Beechcroft at Rockstone

‘But what’s all this about? You wanted me to look after you! Is it that Alexis?’

‘Oh, Japs! Mamma knows all about it and papa. It was only that he was ridiculous because I was so silly as to think I could help him with his Greek.’

‘You! With his Greek! I pity him!’

‘Yes. I found he soon knew too much for me,’ said Gillian meekly; ‘but, indeed, Japs, it wasn’t very bad! He only sent me a valentine, and Aunt Jane says I need not have been so angry.’

‘A cat may look at a king,’ said Jasper loftily. ‘It is a horrid bad thing for a girl to be left to herself without a brother worth having.’

So Gillian got off pretty easily, and after all the walk was not greatly spoilt. They coalesced again with the other three, who were tolerably discreet, and found the debate on the White gentility had been resumed. Ivinghoe was philosophically declaring ‘that in these days one must take up with everybody, so it did not matter if one was a little more of a cad than another; he himself was fag at Eton to a fellow whose father was an oilman, and who wasn’t half a bad lot.’

‘An oilman, Ivy,’ said his sister; ‘I thought he imported petroleum.’

‘Well, it’s all the same. I believe he began as an oilman.’

‘We shall have Fergus reporting that he’s a petroleuse,’ put in Jasper.

‘No, a petroleuse is a woman.’

‘I like Mr. White,’ said Fly; ‘but, Gillian, you don’t think it is true that he is going to marry your Aunt Jane?’

There was a great groan, and Japs observed—

‘Some one told us Rockquay was a hotbed of gossip, and we seem to have got it strong.’

‘Where did this choice specimen come from, Fly!’ demanded Ivinghoe, in his manner most like his mother.

Fly nodded her head towards her governess in the advanced guard.

‘She had a cousin to tea with her, and they thought I didn’t know whom they meant, and they said that he was always up at Rockstone.’

‘Well, he is; and Aunt Jane always stands up for him,’ said Gillian; ‘but that was because he is so good to the workpeople, and Aunt Ada took him for some grand political friend of Cousin Rotherwood’s.’

‘Aunt Jane!’ said Jasper. ‘Why, she is the very essence and epitome of old maids.’

‘Yes,’ said Gillian. ‘If it came to that, she would quite as soon marry the postman.’

‘That’s lucky’ said Ivinghoe. ‘One can swallow a good deal, but not quite one’s own connections.’

‘In fact,’ said Jasper, ‘you had rather be an oilman’s fag than a quarryman’s—what is it?—first cousin once removed in law?’

‘It is much more likely,’ said Gillian, as they laughed over this, ‘that Kalliope and Maura will be his adopted daughters, only he never comes near them.’

Wherewith there was a halt. Miss Elbury insisted that Phyllis should ride, the banks began to show promise of flowers, and, in the search for violets, dangerous topics were forgotten, and Wilfred was forgiven. They reached the spot marked by Fly, a field with a border of sloping broken ground and brushwood, which certainly fulfilled all their desires, steeply descending to a stream full of rocks, the ground white with wood anemones, long evergreen trails of periwinkles and blue flowers between, primroses clustering under the roots of the trees, daffodils gilding the grass above, and the banks verdant with exquisite feather-moss. Such a springtide wood was joy to all, especially as the first cuckoo of the season came to add to their delights and set them counting for the augury of happy years, which proved so many that Mysie said they would not know what to do with them.

‘I should,’ said Ivinghoe. ‘I should like to live to be a great old statesman, as Lord Palmerston did, and have it all my own way. Wouldn’t I bring things round again!’

‘Perhaps they would have gone too far,’ suggested Jasper, ‘and then you would have to gnaw your hand like Giant Pope, as Wilfred says.’

‘Catch me, while I could do something better.’

‘If one only lived long enough,’ speculated Fergus, ‘one might find out what everything was made of, and how to do everything.’

‘I wonder if the people did before the Flood, when they lived eight or nine hundred years,’ said Fly.

‘Perhaps that is the reason there is nothing new under the sun,’ suggested Valetta, as many a child has before suggested.

‘But then,’ said Mysie, they got wicked.’

‘And then after the Flood it had all to be begun over again,’ said Ivinghoe. ‘Let me see, Methuselah lived about as long as from William the Conqueror till now. I think he might have got to steam and electricity.’

‘And dynamite,’ said Gillian. ‘Oh, I don’t wonder they had to be swept away, if they were clever and wicked both!’

‘And I suppose they were,’ said Jasper. ‘At least the giants, and that they handed on some of their ability through Ham, to the Egyptians, and all those queer primeval coons, whose works we are digging up.’

‘From the Conquest till now,’ repeated Gillian. ‘I’m glad we don’t live so long now. It tires one to think of it.’

‘But we shall,’ said Fly.

‘Yes,’ said Mysie, ‘but then we shall be rid of this nasty old self that is always getting wrong.’

‘That little lady’s nasty old self does so as little as any one’s,’ Jasper could not help remarking to his sister; and Fly, pouncing on the first purple orchis spike amid its black-spotted leaves, cried—

‘At any rate, these dear things go on the same, without any tiresome inventing.’

‘Except God’s just at first,’ whispered Mysie.

‘And the gardeners do invent new ones,’ said Valetta.

‘Invent! No; they only fuss them and spoil them, and make ridiculous names for them,’ said Fly. These darling creatures are ever so much better. Look at Primrose there.’

‘Yes,’ said Gillian, as she saw her little sister in quiet ecstasy over the sparkling bells of the daffodils; ‘one would not like to live eight hundred years away from that experience.’

‘But mamma cares just as much still as Primrose does,’ said Mysie. ‘We must get some for her own self as well as for the church.’

‘Mine are all for mamma,’ proclaimed Primrose; and just then there was a shout that a bird’s nest had been found—a ring-ousel’s nest on the banks. Fly and her brother shared a collection of birds’ eggs, and were so excited about robbing the ousels of a single egg, that Gillian hoped that Fergus would not catch the infection and abandon minerals for eggs, which would be ever so much worse—only a degree better than butterflies, towards which Wilfred showed a certain proclivity.

‘I shall be thirteen before next holidays,’ he observed, after making a vain dash with his hat at a sulphur butterfly, looking like a primrose flying away.

‘Mamma won’t allow any “killing collection” before thirteen years old,’ explained Mysie.

‘She says,’ explained Gillian, ‘by that time one ought to be old enough to discriminate between the lawfulness of killing the creatures for the sake of studying their beauty and learning them, and the mere wanton amusement of hunting them down under the excuse of collecting.’

‘I say,’ exclaimed Valetta, who had been exploring above, ‘here is such a funny old house.’

There was a rush in that direction, and at the other end of the wide home-field was perceived a picturesque gray stone house, with large mullioned windows, a dilapidated low stone wall, with what had once been a handsome gateway, overgrown with ivy, and within big double daffodils and white narcissus growing wild.

‘It’s like the halls of Ivor,’ said Mysie, awestruck by the loneliness; ‘no dog, nor horse, nor cow, not even a goose,’

‘And what a place to sketch!’ cried Miss Vincent. ‘Oh, Gillian, we must come here another day.’

‘Oh, may we gather the flowers?’ exclaimed the insatiable Primrose.

‘Those poetic narcissuses would be delicious for the choir screen,’ added Gillian.

‘Poetic narcissus—poetic grandmother,’ said Wilfred. ‘It’s old butter and eggs.’

‘I say!’ cried Mysie. ‘Look, Ivy—I know that pair of fighting lions—ain’t these some of your arms over the door?’

‘By which you mean a quartering of our shield,’ said Ivinghoe. ‘Of course it is the Clipp bearing. Or, two lions azure, regardant combatant, their tails couped.’

‘Two blue Kilkenny cats, who have begun with each other’s tails,’ commented Jasper.

‘Ivinghoe glared a little, but respected the sixth form, and Gillian added—

‘They clipped them! Then did this place belong to our ancestors?’

‘Poetic grandmother, really!’ said Mysie.

‘Great grandmother,’ corrected Ivinghoe. ‘To be sure. It was from the Clipps that we got all this Rockstone estate!’

‘And I suppose this was their house? What a shame to have deserted it!’

‘Oh, it has been a farmhouse,’ said Fly. ‘I heard something about farms that wouldn’t let.’

‘Then is it yours?’ cried Valetta, ‘and may we gather the flowers?’

‘And mayn’t we explore?’ asked Mysie. ‘Oh, what fun!’

‘Holloa!’ exclaimed Wilfred, transfixed, as if he had seen the ghosts of all the Clipps. For just as Valetta and Mysie threw themselves on the big bunches of hepatica and the white narcissus, a roar, worthy of the clip-tailed lions, proceeded from the window, and the demand, ‘Who is picking my roses?’

Primrose in terror threw herself on Gillian with a little scream. Wilfred crept behind the walls, but after the general start there was an equally universal laugh, for between the stout mullions of the oriel window Lord Rotherwood’s face was seen, and Sir Jasper’s behind him.

Great was the jubilation, and there was a rush to the tall door, up the dilapidated steps, where curls of fern were peeping out; but the gentlemen called out that only the back-door could be opened, and the intention of a ‘real grand exploration’ was cut short by Miss Elbury’s declaring that she was bound not to let Phyllis stay out till six o’clock.

Fly, in her usual good-humoured way, suppressed her sighs and begged the others to explore without her, but the general vote declared this to be out of the question. Fly had too short a time to remain with her cousins to be forsaken even for the charms of ‘the halls of Ivor,’ or the rival Beast’s Castle, as Gillian called it, which, after all, would not run away.

‘But it might be let,’ said Mysie.

‘Yes, I’ve got a tenant in agitation,’ said Lord Rotherwood mischievously. ‘Never mind, I dare say he won’t inquire what you have done with his butter and eggs.’

So with a parting salute to the ancestral halls, the cavalry was set in order, big panniers full of moss and flowers disposed on the donkeys, Fly placed on her pony, and every maiden taking her basket of flowers, Jasper and Ivinghoe alone being amiable, or perhaps trustworthy enough to assist in carrying. Fly’s pony demurred to the extra burthen, so Jasper took hers; and when Gillian declared herself too fond of her flowers to part with them, Ivinghoe astonished Miss Vincent, on whom some stones of Fergus’s, as well as her own share of flowers, had been bestowed, by taking one handle of her most cumbrous basket.

Sir Jasper and Lord Rotherwood rode together through the happy young troop on the homeward way. Perhaps Ivinghoe was conscious of a special nod of approval from his father.

On passing Rock House, the youthful public was rather amused at his pausing, and saying—

‘Aren’t you going to leave some flowers there?’

‘Oh yes!’ said Gillian. ‘I have a basket on purpose.’

‘And I have some for Maura,’ said Valetta.

Valetta’s was an untidy bunch; Gillian’s a dainty basket, where white violets reposed on moss within a circle of larger blossoms.

‘That’s something like!’ quoth Ivinghoe.

He lingered with them as if he wanted to see that vision again, but only the caretaker appeared, and promised to take the flowers upstairs.

Maura afterwards told how they were enjoyed, and they knew of Kalliope’s calm restfulness in Holy Week thoughts and Paschal Joys.

It was on Easter Tuesday that Mr. White first sent a message asking to see his guest, now of nearly three weeks.

He came in very quietly and gently—perhaps the sight of the room he had prepared for his young wife was in itself a shock to him, and he had lived so long without womankind that he had all a lonely man’s awe of an invalid. He took with a certain respect the hand that Kalliope held out, as she said, with a faint flush in her cheeks—

‘I am glad to thank you, sir. You have been very good to me.’

‘I am glad to see you better,’ he said, with a little embarrassment.

‘I ought to be, in this beautiful air, and with these lovely things to look at,’ and she pointed to the reigning photograph on the stand—the facade of St. Mark’s.

‘You should see it as I did.’ And he began to describe it to her, she putting in a question or two here and there, which showed her appreciation.

‘You know something about it already,’ he said.

‘Yes; when I was quite a little girl one of the officers in the Royal Wardours brought some photographs to Malta, and told me about them.’

‘But,’ he said, recalling himself, that is not my object now. Your brother says he does not feel competent to decide without you.’ And he laid before her two or three prospectuses of grammar schools. ‘It is time to apply,’ he added, ‘if that little fellow—Peter, you call him, don’t you?—is to begin next term.’

‘Petros! Oh, sir, this is kindness!’

‘I desired that the children’s education should be attended to,’ said Mr. White. ‘I did not intend their being sent to an ordinary National school.’

‘Indeed,’ said Kalliope; ‘I do not think much time has been lost, for they have learnt a good deal there; but I am particularly glad that Petros should go to a superior school just now that he has been left alone, for he is more lively and sociable than Theodore, and it might be less easy for him to keep from bad companions.’

The pros and cons of the several schools were discussed, and Hurstpierpoint finally fixed on.

‘Never mind about his outfit,’ added Mr. White. ‘I’ll give that fellow down in Bellevue an order to rig him out. He is a sharp little sturdy fellow, who will make his way in the world.’

‘Indeed, I trust so, now that his education is secured. It is another load off my mind,’ said Kalliope, with a smile of exceeding sweetness and gratitude, her hands clasped, and her eyes raised for a moment in higher thankfulness,—a look that so enhanced her beauty that Mr. White gazed for a moment in wonder. The next moment, however, the dark eyes turned on him with a little anxiety, and she said—

‘One thing more, sir. Perhaps you will be so kind as to relieve my mind again. That notice of dismissal at the quarter’s end. Was it not in some degree from a mistake?’

‘An utter mistake, my dear,’ he said hastily. ‘Never trouble your head about it.’

‘Then it does not hold?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘And I may go back to my office as soon as I am well enough?’

‘Is that your wish?’

‘Yes, sir. I love my work and my assistants, and I think I could do better if a little more scope could be allowed me.’

‘Very well, we will see about that—you have to get well first of all.’

‘I am so much better that I ought to go home. Mr. Lee is quite ready for me.’

Nonsense! You must be much stronger before Dagger would hear of your going.’

After this Mr. White came to sit with Kalliope for a time in the course of each day, bringing with him something that would interest her, and seeming gratified by her responsiveness, quiet as it was, for she was still very feeble, and exertion caused a failure of breath and fluttering of heart that were so distressing that ten days more passed before she was brought downstairs and drawn out in the garden in a chair, where she could sit on the sheltered terrace enjoying the delicious spring air and soft sea-breezes, sometimes alone, sometimes with the company of one friend or another. Gillian and Aunt Jane had, with the full connivance of Mr. White, arranged a temporary entrance from one garden to the other for the convenience of attending to Kalliope, and here one afternoon Miss Mohun was coming in when she heard through the laurels two voices speaking to the girl. As she moved forward she saw they were the elder and younger Stebbings, and that Kalliope had risen to her feet, and was leaning on the back of her chair. While she was considering whether to advance Kalliope heard her, and called in a breathless voice, ‘Miss Mohun! oh, Miss Mohun, come!’

‘Miss Mohun! You will do us the justice—’ began Mr. Stebbing, speaking more to her indignant face and gesture than to any words.

‘Miss White is not well,’ she said. ‘You had better leave her to me.’

And as they withdrew through the house, Kalliope sank back in her chair in one of those alarming attacks of deadly faintness that had been averted for many days past. Happily an electric bell was always at hand, and the housekeeper knew what remedies to bring. Kalliope did not attempt a word for many long minutes, though the colour came back gradually to her lips. Her first words were,

‘Thank you! Oh, I did hope that persecution was over!’

‘My poor child! Don’t tell me unless you like! Only—it wasn’t about your work?’

‘Oh no, the old story! But he brought his father—to say he consented—and wished it—now.’

There was no letting her say any more at that time, but it was all plain enough. This had been one more attempt of the Stebbing family to recover their former power; Kalliope was assumed to be Mr. White’s favoured niece; Frank could make capital of having loved her when poor and neglected, and his parents were ready to back his suit. The father and son had used their familiarity with the house to obtain admittance to the garden without announcement or preparation, and had pressed the siege, with a confidence that could only be inspired by their own self-opinion. Kalliope had been kept up by her native dignity and resolution, and had at first gently, then firmly, declined the arguments, persuasions, promises, and final reproaches with which they beset her—even threatening to disclose what they called encouragement, and assuring her that she need not reckon on Mr. White, for the general voice declared him likely to marry again, and then where would she be?’

‘I don’t know what would have become of me, if you had not come,’ she said.

And when she had rested long enough, and crept into the house, and Alexis had come home to carry her upstairs, it was plain that she had been seriously thrown back, and she was not able to leave her room for two or three days.

Mr. White was necessarily told what had been the cause of the mischief. He smiled grimly. ‘Ay! ay! Master Frank thought he would come round the old man, did he? He will find himself out. Ha, ha! a girl like that in the house is like a honey-pot near a wasps’ nest, and the little sister will be as bad. Didn’t I see the young lord, smart little prig as he looks, holding an umbrella over her with a smile on his face, as much as to say, “I know who is a pretty girl! No one to look after them either!” But maybe they will all find themselves mistaken,’ and his grim smile relaxed into a highly amiable one.

Miss Mohun was not at all uneasy as to the young lord. An Eton boy’s admiration of a pretty face did not amount to much, even if Ivinghoe had not understood ‘Noblesse oblige’ too well to leave a young girl unsheltered. Besides, he and all the rest were going away the next day. But what did that final hint mean?

CHAPTER XXII. – THE MAIDEN ALL FORLORN

One secret was soon out, even before the cruel parting of Fly and Mysie, which it greatly mitigated.

Clipston was to be repaired and put in order, to be rented by the Merrifields. It was really a fine old substantial squire’s house, though neglected and consigned to farmers for four generations. It had great capabilities—a hall up to the roof, wainscoted rooms—at present happy hunting-grounds to boys and terriers—a choked fountain, numerous windows, walled up in the days of the ‘tax on light,’ and never reopened, and, moreover, a big stone barn, with a cross on the gable, and evident traces of having once been a chapel.

The place was actually in Rockstone Parish, and had a hamlet of six or seven houses, for which cottage services were held once a week, but the restoration of the chapel would provide a place for these, and it would become a province for Lady Merrifield’s care, while Sir Jasper was absolutely entreated, both by Lord Rotherwood and the rector of Rockstone, to become the valuable layman of the parish, nor was he at all unwilling thus to bestow his enforced leisure.

It was a beautiful place. The valley of daffodils already visited narrowed into a ravine, where the rivulet rushed down from moorlands, through a ravine charmingly wooded, and interspersed with rock. It would give country delights to the children, and remove them from the gossip of the watering-place society, and yet not be too far off for those reading-room opportunities beloved of gentlemen.

The young people were in ecstasies, only mourning that they could not live there during the repairs, and that those experienced in the nature of workmen hesitated to promise that Clipston would be habitable by the summer vacation. In the meantime, most of the movables from Silverfold were transported thither, and there was a great deal of walking and driving to and fro, planning for the future, and revelling in the spring outburst of flowers.

Schoolroom work had begun again, and Lady Merrifield was hearing Mysie read the Geruasalemme Liberata, while Miss Vincent superintended Primrose’s copies, and Gillian’s chalks were striving to portray a bust of Sophocles, when the distant sounds of the piano in the drawing-room stopped, and Valetta came in with words always ominous—

‘Aunt Jane wants to speak to you, mamma.’

Lady Merrifield gathered up her work and departed, while Valetta, addressing the public, said, ‘Something’s up.’

‘Oh!’ cried Primrose, ‘Sofi hasn’t run away again?’

‘I hope Kalliope isn’t worse,’ said Mysie anxiously.

‘I guess,’ said Valetta, ‘somebody said something the other day!’

‘Something proving us the hotbeds of gossip,’ muttered Gillian.

‘You had better get your German exercise, Valetta,’ said Miss Vincent. ‘Mysie, you have not finished your sums.’

And a sigh went round; but Valetta added one after-clap.

‘Aunt Jane looked—I don’t know how!’

Whereat Gillian nodded her head, and looked up at Miss Vincent, who was as curious as the rest, but restrained the manifestation manfully.

Meantime Lady Merrifield found her sister standing at the window, and, without turning round, the words were uttered—

‘Jasper was right, Lily.’

‘You don’t mean it?’

‘Yes; he is after her!’—with a long breath.

‘Mr. White!’

‘Yes’—then sitting down. ‘I did not think much of it before. They always are after Ada more or less—and she likes it; but it never has come to anything.’

‘Why should it now?’

‘It has! At least, it has gone further than ever anything did before, except Charlie Scott, that ridiculous boy at Beechcroft that William was so angry with, and who married somebody else.’

‘You don’t say that he has proposed to her?’

‘Yes, he has—the man! By a letter this morning, and I could see she expected it—not that that’s any wonder!’

‘But, my dear, she can’t possibly be thinking of it.’

‘Well, I should have said it was impossible; but I see she has not made up her mind. Poor dear Ada! It is too bad to laugh; but she does like the having a real offer at last, and a great Italian castle laid at her feet.’

‘But he isn’t a gentleman! I don’t mean only his birth—and I know he is a good man really—but Jasper said he could feel he was not a gentleman by the way he fell on Richard White before his sister.’

‘I know! I know! I wonder if it would be for her happiness?’

‘Then she has not answered him?’

‘No; or, rather, I left her going to write. She won’t accept him certainly now; but I believe she is telling him that she must have time to consider and consult her family.’

‘She must know pretty well what her family will say. Fancy William! Fancy Emily! Fancy Reginald!’

‘Yes, oh yes! But Ada—I must say it—she does like to prolong the situation.’

‘It is not fair on the poor man.’

‘Well, she will act as she chooses; but I think she really does want to see what amount of opposition—No, not that, but of estrangement it would cause.’

‘Did you see the letter?’

‘Yes; no doubt you will too. I told her I should come to you, and she did not object. I think she was glad to be saved broaching the subject, for she is half ashamed.’