, them big lads. One’ll go poaching and idling, till ye don’t know what to do with ’um; and another ’ll list, and break his folks’s hearts. Mother says they’re a cross, but I think as they’re worse than a cross—drinking, and fighting, and quarrelling, and never good for nought. And them as is steady goes away, and you don’t get no good o’ them. You may laugh, miss, as don’t know no better—but there are folks as can’t laugh.”
“I did not laugh, Lizzie,” said Kate. “I am very sorry—but why are you so serious about it? I hope the girls are better than the lads.”
“Mother says we’ve haven’t got the same temptations,” said Lizzie, dubiously; “but she’s old, you know, miss, and I dare to say she don’t think on. I’ve got four brothers, all idler the one nor the other. And if I don’t know, I don’ know who should. Mother she’s a good woman, and I hope we’ll all pass for her sake—but missis, she never hears a cross word from Mr John.”
“A cross word, indeed!” said Kate; “that would be unpardonable—and she such a darling. He ought to be proud of having a mother like that. I am very fond of her myself.”
“He’s as proud as Punch, miss,” said Lizzie, “and missis she’s proud of him. When he’s at home he’s always by to walk wi’ her and talk with her. Master, he’s that learned ye never know what to make of him. They say as he’s the biggest scholard in all Huntingshire. It aint to be expected as he would just take his little walks, and make it pleasant like a common man.”
“And what does Mrs Mitford do when Mr John is away?” said Kate, a little doubtful of the propriety of asking so many questions, but too curious to let the opportunity slip.
“Oh, miss! it’s dreadful, that is,” cried Lizzie. “It’s enough to make you cry just to look at her face. Some days she’ll go across to the school as many as three times—and down to the village among all the poor folks. Mother aint Church like me, miss,” the girl continued, with a little apologetic curtsy; “she was born like in Zion, she says, and she can’t make up her mind not to leave it; and it aint to be expected as poor missis should be fond of Zion folks. But when any of the lads are in trouble she never minds church nor chapel. Mother says she’s a bit proud as her own lad is one as never gets into no trouble—and the like of him haven’t got the same temptations, mother says. But I always say as it’s kind of missis, all the same.”
“I should think so, indeed,” cried Kate, “and I think your mother must be——” she was going to say a disagreeable old woman, but stopped in time—“rather hard upon other people,” she went on, diplomatically; “but then if Mr John goes away altogether, I am afraid Mrs Mitford will break her heart.”
“Oh, miss, don’t you be afeared,” cried Lizzie, with bright confidence—“he aint going away. It sounds funny, but he’s going to be the new curate, is Mr John.”
“Oh!!” Kate gave a little cry of disappointment and dismay. “Is he a clergyman? I never thought of that.”
“Not yet, miss,” said Lizzie, “but they say as he’s going up to the bishop at Michaelmas or thereabouts, and then we’ll have him here for curate, and missis will be as glad as glad.”
“I am sure I am not glad,” said Kate to herself, pouting over this unlooked-for piece of news. Not that she cared for John. She had never seen him, how could she care? He had saved her life, people said, but then that was the most fantastic beginning of an acquaintance, like a thing in a novel, and she would rather have seen no more of him ever after, had that been all. But Kate had become interested in my John by dint of hearing his step, and receiving his roses, and knowing him to be her natural victim. And that he should be a clergyman spoilt all. Curates, of course, are always fair game—but then an effective young sportswoman like Kate Crediton can bag curates with so little trouble. Facility, let us say, after the fashion of the copybooks, breeds contempt. And, on the other hand, light-minded as she was, she felt that a clergyman, as distinct from a curate, was a thing that called for respect—and felt herself suddenly pulled up and brought to a pause in all her projects for amusement. How provoking it was! if he had been going to be a soldier, or a barrister, or an—anything except a clergyman! She could not, for Mrs Mitford’s sake, treat him on the ground of simple curatedom; nor would she beguile him from his serious intentions, and wound his mother, who had been so good to her. A clergyman! a being either ready to fall a too ready victim, or a martyr, whom to interfere with would be sacrilege. Kate was thoroughly contrariée. She felt that fortune was against her, and that this was a climax to the misfortunes which hitherto had sat so very lightly upon her. To be thrown from her horse and half-killed—to find herself an inmate of a strange house which she had never heard of before—to be introduced into a new world altogether, with the most delicious sense of novelty and strangeness—and all to find herself at last face to face with a clergyman! Kate could not understand what could be meant by such a waste of means for so miserable an end. “I might have been killed,” she said to herself, “and he only a clergyman all the time!” She was, in short, disgusted at once with her ill fortune and her foolish dreams. She talked no more to Lizzie, but fell back on her pillows, and pushed the roses away with her hand. Mrs Mitford had deceived her, John had deceived her. To think she should really have been getting up a little romance on the subject, and he to turn out only a clergyman after all! When John’s mother returned to the room, after giving him a full account of her patient, along with his breakfast, and reanimating by her son’s interest her own warm glow of sympathy for the invalid, she was quite disturbed by the pucker on Kate’s brow. “Dear me! I am afraid you have been doing too much,” she said, anxiously, bending over the bed. “I have a little headache, that is all,” said Kate, whose temper was affected. And Mrs Mitford shook her head, and took immediate action. She had the blinds all drawn down again which Lizzie had drawn up, and sprinkled eau-de-Cologne all over Kate, and laid aside her own work, which required light, and with her knitting in her hand instead, placed herself in the shade, and said “hush” to every word her patient addressed to her. “Quiet and darkness,” she said, softly; “hush, my dear—there is nothing like darkness and quiet—I always find them effectual.” Poor Kate had to make the best of it. Instead of going on with her new novel, and chattering to her heart’s content, she had to lie silent and shut her eyes, and be content with the eau-de-Cologne; which, after all, though he was but a clergyman, was less interesting than John.
It was a great event to Kate, and also to the kitchen at Fanshawe Regis, when “Miss Parsons” came from Camelford with her young mistress’s “things.” Kate had never been ill in her life before, and she had not been very ill or suffering much even now, so that the feeling of state and dignity and superiority to the rest of the world was unmixed by any severe reminiscence of pain. It gave her quite a thrill of pleasure to see her pretty dresses again. She had been allowed to get up to lie on the sofa by the window, and look out at the roses, but only in her dressing-gown, which was very pretty, no doubt, and very cool, but not so pleasant as all those fresh summer costumes with their floating ribbons. She lay on her sofa, and watched Parsons unpack them with lively interest. “But I should like to know what you mean me to do with them all,” she said. “Here are enough for all the summer; and how long do you suppose I am going to stay? Perhaps a week—there are a dozen gowns at least.”
“I did not know which you would like, miss,” said Parsons; “nor if you might be tempted to stay. It’s so pretty all about, and they’re all so fond of you——”
“Fond of me!” said Kate, with a sudden blush, which surprised herself intensely. “You goose! nobody has seen me but Mrs Mitford—and she will be very glad to get rid of so much trouble, I should think.”
“Ah, miss! as if some folks didn’t know better than that,” said Parsons; which confounded Kate so that she made no answer, but paused to reflect whether the girl was mad, or if she could mean anything. John had seen her, it was true, though she had not seen him. He had saved her life; he had kept sending her roses all the time. And, no doubt, it is quite possible that a man (poor creature!) might be struck at first sight, and never get the better of it all his life after. The suggestion made her smile for one moment, and then filled her with a certain contempt for John.
“Please finish your unpacking as soon as you can,” she said, with severe politeness, to Parsons. “Take out half—that will do. I stay here a week only. And make haste, please, for I am tired of all this fuss.”
“Now they’ve come,” said Parsons, doggedly, “they’d best be unpacked; and if you was to change your mind——”
“Be quiet, please, and get done and go away,” cried Kate. “You will make me ill again, if you don’t mind.”
And then, considerably ruffled and put out, she turned her head to the window. Mrs Mitford had scrupulously kept “the gentlemen"—her husband and her son—out of the flower-garden, on which Kate’s windows looked. She did not think a young lady in a dressing-gown a fit spectacle for any eyes but her own; but Kate was almost well, and her hostess had relaxed a little. As she looked out now she saw through the venetian blinds two figures in the distance walking slowly along a sheltered walk. It could only be John whom his mother was leading on in that way. Her head was almost resting against his arm as she looked up and talked to him. She leant upon him with that pleasant sense of support and help which makes weakness sweet; there was even in her attitude a something which Kate perceived dimly by instinct, but could not have put in words; that delicious sense of surprise, and secret, sacred, humorous consciousness of the wonder there was in it—the sweet jest of being thus supported by her baby, her child, he whom she had carried in her arms—was it yesterday?—which a man’s mother enjoys privately all to herself. Somehow a little envy stole over Kate as she looked at them. She was very fond of her father; but yet it was not such happiness to be with him as it was for this other woman to be with her boy. The young creature thirsting for everything that was sweetest in life would have liked to have that too. To be sure she could not be John’s mother, or anybody’s mother, and would have laughed with inextinguishable laughter at herself for the thought, had she realised it. But still she envied Mrs Mitford, feeling that kind woman to have thus appropriated a joy beyond her reach—and what do women want with joys at that age? Should not all be concentrated in one sweetest draught for the rose lips, so dewy and soft with youth? Kate would have repudiated such a sentiment, of course; and yet this was what breathed unconsciously in her heart. She went to bed with a little spiteful feeling against Mrs Mitford. Had not she made a clergyman of her boy on purpose to spite Kate? If he had been a gravedigger his mother would loved him just the same; it would have made no difference to her. If he had been ugly, and weakly, and half his size, his mother would have liked him quite as well; which were all so many offences against Kate, and evidences of her inferiority. She wanted to have her own delights and the other woman’s delights too. She wanted to be young and to be old; to have a lover’s adoration and a son’s worship, and every other variety that love can take. It so spited her that she cried when she went to bed, and then burst out laughing at her own folly, and was as silly as you can conceive it possible to be—perhaps more silly than after nineteen any one could conceive.
Next day, after Lizzie had put the room in order, and Mrs Mitford had paid her after-breakfast visit, and gone off to the village to see some of her poor people, it occurred to Kate to try her own strength. Her father was coming to dinner at the Rectory that day, and it had been arranged that she was to be up in the evening to see him. But when all was quiet in the house, Mrs Mitford out, the doctor not expected, and Parsons at hand, who was not likely to thwart her mistress, Kate formed a different plan for herself. She had her dresses taken out, just to look at them. After being in a dressing-gown for a week, the charms of a real dress, something that fits, is wonderful. Kate gave a contemptuous glance at her white wrapper, as she gazed at all those pretty garments, and then she glanced at herself in the glass opposite, with her hair all loosely bundled up under her net. What a guy she looked, lying there so long, as if she had had a fever! “A good thing they did not bethink themselves of cutting off my hair,” she said, under her breath; and could not but ask herself with horror whether all the eau-de-Cologne that had been lavished on her head, and all the showers of water, would affect her hair disadvantageously. She might as well take it out of the net at least, and let Parsons dress it. When this was done, Kate felt her courage rise. She sprang up from her sofa, frightening the maid. “I am going to dress—I must dress—I can’t bear this thing five minutes longer!” she cried.
“Oh, miss! you’ll catch your death,” cried Parsons, not indeed knowing why, but delivering the first missile of offence that came to her hand. But Parsons was far from being a person of spirit, or able to cope with her young mistress. She stood helplessly by, protesting, but making no effort to resist, except the passive one of giving no assistance. Kate flew at her dress with a sense of novelty which gave it an additional charm. She buttoned herself into it with a certain delight. “Oh, how nice it is to feel one has something on!” she cried, tossing her wrapper to the other side of the room; and she fastened her belt, and tied her ribbons, and did everything for herself with a sweep of enthusiasm. The reader has only seen her as an invalid, and Kate was very well worth looking at. She was a little over the middle height; her figure was very slender and pliant and graceful—upright, yet bending as if with every breeze. Her hair was warm sunny brown hair; her eyes were dark-violet blue, large, and limpid, and full of a startled sweetness, like the eyes of a fawn. They had the child’s look of surprise at the fair world and wonderful beings among which it finds itself, which has always so great a charm; and with that blue ribbon in her pretty hair, and the clear blue muslin dress, she was like a flower. And then she had that glory of complexion which we are so fond of claiming as specially English. Nothing could be more delicate or more lovely than the gradations of colour in her face—her lips a rich rose, her cheeks a little paler—a soft rose-reflection upon her delicate features and white throat. It was not “the perfect woman nobly planned” which came to your mind at sight of so pretty a creature. She was a Greuze—an article of luxury, worth quantities of money, and always delightful to look at—an ornament to any chamber, the stateliest or the simplest. She might have been placed in a palace or in a cottage, and would not have looked out of place in either; and there was enough beauty in her to decorate the place at once, and make up for all lack of colour or loveliness besides. But what she might have beyond the qualities of the Greuze the spectator could not tell. What harm or good she might have it in her to do—what might be the result even of this first unexpected appearance of hers in the house which she had taken by storm—it was impossible to predict. It could not but be either for good or evil; but, looking into the lovely, flower-like face, into her surprised sweet eyes, the most keen observer would have been baffled. She was full of childish delight in the novelty—a half-mischievous, half-innocent pleasure in the anticipation of producing some effect in the quiet unsuspicious house; but that was all that could be made out. She stood before the glass for a minute contemplating her perfected toilette with the highest satisfaction. She looked like a wreath of that lovely evanescent convolvulus, which is blue and white and rose all at once. “Am I nice?” she said to the bewildered Parsons; who replied only by a bewildered exclamation of “Oh, miss!” and then Kate turned, poising herself for one moment on her heel in uncertainty. She took one of John’s roses and placed it in her belt; and then, with a little wave of her handkerchief, and, as it were, flourish of trumpets, she opened her door and stepped forth into the unknown.
Here let us pause for a moment. To step for the first time into a new country is thrilling to the inexperienced traveller; but to put your foot into a new house,—a place which is utterly strange to you, and yet which you are free to penetrate through as if it were your own—to take your chance of stumbling against people whom you know intimately and yet have no acquaintance with—to set out on a voyage of discovery into the most intimate domestic shrines, with no light but that of your own genius to guide you,—is more thrilling still. Kate stepped briskly over the threshold of her own room, and then she paused aghast at her own audacity. The cold silence of the unknown hushed her back as if she had been on an expedition into the arctic regions. She paused, and her heart gave a loud beat. Should she retire into the ascertained and lawful place from which Parsons was watching with a face of consternation, or should she go on? But no! never!—put it in Parson’s power to taunt her with a retreat—that could not be! She gave another little wave of her handkerchief, as if it had been her banner, and went on.
But it must be avowed that when she was out of sight of Parsons and her own room, Kate paused again and panted, and clung to the banisters, looking down the broad, handsome staircase. She could see down into the hall, with all its closed doors, looking so silent, so strange, so suggestive. She did not know what she would find there; and nobody knew her or expected her. A distant sound from the kitchen, Lizzie’s hearty, youthful laugh, struck with a consolatory sound upon her ear. But alas! she was not bound to the kitchen, where she had friends, but to investigate those closed doors, with such wonders as might be within. She clung to the great polished oak banister for a moment, feeling her heart beat; and then, “courage!” cried Kate, and launched herself into the unknown world below stairs.