It had then been a piteous change and darkening of life when, after the crushing grief of his death, the young people found themselves in such an entirely different stratum of society. They were ready to work, but they could not help feeling the mortification of being relegated below the mysterious line of gentry, as they found themselves at Rockquay, and viewed as on a level with the clerks and shop-girls of the place. Still more, as time went on, did they miss the companionship and intercourse to which they had been used. Mr. Flight, the only person in a higher rank who took notice of them, and perceived that there was more in them than was usual, was after all only a patron-not a friend, and perhaps was not essentially enough of a gentleman to be free from all airs of condescension even with Alexis, while he might be wise in not making too much of an approach to so beautiful a girl as Kalliope. Besides, after a fit of eagerness, and something very like promises, he had apparently let Alexis drop, only using him for his musical services, and not doing anything to promote the studies for which the young man thirsted, nor proposing anything for the younger boys, who would soon outgrow the National School.
Alexis had made a few semi-friends among the musical youth of the place; but there was no one to sympathise with him in his studious tastes, and there was much in his appearance and manners to cause the accusation of being 'stuck-up'-music being really the only point of contact with most of his fellows of the lower professional class.
Kalliope had less time, but she had, on principle, cultivated kindly terms with the young women employed under her. Her severe style of beauty removed her from any jealousy of her as a rival, and she was admired-almost worshipped-by them as the glory of the workshop. They felt her superiority, and owned her ability; but nobody there was capable of being a companion to her. Thus the sister and brother had almost wholly depended upon one another; and it was like a breath from what now seemed the golden age of their lives when Gillian Merrifield walked into the office, treating Kalliope with all the freedom of an equal and the affection of an old friend. There was not very much time to spare after Gillian had looked at the exercises, noted and corrected the errors, and explained the difficulties or mistakes in the translation from Testament and Delectus, feeling all the time how much more mastery of the subject her pupil had than Mr. Pollock's at home had ever attained to.
However, Kalliope always walked home with her as far as the opening of Church Cliff Road, and they talked of the cleverness and goodness of the brothers, except Richard at Leeds, who never seemed to be mentioned; how Theodore kept at the head of the school, and had hopes of the drawing prize, and how little Petros devoured tales of battles, and would hear of nothing but being a soldier. Now and then, too, there was a castle in the air of a home for little Maura at Alexis's future curacy. Kalliope seemed to look to working for life for poor mother, while Theodore should cultivate his art. Oftener the two recalled old adventures and scenes of their regimental days, and discussed the weddings of the two Indian sisters.
Once, however, Kalliope was obliged to suggest, with a blushing apology, that she feared Gillian must go home alone, she was not ready.
'Can't I help you? what have you to do?'
Kalliope attempted some excuse of putting away designs, but presently peeped from the window, and Gillian, with excited curiosity, imitated her, and beheld, lingering about, a young man in the pink of fashion, with a tea-rose in his buttonhole and a cane in his hand.
'Oh, Kally,' she cried, 'does he often hang about like this waiting for you?'
'Not often, happily. There! old Mr. Stebbing has come out, and they are walking away together. We can go now.'
'So he besets you, and you have to keep out of his way,' exclaimed Gillian, much excited. 'Is that the reason you come to the garden all alone on Sunday?'
'Yes, though I little guessed what awaited me there,' returned Kalliope; 'but we had better make haste, for it is late for you to be returning.'
It was disappointing that Kalliope would not discuss such an interesting affair; but Gillian was sensible of the danger of being so late as to cause questions, and she allowed herself to be hurried on too fast for conversation, and passing the two Stebbings, who, no doubt, took her for a 'hand.'
'Does this often happen?' asked Gillian.
'No; Alec walks home with me, and the boys often come and meet me. Oh, did I tell you that the master wants Theodore to be a pupil- teacher? I wish I knew what was best for him.'
'Could not he be an artist?'
'I should like some one to tell me whether he really has talent worth cultivating, dear boy, or if he would be safer and better in an honourable occupation like a school-master.'
'Do you call it honourable?'
'Oh yes, to be sure. I put it next to a clergyman's or a doctor's life.'
'Not a soldier's?'
'That depends,' said Kalliope.
'On the service he is sent upon, you mean? But that is his sovereign's look-out. He "only has to obey, to do or die."'
'Yes, it is the putting away of self, and possible peril of life, that makes all those grandest,' said Kalliope, 'and I think the schoolmaster is next in opportunities of doing good.'
Gillian could not help thinking that none of all these could put away self more entirely than the girl beside her, toiling away her beauty and her youth in this dull round of toil, not able to exercise the instincts of her art to the utmost, and with no change from the monotonous round of mosaics, which were forced to be second rate, to the commonest household works, and the company of the Queen of the White Ants.
Gillian perceived enough of the nobleness of such a life to fill her with a certain enthusiasm, and make her feel a day blank and uninteresting if she could not make her way to the little office.
One evening, towards the end of the first fortnight, Alexis himself came in with a passage that he wanted to have explained. His sister looked uneasy all the time, and hurried to put on her hat, and stand demonstratively waiting, telling Gillian that they must go, the moment the lesson began to tend to discursive talk, and making a most decided sign of prohibition to her brother when he showed a disposition to accompany them.
'I think you are frightfully particular, Kally,' said Gillian, when they were on their way up the hill. 'Such an old friend, and you there, too.'
'It would never do here! It would be wrong,' answered Kalliope, with the authority of an older woman. 'He must not come to the office.'
'Oh, but how could I ever explain to him? One can't do everything in writing. I might as well give up the lessons as never speak to him about them.'
There was truth in this, and perhaps Alexis used some such arguments on his side, for at about every third visit of Gillian's he dropped in with some important inquiry necessary to his progress, which was rapid enough to compel Gillian to devote some time to preparation, in order to keep ahead of him.
Kalliope kept diligent guard, and watched against lengthening the lessons into gossip, and they were always after hours when the hands had gone away. The fear of being detected kept Gillian ready to shorten the time.
'How late you are!' were the first words she heard one October evening on entering Beechcroft Cottage; but they were followed by 'Here's a pleasure for you!'
'It's from papa himself! Open it! Open it quick,' cried Valetta, dancing round her in full appreciation of the honour and delight.
Sir Jasper said that his daughter must put up with him for a correspondent, since two brides at once were as much as any mother could be supposed to undertake. Indeed, as mamma would not leave him, Phyllis was actually going to Calcutta, chaperoned by one of the matrons of the station, to make purchases for both outfits, since Alethea would not stir from under the maternal wing sooner than she could help.
At the end came, 'We are much shocked at poor White's death. He was an excellent officer, and a good and sensible man, though much hampered with his family. I am afraid his wife must be a very helpless being. He used to talk about the good promise of one of his sons-the se
cond, I think. We will see whether anything can be done for the children when we come home. I say we, for I find I shall have to be invalided before I can be entirely patched up, so that mamma and I shall have a sort of postponed silver wedding tour, a new variety for the old folks "from home."'
'Oh, is papa coming home?' cried Valetta.
'For good! Oh, I hope it will be for good,' added Gillian.
'Then we shall live at dear Silverfold all the days of our life,' added Fergus.
'And I shall get back to Rigdum.'
'And I shall make a telephone down to the stables,' were the cries of the children.
The transcendent news quite swallowed up everything else for some time; but at last Gillian recurred to her father's testimony as to the White family.
'Is the second son the musical one?' she was asked, and on her affirmative, Aunt Jane remarked, 'Well, though the Rev. Augustine Flight is not on a pinnacle of human wisdom, his choir practices, etc., will keep the lad well out of harm's way till your father can see about him.'
This would have been an opportunity of explaining the youth's aims and hopes, and her own share in forwarding them; but it had become difficult to avow the extent of her intercourse with the brother and sister, so entirely without the knowledge of her aunts. Even Miss Mohun, acute as she was, had no suspicions, and only thought with much satisfaction that her niece was growing more attentive to poor Lilian Giles, even to the point of lingering.
'I really think, she said, in consultation with Miss Adeline, 'that we might gratify that damsel by having the White girls to drink tea.'
'Well, we can add them to your winter party of young ladies in business.'
'Hardly. These stand on different ground, and I don't want to hurt their feelings or Gillian's by mixing them up with the shopocracy.'
'Have you seen the Queen of the White Ants?'
'Not yet; but I mean to reconnoitre, and if I see no cause to the contrary, I shall invite them for next Tuesday.'
'The mother? You might as well ask her namesake.'
'Probably; but I shall be better able to judge when I have seen her.'
So Miss Mohun trotted off, made her visit, and thus reported, 'Poor woman! she certainly is not lovely now, whatever she may have been; but I should think there was no harm in her, and she is effusive in her gratitude to all the Merrifield family. It is plain that the absent eldest son is the favourite, far more so than the two useful children at the marble works; and Mr. White is spoken of as a sort of tyrant, whereas I should think they owed a good deal to his kindness in giving them employment.'
'I always thought he was an old hunks.'
'The town thinks so because he does not come and spend freely here; but I have my doubts whether they are right. He is always ready to do his part in subscriptions; and the employing these young people as he does is true kindness.'
'Unappreciated.'
'Yes, by the mother who would expect to be kept like a lady in idleness, but perhaps not so by her daughter. From all I can pick up, I think she must be a very worthy person, so I have asked her and the little schoolgirl for Tuesday evening, and I hope it will not be a great nuisance to you, Ada.'
'Oh no,' said Miss Adeline, good humouredly, 'it will please Gillian, and I shall be interested in seeing the species, or rather the variety.'
'Var Musa Groeca Hibernica Militaris,' laughed Aunt Jane.
'By the bye, I further found out what made the Captain enlist.'
'Trust you for doing that!' laughed her sister.
'Really it was not on purpose, but old Zack Skilly was indulging me with some of his ancient smuggling experiences, in what he evidently views as the heroic age of Rockquay. "Men was men, then," he says. "Now they be good for nought, but to row out the gentlefolks when the water is as smooth as glass." You should hear the contempt in his voice. Well, a promising young hero of his was Dick White, what used to work for his uncle, but liked a bit of a lark, and at last hit one of the coastguard men in a fight, and ran away, and folks said he had gone for a soldier. Skilly had heard he was dead, and his wife had come to live in these parts, but there was no knowing what was true and what wasn't. Folks would talk! Dick was a likely chap, with more life about him than his cousin Jem, as was a great man now, and owned all the marble works, and a goodish bit of the town. There was a talk as how the two lads had both been a courting of the same maid, that was Betsy Polwhele, and had fallen out about her, but how that might be he could not tell. Anyhow, she was not wed to one nor t'other of them, but went into a waste and died.'
'I wonder if it was for Dick's sake. So Jem was not constant either.'
'Except to his second love. That was a piteous little story too.'
'You mean his young wife's health failing as soon as he brought her to that house which he was building for her, and then his taking her to Italy, and never enduring to come back here again after she and her child died. But he made a good thing of it with his quarries in the mountains.'
'You sordid person, do you think that was all he cared for!'
'Well, I always thought of him as a great, stout, monied man, quite incapable of romance and sensitiveness.'
'If so, don't you think he would have let that house instead of keeping it up in empty state! There is a good deal of character in those Whites.'
'The Captain is certainly the most marked man, except Jasper, in that group of officers in Gillian's photograph-book.'
'Partly from the fact that a herd of young officers always look so exactly alike-at least in the eyes of elderly spinsters.'
'Jane!'
'Let us hope so, now that it is all over. This same Dick must have had something remarkable about him, to judge by the impression he seems to have left on all who came in his way, and I shall like to see his children.'
'You always do like queer people.'
'It is plain that we ought to take notice of them,' said Miss Mohun, 'and it is not wholesome for Gillian to think us backward in kindness to friends about whom she plainly has a little romance.'
She refrained from uttering a suspicion inspired by her visit that there had been more 'kindnesses' on her niece's part than she could quite account for. Yet she believed that she knew how all the girl's days were spent; was certain that the Sunday wanderings never went beyond the garden, and, moreover, she implicitly trusted Lily's daughter.
Gillian did not manifest as much delight and gratitude at the invitation as her aunts expected. In point of fact, she resented Aunt Jane's making a visit of investigation without telling her, and she was uneasy lest there should have been or yet should be a dis- closure that should make her proceedings appear clandestine. 'And they are not!' said she to herself with vehemence. 'Do I not write them all to my own mother? And did not Miss Vincent allow that one is not bound to treat aunts like parents?'
Even the discovery of Captain White's antecedents was almost an offence, for if her aunt would not let her inquire, why should she do so herself, save to preserve the choice morceau for her own superior intelligence? Thus all the reply that Gillian deigned was, 'Of course I knew that Captain White could never have done anything to be ashamed of.'
The weather was too wet for any previous meetings, and it was on a wild stormy evening that the two sisters appeared at seven o'clock at Beechcroft Cottage. While hats and waterproofs were being taken off upstairs, Gillian found opportunity to give a warning against mentioning the Greek lessons. It was received with consternation.
'Oh, Miss Merrifield, do not your aunts know?'
'No. Why should they? Mamma does.'
'Not yet. And she is so far off! I wish Miss Mohun knew! I made sure that she did,' said Kalliope, much distressed.
'But why? It would only make a fuss.'
'I should be much happier about it.'
'And perhaps have it all upset.'
'That is the point. I felt that it must be all right as long as Miss Mohun sanctioned it; but I could not bear that we should be the means of bringing you into a s
crape, by doing what she might disapprove while you are under her care.'
'Don't you think you can trust me to know my own relations?' said Gillian somewhat haughtily.
'Indeed, I did not mean that we are not infinitely obliged to you,' said Kalliope. 'It has made Alexis another creature to have some hope, and feel himself making progress.'
'Then why do you want to have a fuss, and a bother, and a chatter? If my father and mother don't approve, they can telegraph.'
With which argument she appeased or rather silenced Kalliope, who could not but feel the task of objecting alike ungracious and ungrateful towards the instructor, and absolutely cruel and unkind towards her brother, and who spoke only from a sense of the treachery of allowing a younger girl to transgress in ignorance. Still she was conscious of not understanding on what terms the niece and aunts might be, and the St. Kenelm's estimate of the Beechcroft ladies was naturally somewhat different from that of the St. Andrew's congregation. Miss Mohun was popularly regarded in those quarters as an intolerable busybody, and Miss Adeline as a hypochondriacal fine lady, so that Gillian might perhaps reasonably object to put herself into absolute subjection; so, though Kalliope might have a presentiment of breakers ahead, she could say no more, and Gillian, feeling that she had been cross, changed the subject by admiring the pretty short curly hair that was being tied back at the glass.
'I wish it would grow long,' said Kalliope. 'But it always was rather short and troublesome, and ever since it was cut short in the fever, I have been obliged to keep it like this.'
'But it suits you,' said Gillian. 'And it is exactly the thing now.'
'That is the worst of it. It looks as if I wore it so on purpose. However, all our hands know that I cannot help it, and so does Lady Flight.'
The girl looked exceedingly well, though little Alice, the maid, would not have gone out to tea in such an ancient black dress, with no relief save a rim of white at neck and hands, and a tiny silver Maltese cross at the throat. Maura had a comparatively new gray dress, picked out with black. She was a pretty creature, the Irish beauty predominating over the Greek, in her great long-lashed brown eyes, which looked radiant with shy happiness. Miss Adeline was perfectly taken by surprise at the entrance of two such uncommon forms and faces, and the quiet dignity of the elder made her for a moment suppose that her sister must have invited some additional guest of undoubted station.
Beechcroft at Rockstone Page 11
