Beechcroft at Rockstone

by Шарлотта Мэри Йондж

  'Ha, ha, old Small Change, don't you wish you may get it?'-as Primrose proved to be outside the drive on one of the donkeys. 'You've got nothing to do but gnaw your fists at us like old Giant Pope.'

  'For shame, Wilfred!' said Jasper. 'My mother did Primrose's throat, nurse, so she is all right.'

  'Bad form,' observed Lord Ivinghoe, shaking his head.

  'I'm not going to Eton,' replied Wilfred audaciously.

  'I should hope not!'-in a tone of ineffable contempt, not for Wilfred's person, but his manners, and therewith his Lordship exclaimed, 'Who's that?' as Maura came flying down with Gillian's forgotten basket.

  'Oh, that's Maura White!' said Valetta.

  'I say, isn't she going with us?'

  'Oh no, she has to look after her sister!'

  'Don't you think we might take her, Gill?' said Fly. 'She never gets any fun.'

  'I don't think she ought to leave Kalliope to-day, Fly, for nurse is going down to Il Lido; and besides, Aunt Jane said we must not take all Rockquay with us.'

  'No, they would not let us ask Kitty and Clement Varley, said Fergus disconsolately.

  'I am sure she is five times as pretty as your Kitty!' returned Ivinghoe. 'She is a regular stunner.' Whereby it may be perceived that a year at Eton had considerably modified his Lordship's correctness of speech, if not of demeanour. Be it further observed that, in spite of the escort of the governesses, the young people were as free as if those ladies had been absent, for, as Jasper observed, the donkeys neutralised them. Miss Elbury, being a bad walker, rode one, and Miss Vincent felt bound to keep close to Primrose upon the other; and as neither animal could be prevailed on to moderate its pace, they kept far ahead of all except Valetta, who was mounted on the pony intended for Lady Phyllis, but disdained by her until she should be tired. Lord Ivinghoe's admiration of Maura was received contemptuously by Wilfred, who was half a year younger than his cousin, and being already, in his own estimation, a Wykehamist, had endless rivalries with him.

  'She! She's nothing but a cad! Her sister is a shop-girl, and her brother is a quarryman.'

  'She does not look like it,' observed Ivinghoe, while Mysie and Fly, with one voice, exclaimed that her father was an officer in the Royal Wardours.

  'A private first,' said Wilfred, with boyhood's reiteration. 'Cads and quarrymen all of them-the whole boiling, old White and all, though he has got such a stuck-up house!'

  'Nonsense, Will,' said Fly. 'Why, Mr. White has dined with us.'

  'A patent of nobility, said Jasper, smiling.

  'I don't care,' said Wilfred; 'if other people choose to chum with old stonemasons and convicts, I don't.'

  'Wilfred, that is too bad,' said Gillian. 'It is very wrong to talk in that way.'

  'Oh!' said the audacious Wilfred, 'we all know who is Gill's Jack!'

  'Shut up, Will!' cried Fergus, flying at him. 'I told you not to-'

  But Wilfred bounded up a steep bank, and from that place of vantage went on-

  'Didn't she teach him Greek, and wasn't he spoony; and didn't she send back his valentine, so that-'

  Fergus was scrambling up the bank after him, enraged at the betrayal of his confidence, and shouting inarticulately, while poor Gillian moved on, overwhelmed with confusion, and Fly uttered the cutting words, 'Perfectly disgusting!'

  'Ay, so it was!' cried the unabashed Wilfred, keeping on at the top of the bank, and shaking the bushes at every pause. 'So he broke down the rocks, and ran away with the tin, and enlisted, and went to prison. Such a sweet young man for Gill!'

  Poor Gillian! was her punishment never to end? That scrape of hers, hitherto so tenderly and delicately hinted at, and which she would have given worlds to have kept from her brothers, now shouted all over the country! Sympathy, however, she had, if that would do her any good. Mysie and Fly came on each side of Ivinghoe, assuring him, in low eager voices, of the utter nonsense of the charge, and explaining ardently; and Jasper, with one bound, laid hold of the tormentor, dragged him down, and, holding his stick over him, said-

  'Now, Wilfred, if you don't hold your tongue, and not behave like a brute, I shall send you straight home.'

  'It's quite true,' growled Wilfred. 'Ask her.'

  'What does that signify? I'm ashamed of you! I've a great mind to thrash you this instant. If you speak another word of that sort, I shall. Now then, there are the governesses trying to stop to see what's the row. I shall give you up to Miss Vincent, if you choose to behave so like a spiteful girl.'

  A sixth-form youth was far too great a man to be withstood by one who was not yet a public schoolboy at all; and Wilfred actually obeyed, while Jasper added to Fergus-

  'How could you be such a little ass as to go and tell him all that rot?'

  'It was true,' grumbled Fergus.

  'The more reason not to go cackling about it like an old hen, or a girl! Your own sister! I'm ashamed of you both. Mind, I shall thrash you if you mention it again.'

  Poor Fergus felt the accusation of cackling unjust, since he had only told Wilfred in confidence, and that had been betrayed, but he had got his lesson on family honour, and he subsided into his wonted look-out for curious stones, while Gillian was overtaken by Jasper- whether willingly or not, she hardly knew-but his first word was, 'Little beast!'

  'You didn't hurt him, I hope,' said Gill, accepting the invitation to take his arm.

  'Oh no! I only threatened to make him walk with the governesses and the donkeys.'

  'Asses and savants to the centre,' said Gillian; 'like the orders to the French army in Egypt.'

  '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 Ja
sper, '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.