Kingsworth: or, The Aim of a Life

“Mamma,” said Kate, when he was gone, “we have some girl-cousins too at Silthorpe. Couldn’t we ask them to stay here some time?”

“It is a great stretch to call them cousins, Katie,” said Mrs Kingsworth. “I don’t see quite how we could do so.”

Kate pouted a little, thinking to herself that her mother always opposed her wishes, and finding that Emberance was deep in a piece of fancy-work and unwilling to leave it, set off to finish her walk by herself.

There was no absolute embargo on solitary rambles, and though Kate well knew that her mother did not like her to walk alone in the village, in her present mood she did not feel inclined to regard an unspoken prohibition.

She turned away from the path towards the Vicarage; with a shy unwillingness to be met there by herself; yet her thoughts as she walked along were not wrapped in the sunny haze proper to a young maiden just awaking to a sense of preference given and received. Kate did not dream, she thought and speculated on her own life. Only her thoughts were confused and formless. “What was wrong? Why did no one answer her questions? And what questions after all did she want to ask?”

She had turned down a lane that led away from the sea; and having no special object in pursuing her walk, was about to turn back, when she was overtaken by one of the fisher-women who sold fish about the neighbourhood. There was nothing very characteristic or picturesque about the class, they wore the ordinary dress of labouring women, except that their petticoats were very short, and they were generally as rough and ignorant as might be expected of the inhabitants of a place which had enjoyed so few advantages as Kingsworth.

This one was a handsome woman, with a keen intelligent face, and bright eyes looking out from under her flattened bonnet.

“Good morning to you, my lady,” she said.

“Good morning,” said Kate graciously, – she had grasped enough of her rôle to know that graciousness was her people’s due.

“Fine weather, miss, for the time of year. Is it Miss Katharine then that I’m talking to?”

“Yes,” said Kate. “And what is your name? I don’t know any one, as I was never here till last September.”

“Alice Taylor’s my name, if you please, miss. But begging your pardon, Miss Katharine, you was here eighteen years ago, as I ought to know, as I was your nursemaid.”

“Were you?” said Kate warmly. “Did you live with my mother? Where do you live now? I am sure then I might come and see you.”

“Well, you see, miss, there’s evil tongues everywhere, and poor servants even have their enemies. But I was as innocent as the babe unborn, of what I was accused of, and perhaps there were some that had reason to be sorry for what they did,” she concluded spitefully with a glance at Kate.

“Were you accused of doing wrong?” said Kate.

“Ah, never mind, my dear young lady, it’s all too long ago to go back to. And so Mr James’s daughter is staying here. She’s a fine young lady. Who would have thought when Mr James came of age how things would be?”

“What did they do when he came of age?” said Kate, with an odd sense of fascinated curiosity.

“Dear me, miss, there was such rejoicings! Dinner for all the place, and compliments to your great-grandfather who won the place back again to the family, and Mr James so handsome and condescending like. Mr George, he was always a quiet one.”

“That was my father?”

“Yes, miss, but he being the younger wasn’t thought so much of – you’ll excuse my saying so.”

There was something in the tone which Katharine instinctively felt to be an impertinence, and as they came to a turn of the road she said, —

“Well, good morning, Mrs Taylor. I believe I ought to go home. I’ll ask mamma if I may come and see you.”

“Thank you, miss; good morning,” said Mrs Taylor civilly enough.

Katharine hurried home, full of her new subject. “Oh, mamma,” she cried, “I have met a woman who says she was my nurse! Alice was her name – and now she is Mrs Taylor. She says she was suspected of doing something wrong; but that it was not true. Do you remember her?”

“Your nurse,” said Mrs Kingsworth briefly, “turned out dishonest. She took a pair of my gold earrings, and was dismissed.”

“But, mamma, she says that she was accused falsely. Won’t you go and hear what she has to say?”

“My dear, after all these years it would be impossible to renew the subject. Besides, she did take the earrings. I forget the details now; but there was no doubt of it at the time. She was not a desirable person.”

“I think she was angry with us about it,” said Kate.

“Possibly. She had no right to speak to you at all.” Kate did not feel inclined to repeat all Alice Taylor’s remarks, and indeed was more easily silenced than usual; but the incident added its quota to the weight on her mind. She felt quite sure that Alice Taylor believed her to be the wrong woman in the wrong place.

Chapter Eleven

Coming to an Understanding

Emberance meanwhile had her own troubles. Not that her thoughts took the same line as Katharine’s; she had never vexed herself about her supposed wrongs, and was much too fond of Kate to begin to do so now. But her love story was a trial to her, and in a very unromantic way. She was a young lively girl, with bright spirits and the readiest interest in all the affairs of life, not raised by character or education above the ordinary temptations of gay young girlhood. At the same time she loved Malcolm Mackenzie honestly and truly, she looked forward to marrying him and to quitting friends and country for his sake, and could she have enjoyed all the little pleasures of her engagement, have received Malcolm’s letters, and have talked about him to Kate, she would hardly have felt the strain of it. But she longed for tidings of Malcolm, she thought about it, she was vaguely unhappy when the sea was rough, read all the information about New Zealand that she could find, and often felt that she never could be happy till the silence between them was ended. And yet she was young and bright, and everything around her was enjoyable, would have been so enjoyable, if the thought of Malcolm had not come to damp it. It seemed so hard that she could not feel free to be happy, that for years and years there must be a shadow on the comfortable commonplace days, filled with little cares and little pleasures that otherwise would have satisfied her so well.

Perhaps the trial would not have taken this form in a more elevated nature, nor was it quite the reason for which Malcolm Mackenzie pitied his far-off love when he thought of all the sorrows of separation; but it was quite compatible in Emberance with a most honest affection for him. She was to go home in time for Christmas, and at home would be much more likely to pick up fragments of intelligence. As to encouraging other admirers, Emberance knew her duty too well to think of such a thing, and of course the little attentions that young men paid were of no serious consequence; still Emberance was not unaware that just for the purposes of a dance or a game of tennis, an idle chat or occasional joke, she and not Kate had the superior attraction. Even Major Clare – and here Emberance’s little bit of self-sufficient fancy was interrupted by a sudden sense of the change in Kate’s ways and manner – she had been sitting over her pretty fancy-work one morning in the drawing-room at Kingsworth, letting her thoughts have their way according as the tossing waves suggested one set of images or the spire of the village church another.

Was Kate really beginning to care for the Major’s dark face, with its nonchalant expression, and quaint dark eyes, and was he at all serious in the constant attention that he was beginning to pay her? Emberance had knowledge enough of the world to think that if so certain side words and glances towards herself had better have been omitted. She was well aware, too, that Katharine had other attractions beside her beaux yeux. Not for any little triumph of her own vanity would she have disturbed “anything real” on its way to Kate; but she was shrewd, and had her doubts of the reality, while Kate’s blushes and consciousness attracted the more attention from her ordinary open and unsentimental manner.

Emberance wondered as she sat and worked, whether such an idea had ever occurred to Mrs Kingsworth. She looked up and watched her aunt as she sat reading – Kate had been sent into another room to perform the hour’s practice which her mother still required of her – and thought that she would try delicately to find out. “Christmas will soon be here, Aunt Mary,” she said, “I am afraid I am much too sorry to go home.”

“My dear, I wish I could keep you over Christmas,” said Mrs Kingsworth, with more warmth than usual. “I don’t know what Katie will do without you. She always pined for a companion, and I am glad she is gratified at last.”

“I shall miss her very much,” said Emberance. “But after all she won’t be quite solitary. There are the Clares, and she likes Minnie very much.”

“Yes, the Clares are ladylike girls, but there are difficulties in close intimacies with strangers.”

“I think,” said Emberance, feeling very doubtful of her ground, “that Kate gets on well with every one. Mr and Miss Deane like her as well as the Clares do, and Minnie was telling me the other day that if ever they made plans for an expedition without us, her uncle was sure to manage for us to be included.”

“Her uncle! Major Clare? Indeed!” said Mrs Kingsworth.

She made no further remark at the moment, but after a pause, during which she turned over no leaf of her book, she said, —

“Major Clare’s leave is a very long one?”

“Yes, he has some months of it yet left, I believe,” returned Emberance. “He met with an accident, you know, and that is why he came home.”

Mrs Kingsworth said no more. The idea that Kate’s future conduct would be hampered by a marriage engagement was a very old one to her; but under the immediate pressure of adjusting her conduct to the difficulties of the situation it had passed out of her mind. Now it returned, and gave a sudden start to her resolution. Fear of disappointment had hitherto held her silent, fear of consequences now urged her to speak. Kate should know all, and her mother would know of what stuff the girl was made at last.

Without saying a word to Emberance, she rose from her seat and went in search of her daughter.

The morning-room in which Kate was had been Mrs Kingsworth’s favourite sitting-room long ago, and was as cheerful a room as any in the house, with white panels and a carved cornice, and long windows that looked towards the village. Kate liked it, and would fain have sat there every day, but it had too many associations for Mrs Kingsworth to endure it.

Kate had left off playing and was standing at the long narrow window looking down the road. Her eyes were absent and dreamy, her figure still; there was a look of repose about her, a content in quiet and inaction that was a new thing. Her rosy cheeks deepened a little in colour and her lips smiled, as much a contrast to the intense purpose in her mother’s pale, clear-cut face, as her blue dress with its girlish fashionable cut, was to the black, soberly made garments which Mrs Kingsworth would never lay aside.

“Katharine.”

“Yes, mamma.”

Kate started, and looked guilty, probably expecting to be reproved for idling.

“I have practised for an hour,” she said.

Mrs Kingsworth sat down and laid her hands together in her lap.

“I have something to say to you,” she began. “I have made up my mind to tell you certain facts which have been hitherto concealed from you.”

Kate looked startled and attentive, and her mother continued.

“You will feel quite sure, Katie, that what I tell you is absolutely true?”

“Oh, yes,” said Kate, surprised at such a question.

“It will be so. I shall not think it right to soften facts because of our relation to those concerned.”

“I want to hear,” said Kate, with a throbbing heart. “Your uncle James,” said Mrs Kingsworth, “was, of course, your grandfather’s natural heir. He was not a well-principled person, and displeased him by debts and other bad habits. My husband was of a steadier nature, and was his father’s favourite. After my marriage I found that in many ways he was James’ enemy, and made the worst of him to his father, whose preference he valued, I believe, from mercenary motives.”

“Mamma!” gasped Kate, with a frightened sob, “Oh, he could not – ”

“I know that he did. James married secretly, and your grandfather conceived the idea that his choice was very discreditable.”

“What – Aunt Ellen?”

“Yes. Your father, though well aware that she was respectably connected and well-conducted, concealed the fact, so that your grandfather, under a false impression, made his will in George’s favour, – in your father’s favour. Do you understand?”

Kate’s answer was unexpected.

“Mother, – how do you know?” she said abruptly, with a sort of instinctive defiance.

“Because after your grandfather’s sudden death, James accused my husband of having received an explanatory letter to lay before his father. I found that letter and read it.”

“Did you ask him?”

“No, Kate, he and his brother were beyond the reach of questions then. Now you know why Kingsworth is hateful to me, and why I have no pleasure in any of the advantages it brings you.”

Poor Kate was stunned and startled, conscious chiefly of the instinctive effort to check a flood of tears.

“But Uncle James was a wicked man,” she said vehemently.

“How does that alter it? Let him have been ever so wicked or ever so weak, he was wronged, he and his child, by your father.”

“Emberance!”

“Emberance. You stand in her place.”

Mrs Kingsworth’s tones were quiet and distinct, she looked intently at Kate, the characters of the old actors in the drama were nothing to her compared to how her child would come out of this terrible test.

Katharine’s shocked, sobbing agitation could not be pitiful to her, it was so welcome as a sign of feeling.

“I don’t believe my father meant it. Oh, mamma, you shouldn’t have thought he meant it,” said the girl at last.

“Kate,” said Mrs Kingsworth, “love never blinded my eyes, and I cannot sacrifice principles to persons. The facts are as I have told you. This property is yours only through a dishonourable action. But for that Emberance would be the heiress of Kingsworth, and you, as my daughter, would still be far enough removed from any chance of poverty.”

“Mamma, do people know!” sobbed Kate at last. – “Do the Clares. – Do people know?”

“I imagine that there was an impression of some scandal: but as there was no question of your father’s legal right, the neighbourhood could only accept the facts. But Kate,” Mrs Kingsworth continued, with more hurry of manner. “I never cared much for what people think. To respect those near to me, is to me the one thing needful. When I found of what my husband was capable, all the charm of life was gone for me. I have tried very hard to bring up my daughter pure from such a taint. You are a free agent, your actions are your own, but oh, Katie! what is there to compare to right and truth?”

The tears gathered in Mrs Kingsworth’s dark eyes, she could hardly command her voice, her whole frame trembled as she felt how inadequate her carefully governed words were to describe the anguish that had come to the proud high-minded girl in the discovery that she had thrown away the love of her youth, the sense of stain and injury that had clung to her ever since, till in her lonely musings the offence against her sense of honour, her conscience had shut out all pity for the offender.

Now she loyally kept her promise to the Canon not to make any suggestion to her daughter, but she felt as if her very life hung on the turn Katharine’s thoughts might take, on what she might say next. But Kate had not come to the point of perceiving that any particular line of action could be expected of her. Her vague misgivings were painfully realised, yet having often experienced her mother’s severe judgment, she took refuge in a sort of instinctive doubt of the truth of her impressions.

“Did – did Uncle James make friends with papa before they were drowned?” she faltered.

“No one can tell,” said Mrs Kingsworth, solemnly. “They went out in the foggy evening, and in the morning they were found at the foot of the rocks, – together. We must live, Kate, under the shadow of that awful doubt. But if the sense of sharing the sin were gone, that I could bear.”

“Mamma, mamma, oh, what can it mean? Oh, I cannot bear, – I cannot bear – ”

She started up to run out of the room, but the shock and the horror were too much for her. She turned helpless and dizzy, and fell half-fainting into her mother’s arms. Mrs Kingsworth was startled into a sudden sense of the present. She called for help, took Kate to her room, and tended her carefully till she was better.

“My poor child,” she said with unusual gentleness, “I did not mean to startle you so much. I forgot the newness of it.”

But Kate turned away from her and hid her face. “Let me alone, mamma,” was all she said, “let me alone.”

Mrs Kingsworth turned away and left the room. She experienced the sort of relief that follows on having reached a long-dreaded crisis. The point in her life had come, and as is often the case, neither of the alternatives which she had expected had taken place. Kate had not shown herself careless and indifferent, nor had she seen at once what Mrs Kingsworth thought of supreme importance, her own share in the responsibility. Would she take refuge in perverse disbelief?

Poor Katharine was hardly conscious of distinct thoughts at all. The horrible tragedy at which her mother had hinted shocked and terrified her. How fearful an ending to the two lives. Under the suspicion of this more terrible crime she could not realise any responsibility for her father’s wrong-doing. The puzzles of her life were all explained now. Her girlhood had passed as in an enchanted sleep, shut in from cares and interests and responsibilities. Now she awoke with the sudden shock, the spell of her unthinking childhood was rudely broken, and the real Katharine came, as it were, to life.

She did not feel her inheritance a burden, nor think herself, at least in those first moments, responsible for her father’s sin. She did not think of ridding herself of her ill-gotten riches, but as the first shock subsided a little it did occur to her that Emberance was wronged. “It ought to be hers,” she said vaguely to herself, and then the thought was swept away by a sense of anger with her mother, “who was so sure papa had been wicked – who did not care if people knew it – oh, did Major Clare know it?” Kate hid her face in her hands and sobbed aloud.

Chapter Twelve

Responsibility

The stir and the running up and down stairs caused by Katharine’s illness at length attracted Emberance’s attention, and she came out of the drawing-room to see what was the matter just as Mrs Kingsworth came down stairs.

“Kate has not been quite well,” she said. “I have been talking to her on very painful subjects, and she has been greatly upset.”

“May I go to her?” said Emberance eagerly.

“Oh, yes; she may be more willing to express her own view of the matter to you than to me. But she showed real feeling.”

Emberance ran up stairs into her cousin’s room. Kate was lying on her back, with her hands twisted together and pressed against her forehead. She was sobbing and overcome with a passion of misery quite beyond her control.

“Oh, Katie, my darling, what is it? Don’t cry so terribly. Tell me what it all means,” cried Emberance, with warm kisses.

Kate threw her arms round her, and buried her face in her neck, till the violent agitation subsided a little, and Kate murmured, “Oh, Emmy, is it true about the drowning? Have you known it – always?”

“We don’t know anything, you know, Katie,” said Emberance gently, “only that there was an accident.”

“But mamma thinks – oh, I don’t know what she thinks.”

“Uncle Kingsworth told me once that it was better not to think about it at all. He said that we had no right to entertain dreadful suspicions of either.”

Emberance spoke very gravely: but with a matter-of-course quietness that was the greatest possible contrast to Kate’s excited horror.

“I shall never forget it! never get it out of my mind! Emmy, does every one know?”

“I suppose they know as much as we do,” said Emberance.

Katharine was silent for a moment, then burst out again. “But Uncle James was wicked – ah, I forgot he is your father – oh it is all dreadful, every way.”

“You see, Kate,” said Emberance, “the way I have got to look on it is this. I expect that neither my father nor yours were exactly – good. Of course it would be much better and happier if we could look back on them as other girls do; but as we can’t, and as it isn’t our fault in any way, why should we let it spoil our lives altogether? We have got our mothers and – and other people to care about, and it’s not our fault.”

“But – mother says that you ought to have all the money, that it ought not to be mine. How could I help that?”

“As to that,” said Emberance resolutely, “I was always determined that all those fancies should not spoil my life. I got quite tired of the subject long ago. Grandfather Kingsworth had a perfect right to do what he liked with the place; and if my father had had it, why Kitty, I don’t think there would have been much left now, and that’s the truth. I am very happy, and so may you be. Don’t think about it at all.”

Emberance’s common sense sounded flat to Katharine’s excited spirits; but the words were consolatory, for she had by no means realised that she could alter the past arrangement by any act of hers. She turned away, and while she coloured to her ears, whispered, “But Emmy, would any one – ever – like girls, with such a story belonging to them?”

“Yes!” cried Emberance, “they would! They do, Kitty. It didn’t make any difference.”

Kate looked up surprised and curious, and Emberance blushed in her turn and laughed. “I mustn’t tell,” she said, “but there wasn’t any occasion to be an heiress, it all came right, and so it will – would – for you.”

“I know now why you don’t mind. I shouldn’t either,” said Kate slowly, after a pause.

She did not ask any more questions, and her agitation subsided; while to her mother’s intense disappointment, she said nothing more of what had passed. She was, however, much altered, and was meek and quiet, clinging much to Emberance during the next few days, and evidently needing her caressing kindness. For Kate had no idea that she had any character for independence to keep up; and as her brusquerie had been perfectly natural, so, with her changed mood was her increased softness.

It so happened that both Major Clare and his nieces were away for a few days; so that the Kingsworths were left much to themselves, and Kate formed and acted on a resolution. She was hardly conscious that she did not fully trust her mother’s views of the past; but she proved that she had some idea of independent judgment and action by writing to her uncle Canon Kingsworth a little letter that much surprised the kind old man. She said, —

“My dear Uncle, —

“Mamma has told me lately all that passed about this property, and also all that she believes about the death of my father and uncle. I think I ought to know all that really happened, that I may know what to think. Will you please tell me?

“I am your loving and dutiful niece,” (Kate had been brought up to old-fashioned respectfulness.)

“Katharine Kingsworth.”

This letter cost the Canon much consideration, and at first he thought that he would answer it in person; but finally decided that the safest way was to leave Kate’s mind to work the matter out for itself, without exposing himself to questions that he might not know how to answer. So after a day or two of suspense, Katharine received the following answer.

“My dear Katharine, —

“I feel deeply for the pain which you are now suffering, and which I am afraid I can in no way lessen; for sin brings sorrow in its train even upon one so innocent as yourself. Your mother has told you doubtless the actual facts, and I earnestly recommend you to draw from them no further inferences; but for your satisfaction I will repeat what passed.