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‘Whoever told Miss Mytton so made a great mistake.  The Admiral only is—is—amused—as you know gentlemen will be at young girls’ little—little scrapes,’ returned Mrs. Merrifield, longing to say ‘impertinences,’ but refraining, and scarcely believing what nevertheless was true, that Arthurine did not know how personal she had been, although her mother said it all over again twice.  Bessie, however, did believe it, from experience of resemblances where she had never intended direct portraiture; and when there was a somewhat earnest invitation to a garden party at the Gap, the Merrifields not only accepted for themselves, but persuaded as many of their neighbours as they could to countenance the poor girl.  ‘There is something solid at the bottom in spite of all the effervescence,’ said Bessie.

It was late in the year for a garden party, being on the 2d of October, but weather and other matters had caused delays, and the Indian summer had begun with warm sun and exquisite tints.  ‘What would not the maple and the liquid amber have been by this time,’ thought the sisters, ‘if they had been spared.’  Some of the petite noblesse, however, repented of their condescension when they saw how little it was appreciated.  Mrs. Arthuret, indeed, was making herself the best hostess that a lady who had served no apprenticeship could be to all alike, but Arthurine or ‘Atty,’ as Daisy and Pansy were heard shouting to her—all in white flannels, a man all but the petticoats—seemed to be absorbed in a little court of the second-rate people of Bonchamp, some whom, as Mrs. Greville and Lady Smithson agreed, they had never expected to meet.  She was laughing and talking eagerly, and by and by ran up to Bessie, exclaiming in a patronising tone—

‘Oh! my dear Miss Bessie, let me introduce you to Mr. Foxholm—such a clever literary man.  He knows everybody—all about everybody and everything.  It would be such an advantage!  And he has actually made me give him my autograph!  Only think of that!’

Bessie thought of her own good luck in being anonymous, but did not express it, only saying, ‘Autograph-hunters are a great nuisance.  I know several people who find them so.’

‘Yes, he said it was one of the penalties of fame that one must submit to,’ returned Miss Arthuret, with a delighted laugh of consciousness.

Bessie rejoiced that none of her own people were near to see the patronising manner in which Arthurine introduced her to Mr. Foxholm, a heavily-bearded man, whose eyes she did not at all like, and who began by telling her that he felt as if he had crossed the Rubicon, and entering an Arcadia, had found a Parnassus.

Bessie looked to see whether the highly-educated young lady detected the malaprop for the Helicon, but Arthurine was either too well-bred or too much exalted to notice either small slips, or even bad taste, and she stood smiling and blushing complacently.  However, just then Susan hurried up.  ‘Bessie, you are wanted.  Here’s a card.  The gentleman sent it in, and papa asked me to find you.’

Bessie opened her eyes.  The card belonged to the editor of one of the most noted magazines of the day, but one whose principles she did not entirely approve.  What could be coming?

Her father was waiting for her.

‘Well, Miss Bessie,’ he said, laughing, ‘Jane said the gentleman was very urgent in wanting to know when you would be in.  An offer, eh?’

‘Perhaps it is an offer, but not of that sort,’ said Bessie, and she explained what the unliterary Admiral had not understood.  He answered with a whistle.

‘Shall you do it, Bessie?’

‘I think not,’ she said quietly.

The editor was found waiting for her, with many apologies for bringing her home, and the Admiral was so delighted with his agreeableness as hardly to be able to tear himself away to bring home his wife.

The offer was, as Bessie expected, of excellent terms for a serial story—terms that proved to her what was her own value, and in which she saw education for her sister Anne’s eldest boy.

‘Of course, there would be a certain adaptation to our readers.’

She knew what that meant, and there was that in her face which drew forth the assurance.

‘Of course nothing you would not wish to say would be required, but it would be better not to press certain subjects.’

‘I understand,’ said Bessie.  ‘I doubt—’

‘Perhaps you will think it over.’

Bessie’s first thought was, ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, then let my right hand forget her cunning.’  That had been the inward motto of her life.  Her second was, ‘Little Sam!  David’s mission room!’  There was no necessity to answer at once, and she knew the periodical rather by report than by reading, so she accepted the two numbers that were left with her, and promised to reply in a week.  It was a question on which to take counsel with her father, and with her own higher conscience and heavenly Guide.

The Admiral, though not much given to reading for its own sake, and perhaps inclined to think ephemeral literature the more trifling because his little daughter was a great light there, was anything but a dull man, and had an excellent judgment.  So Bessie, with all the comfort of a woman still with a wise father’s head over her, decided to commit the matter to him.  He was somewhat disappointed at finding her agreeable guest gone, and wished that dinner and bed had been offered.

Mrs. Merrifield and Susan were still a good deal excited about Arthurine’s complimentary friend, who they said seemed to belong to Fred Mytton, of whom some of the ladies had been telling most unpleasant reports, and there was much lamentation over the set into which their young neighbour had thrown herself.

‘Such a dress too!’ sighed Mrs. Merrifield.

‘And her headmistress has just arrived,’ said Susan, ‘to make her worse than ever!’

‘How comes a headmistress to be running about the country at this time of year?’ asked Bessie.

‘She has been very ill,’ said Mrs. Merrifield, ‘and they wrote to her to come down as soon as she could move.  There was a telegram this morning, and she drove up in the midst of the party, and was taken to her room at once to rest.  That was the reason Miss Arthuret was away so long.  I thought it nice in her.’

‘Perhaps she will do good,’ said Bessie.

Dinner was just over, and the Admiral had settled down with his shaded lamp to read and judge of the article that Bessie had given him as a specimen, when in came the message, ‘Mrs. Rudden wishes to speak to you, sir.’

Mrs. Rudden was the prosperous widow who continued the business in the village shop, conjointly with the little farm belonging to the Gap property.  She was a shrewd woman, had been able to do very well by her family, and was much esteemed, paying a rent which was a considerable item in the Gap means.  The ladies wondered together at the summons.  Susan hoped ‘that girl’ did not want to evict her, and Bessie suggested that a co-operative store was a more probable peril.  Presently the Admiral came back.  ‘Do any of you know Miss Arthuret’s writing?’ he said.

‘Bessie knows it best,’ said Susan.

He showed a letter. ‘That is hers—the signature,’ said Bessie. ‘I are not sure about the rest.  Why—what does it mean?’

For she read—

‘The Gap, 2d Oct.

‘MRS. RUDDEN,—You are requested to pay over to the bearer, Mr. Foxholm, fifty pounds of the rent you were about to bring me to-morrow.—I remain, etc.,

‘ARTHURINE ARTHURET.’

‘What does it mean?’ asked Bessie again.  ‘That’s just what Mrs. Rudden has come up to me to ask,’ said the Admiral.  ‘This fellow presented it in her shop about a quarter of an hour ago.  The good woman smelt a rat.  What do you think she did?  She looked at it and him, asked him to wait a bit, whipped out at her back door, luckily met the policeman starting on his rounds, bade him have an eye to the customer in her shop, and came off to show it to me.  That young woman is demented enough for anything, and is quite capable of doing it—for some absurd scheme.  But do you think it is hers, or a swindle?’

‘Didn’t she say she had given her autograph?’ exclaimed Susan.

‘And see here,’ said Bessie, ‘her signature is at the top of the sheet of note-paper—small paper.  And as she always writes very large, it would be easy to fill up the rest, changing the first side over.’

‘I must take it up to her at once,’ said the Admiral.  ‘Even if it be genuine, she may just as well see that it is a queer thing to have done, and not exactly the way to treat her tenants.’

‘It is strange too that this man should have known anything about Mrs. Rudden,’ said Mrs. Merrifield.

‘Mrs. Rudden says she had a message this morning, when she had come up with her rent and accounts, to say that Miss Arthuret was very much engaged, and would be glad if she would come to-morrow!  Could this fellow have been about then?’

No one knew, but Bessie breathed the word, ‘Was not that young Mytton there?’

It was not taken up, for no one liked to pronounce the obvious inference.  Besides, the Admiral was in haste, not thinking it well that Mr. Foxholm should be longer kept under surveillance in the shop, among the bread, bacon, cheeses, shoes, and tins of potted meat.

He was then called for; and on his loudly exclaiming that he had been very strangely treated, the Admiral quietly told him that Mrs. Rudden had been disturbed at so unusual a way of demanding her rent, and had come for advice on the subject; and to satisfy their minds that all was right, Mr. Foxholm would, no doubt, consent to wait till the young lady could be referred to.  Mr. Foxholm did very decidedly object; he said no one had any right to detain him when the lady’s signature was plain, and Admiral Merrifield had seen him in her society, and he began an account of the philanthropical purpose for which he said the money had been intended, but he was cut short.

‘You must be aware,’ said the Admiral, ‘that this is not an ordinary way of acting, and whatever be your purpose, Mrs. Rudden must ascertain your authority more fully before paying over so large a sum.  I give you your choice, therefore, either of accompanying us to the Gap, or of remaining in Mrs. Rudden’s parlour till we return.’

The furtive eye glanced about, and the parlour was chosen.  Did he know that the policeman stationed himself in the shop outside?

The dinner at the Gap was over, and Miss Elmore, the headmistress, was established in an arm-chair, listening to the outpouring of her former pupil and the happy mother about all the felicities and glories of their present life, the only drawback being the dullness and obstructiveness of the immediate neighbours.  ‘I thought Miss Merrifield was your neighbour—Mesa?’

‘Oh no—quite impossible!  These are Merrifields, but the daughters are two regular old goodies, wrapped up in Sunday schools and penny clubs.’

‘Well, that is odd!  The editor of the – came down in the train with me, and said he was going to see Mesa—Miss Elizabeth Merrifield.’

‘I do think it is very unfair,’ began Arthurine; but at that moment the door-bell rang.  ‘How strange at this time!’

‘Oh! perhaps the editor is coming here!’ cried Arthurine.  ‘Did you tell him I lived here, Miss Elmore?’

‘Admiral Merrifield,’ announced the parlour-maid.

He had resolved not to summon the young lady in private, as he thought there was more chance of common-sense in the mother.

‘You are surprised to see me at this time,’ he said; ‘but Mrs. Rudden is perplexed by a communication from you.’

‘Mrs. Rudden!’ exclaimed Arthurine.  ‘Why, I only sent her word that I was too busy to go through her accounts to-day, and asked her to come to-morrow.  That isn’t against the laws of the Medes and Persians, is it?’

‘Then did you send her this letter?’

‘I?’ said Arthurine, staring at it, with her eyes at their fullest extent.  ‘I! fifty pounds!  Mr. Foxholm!  What does it mean?’

‘Then you never wrote that order?’

‘No! no!  How should I?’

‘That is not your writing?’

‘No, not that.’

‘Look at the signature.’

‘Oh! oh! oh!’—and she dropped into a chair.  ‘The horrible man!  That’s the autograph I gave him this afternoon.’

‘You are sure?’

‘Quite; for my pen spluttered in the slope of the A.  Has she gone and given it to him?’

‘No.  She brought it to me, and set the policeman to watch him.’

‘What a dear, good woman!  Shall you send him to prison, Admiral Merrifield?  What can be done to him?’ said Arthurine, not looking at all as if she would like to abrogate capital punishment.

‘Well, I had been thinking,’ said the Admiral.  ‘You see he did not get it, and though I could commit him for endeavouring to obtain money on false pretences, I very much doubt whether the prosecution would not be worse for you than for him.’

‘That is very kind of you, Admiral!’ exclaimed the mother.  ‘It would be terribly awkward for dear Arthurine to stand up and say he cajoled her into giving her autograph.  It might always be remembered against her!’

‘Exactly so,’ said the Admiral; ‘and perhaps there may be another reason for not pushing the matter to extremity.  The man is a stranger here, I believe.’

‘He has been staying at Bonchamp,’ said Mrs. Arthuret.  ‘It was young Mr. Mytton who brought him over this afternoon.’

‘Just so.  And how did he come to be aware that Mrs. Rudden owed you any money?’

There was a pause, then Arthurine broke out—

‘Oh, Daisy and Pansy can’t have done anything; but they were all three there helping me mark the tennis-courts when the message came.’

‘Including the brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘He is a bad fellow, and I would not wish to shield him in any way, but that such a plot should be proved against him would be a grievous disgrace to the family.’

‘I can’t ever feel about them as I have done,’ said Arthurine, in tears.  ‘Daisy and Pansy said so much about poor dear Fred, and every one being hard on him, and his feeling my good influence—and all the time he was plotting this against me, with my chalk in his hand marking my grass,’ and she broke down in child-like sobs.

The mortification was terrible of finding her pinnacle of fame the mere delusion of a sharper, and the shock of shame seemed to overwhelm the poor girl.

‘Oh, Admiral!’ cried her mother, ‘she cannot bear it.  I know you will be good, and manage it so as to distress her as little as possible, and not have any publicity.’

‘1 will do my best,’ said the Admiral.  ‘I will try and get a confession out of him, and send him off, though it is a pity that such a fellow should get off scot-free.’

‘Oh, never mind, so that my poor Arthurine’s name is not brought forward!  We can never be grateful enough for your kindness.’

It was so late that the Admiral did not come back that night, and the ladies were at breakfast when he appeared again.  Foxholm had, on finding there was no escape, confessed the fraud, but threw most of the blame on Fred Mytton, who was in debt, not only to him but to others.  Foxholm himself seemed to have been an adventurer, who preyed on young men at the billiard-table, and had there been in some collusion with Fred, though the Admiral had little doubt as to which was the greater villain.  He had been introduced to the Mytton family, who were not particular; indeed, Mr. Mytton had no objection to increasing his pocket-money by a little wary, profitable betting and gambling on his own account.  However, the associates had no doubt brought Bonchamp to the point of being too hot to hold them, and Fred, overhearing the arrangement with Mrs. Rudden, had communicated it to him—whence the autograph trick.  Foxholm was gone, and in the course of the day it was known that young Mytton was also gone.

The Admiral promised that none of his family should mention the matter, and that he would do his best to silence Mrs. Rudden, who for that matter probably believed the whole letter to have been forged, and would not enter into the enthusiasm of autographs.

‘Oh, thank you!  It is so kind,’ said the mother; and Arthurine, who looked as if she had not slept all night, and was ready to burst into tears on the least provocation, murmured something to the same effect, which the Admiral answered, half hearing—

‘Never mind, my dear, you will be wiser another time; young people will be inexperienced.’

‘Is that the cruellest cut of all?’ thought Miss Elmore, as she beheld her former pupil scarcely restraining herself enough for the farewell civilities, and then breaking down into a flood of tears.

Her mother hovered over her with, ‘What is it?  Oh! my dear child, you need not be afraid; he is so kind!’

‘I hate people to be kind, that is the very thing,’ said Arthurine,—‘Oh!  Miss Elmore, don’t go!—while he is meaning all the time that I have made such a fool of myself!  And he is glad, I know he is, he and his hateful, stupid, stolid daughters.’

‘My dear! my dear!’ exclaimed her mother.

‘Well, haven’t they done nothing but thwart me, whatever I wanted to do, and aren’t they triumphing now in this abominable man’s treachery, and my being taken in?  I shall go away, and sell the place, and never come back again.’

‘I should think that was the most decided way of confessing a failure,’ said Miss Elmore; and as Mrs. Arthuret was called away by the imperative summons to the butcher, she spoke more freely.  ‘Your mother looks terrified at being so routed up again.’

‘Oh, mother will be happy anywhere; and how can I stay with these stick-in-the-mud people, just like what I have read about?’

‘And have gibbeted!  Really, Arthurine, I should call them very generous!’

‘It is their thick skins,’ muttered she; ‘at least so the Myttons said; but, indeed, I did not mean to be so personal as it was thought.’

‘But tell me.  Why did you not get on with Mesa?’

‘That was a regular take-in.  Not to tell one!  When I began my German class, she put me out with useless explanations.’

‘What kind of explanations?’

‘Oh, about the Swiss being under the Empire, or something, and she would go into parallels of Saxon words, and English poetry, such as our Fraülein never troubled us with.  But I showed her it would not do.’

‘So instead of learning what you had not sense to appreciate, you wanted to teach your old routine.’

‘But, indeed, she could not pronounce at all well, and she looked ever so long at difficult bits, and then she even tried to correct me.’

‘Did she go on coming after you silenced her?’

‘Yes, and never tried to interfere again.’

‘I am afraid she drew her own conclusions about High Schools.’

‘Oh, Miss Elmore, you used to like us to be thorough and not discursive, and how could anybody brought up in this stultifying place, ages ago, know what will tell in an exam?’

‘Oh! Arthurine.  How often have I told you that examinations are not education.  I never saw so plainly that I have not educated you.’

‘I wanted to prepare Daisy and Pansy, and they didn’t care about her prosing when we wanted to get on with the book.’

‘Which would have been the best education for them, poor girls, an example of courtesy, patience, and humility, or getting on, as you call it?’

‘Oh! Miss Elmore, you are very hard on me, when I have just been so cruelly disappointed.’

‘My dear child, it is only because I want you to discover why you have been so cruelly disappointed.’

It would be wearisome to relate all that Arthurine finally told of those thwartings by the Merrifields which had thrown her into the arms of the Mytton family, nor how Miss Elmore brought her to confess that each scheme was either impracticable, or might have been injurious, and that a little grain of humility might have made her see things very differently.  Yet it must be owned that the good lady felt rather like bending a bow that would spring back again.

Bessie Merrifield had, like her family, been inclined to conclude that all was the fault of High Schools.  She did not see Miss Elmore at first, thinking the Arthurets not likely to wish to be intruded upon, and having besides a good deal to think over.  For she and her father had talked over the proposal, which pecuniarily was so tempting, and he, without prejudice, but on principle, had concurred with her in deciding that it was her duty not to add one touch of attractiveness to aught which supported a cause contrary to their strongest convictions.  Her father’s approbation was the crowning pleasure, though she felt the external testimony to her abilities, quite enough to sympathise with such intoxication of success as to make any compliment seem possible.  Miss Elmore had one long talk with her, beginning by saying—

‘I wish to consult you about my poor, foolish child.’

‘Ah!  I am afraid we have not helped her enough!’ said Bessie.  ‘If we had been more sympathetic she might have trusted us more.’

‘Then you are good enough to believe that it was not all folly and presumption.’

‘I am sure it was not,’ said Bessie.  ‘None of us ever thought it more than inexperience and a little exaltation, with immense good intention at the bottom.  Of course, our dear old habits did look dull, coming from life and activity, and we rather resented her contempt for them; but I am quite sure that after a little while, every one will forget all about this, or only recollect it as one does a girlish scrape.’

‘Yes.  To suppose all the neighbourhood occupied in laughing at her is only another phase of self-importance.  You see, the poor child necessarily lived in a very narrow world, where examinations came, whatever I could do, to seem everything, and she only knew things beyond by books.  She had success enough there to turn her head, and not going to Cambridge, never had fair measure of her abilities.  Then came prosperity—’

‘Quite enough to upset any one’s balance,’ said Bessie.  ‘In fact, only a very sober, not to say stolid, nature would have stood it.’

‘Poor things!  They were so happy—so open-hearted.  I did long to caution them.  “Pull cup, steady hand.”’

‘It will all come right now,’ said Bessie.  ‘Mrs Arthuret spoke of their going away for the winter; I do not think it will be a bad plan, for then we can start quite fresh with them; and the intimacy with the Myttons will be broken, though I am sorry for the poor girls.  They have no harm in them, and Arthurine was doing them good.’

‘A whisper to you, Miss Merrifield—they are going back with me, to be prepared for governesses at Arthurine’s expense.  It is the only thing for them in the crash that young man has brought on the family.’

‘Dear, good Arthurine!  She only needed to learn how to carry her cup.’

MRS. BATSEYES

I. FATHER AND DAUGHTER

SCENE.—The drawing-room of Darkglade Vicarage.  Mr. Aveland, an elderly clergyman.  Mrs. Moldwarp, widow on the verge of middle age.

Mr. A.  So, my dear good child, you will come back to me, and do what you can for the lonely old man!

Mrs. M.  I know nothing can really make up—

Mr. A.  Ah! my dear, you know only too well by your own experience, but if any one could, it would be you.  And at least you will let nothing drop in the parish work.  You and Cicely together will be able to take that up when Euphrasia is gone too.

Mrs. M.  It will be delightful to me to come back to it!  You know I was to the manner born.  Nothing seems to be so natural!

Mr. A.  I am only afraid you are giving up a great deal.  I don’t know that I could accept it—except for the parish and these poor children.

Mrs. M.  Now, dear father, you are not to talk so!  Is not this my home, my first home, and though it has lost its very dearest centre, what can be so dear to me when my own has long been broken?

Mr. A.  But the young folks—young Londoners are apt to feel such a change a great sacrifice.

Mrs. M.  Lucius always longs to be here whenever he is on shore, and Cicely.  Oh! it will be so good for Cicely to be with you, dear father.  I know some day you will be able to enjoy her.  And I do look forward to having her to myself, as I have never had before since she was a little creature in the nursery.  It is so fortunate that I had not closed the treaty for the house at Brompton, so that I can come whenever Phrasie decides on leaving you.

Mr. A.  And she must not be long delayed.  She and Holland have waited for each other quite long enough.  Your dear mother begged that there should be no delay; and neither you nor I, Mary, could bear to shorten the time of happiness together that may be granted them.  She will have no scruple about leaving George’s children now you and Cicely will see to them—poor little things!