Chapter Eight.
Society.
It was a still evening late in October. The level rays of the setting sun struck on the Kingsworth rocks till the little cove had almost the warmth of summer. Soft rosy clouds floated over the blue vault and reflected their colour on the rippling water, and on the white wings of the sea birds which hovered between sea and sky.
Katharine Kingsworth was sitting on a smooth dry stone with her feet on the warm sand, the red light brightening her face and hair, and making her little figure in its warm dark dress a picturesque object in the scene.
Katharine was alone and a little thoughtful, though her thoughts were pleasant ones, as she compared her present life with the dulness of Applehurst.
“Kitty is as fresh as if she had spent all her life on a desert island,” one of the Clares had said of her, that morning.
“Well, Applehurst was a desert house if not a desert island,” Kate had replied. “You were all brought up differently. I wonder why—”
Some instinct checked the expression of her wonder on the girl’s lips; but for the first time she realised how unlike her life was to that of other girls, and to feel that the circumstances of it were peculiar.
“Emberance’s father and mine were drowned,” she thought, “so mamma disliked the place for ever afterwards. That might be; but why should she shut me up at Applehurst, and make me so different to other girls? Why does she seem to dislike all my pleasure and to hint that it won’t last. I don’t think she is as kind to me as Mrs Clare is to her daughters; how pleased she was for them to go to the picnic.”
A certain hurt look came across Kate’s bright face as these thoughts passed through her mind.
“When I am twenty-one I shall be able to do as I like,” she thought. “I know that, because Minnie Clare let out that their father said they must not ask me now to give any money to do up the church, as I could not promise it rightly; but I think I shall ask mamma if I may not give them some now.”
A pause in Katharine’s reflections as she watched the gulls dipping into the water and floating upwards again towards the clouds, then—
“I suppose girls who have been all brought up together are much more amusing and know much better what to say than I do. I wonder—I wonder—if Major Clare observed any difference when he walked home with us yesterday from the Vicarage—”
“Why, Kate, are you actually here by yourself?” said Emberance, descending on her from the park above. “That is something unusual.”
“It is rather nice to sit and think a little sometimes,” said Kate.
“Well, I think so; but you never seem to have much to think about,” said Emberance sitting down by her side.
“Why shouldn’t I have as much to think about as you?”
Emberance laughed, a little conscious laugh, and a pretty blush came over her face.
“I don’t think you have, Kitty.”
“I do think,” said Kate, “only there is so much to do. I think what it will be like when I can spend my money as I please. I suppose when I am twenty-one mamma will not be able to prevent me.”
“I suppose not,” said Emberance a little drily.
“But, Emmy, don’t you think it would be just as proper for me to wear a jacket trimmed with fur, as for Miss Deane at Mayford?” said Katharine with great emphasis.
“Of course, why not? Why don’t you get one? That black cloth is rather shabby. I would have a fur jacket if I could afford it directly.”
Katharine looked at her and the colour rose a little in her face.
“Mamma looked at me,” she said, “when I asked her about it, and said in her slow way, ‘It would cost a great deal. Your cousin has not one.’ And then, Emmy, I said, I supposed that I—that mamma had more money than Aunt Ellen—and so—”
“So you might get one. Of course, Kitty, don’t blush about it,” said Emberance kindly. “I shan’t be jealous.”
“But,” said Katharine, “mamma looked at me and the tears came into her eyes, and she said, as if she hated me, ‘So you can enjoy pleasures your cousin does not share,’ and went away.”
“That was very hard on you, Kate,” said Emberance warmly. “Aunt Mary should not have said so. Never mind, let us go in presently and talk about jackets, and I’ll tell her I have some seal-skin trimming at home quite good. I don’t want a new jacket.”
Katharine threw her arms round her cousin and kissed her with an odd sense of gratitude.
“Dear, dear Emmy, I should like you to have one too,” she said. “When I am twenty-one I’ll give you one.”
“Do,” said Emberance laughing, “and trim it with grey fur. What a funny little child you are, Kitty!”
“Emberance,” said Kate suddenly, “I never thought about it before. We are cousins. Why am I rich instead of you?”
“Because grandpapa left Kingsworth to your father and not to mine,” said Emberance turning her head away with a sudden stiffness.
“Why?” said Kate.
“I don’t quite know.”
“Was he the eldest?”
“No,” said Emberance reluctantly.
“Then, mamma thinks it wasn’t fair,” cried Kate with sudden quickness of apprehension.
“Nonsense, Kitty, it is all over and done with now, and can’t be altered. It is no concern of ours, and I am sure I am very happy; let us talk of something else. What did you think of Major Clare?”
“Oh, he was very entertaining, he told me a long story about a tiger, and he is going to give Minnie a necklace made of its teeth. It seems odd that Mr Clare’s brother should be so young. And I like Mr Alfred Deane, too. Do you think they’ll dance with us if we go to the ball?”
“Very likely.”
“Do you like dancing?”
“Oh very much indeed, I hope we shall go,” said Emberance with involuntary heartiness, and then the thought crossed her, that an engaged girl, with a lover at the Antipodes, ought not to be elated at the thought of going to a ball.
But Emberance was very simple and natural, and though the ball would have been finer if her Robin had been there (by the way Malcolm Mackenzie hated dancing,) she could not regard it wholly with indifference.
It had been much under discussion, Mrs Kingsworth having wished to refuse Mrs Deane’s invitation, and Kate naturally being equally in favour of accepting it, and indeed vehemently angry at being deprived of the pleasure. Every day seemed to Mrs Kingsworth to make it plainer that her view of Kate’s selfishness and frivolity was right. Every day the girl seemed to her a less likely person to sacrifice pleasure and self-importance to the highest sense of right; every day she felt that she could not tell her her wishes without the chance of bitter mortification. And so she was cold to Kate, and the girl who was inconsiderate and selfish from want of knowledge of other people’s views, opposed her more and more.
Emberance did not of course know that her aunt meditated a great act of restitution, but she perceived that she regarded her as an injured person, and having always heard her mother call her Aunt Mary a usurper, it came with a great surprise to her to find Aunt Mary of the same opinion. She perceived, too, how Katharine always appeared in a less amiable light to her mother than to any one else, how the frank caresses and innocent gaiety that made her a favourite among her friends, were chilled and repressed by the dread of criticism.
On this occasion as the two girls came back to the house together, Emberance said,—
“You should not be so vehement about gaieties in talking to Aunt Mary, Kitty; she thinks you care for nothing else.”
“But how can I help being vehement when I feel so?” said Katharine, opening her round eyes; “and I do care immensely about the ball.”
“So do I; but still one ought not to be frivolous, and you might show a little more interest in other things.”
“But Emmy,” said Kate, “I don’t think I have found out yet what sort of things I do like.”
Emberance laughed and desisted, a little ashamed of having suggested a prudential motive, when she saw how entirely it failed of being understood.
“I suppose,” she said, “that seeing all the neighbours here, reminds Aunt Mary of old times, and makes her sad. We ought to remember that.”
Kate looked a little impatient.
“That was so very long ago,” she said, as she ran into the house, and opened the drawing-room door.
Mrs Kingsworth was writing a note. “Katharine, I have accepted Mrs Deane’s invitation,” she said.
“Have you? Oh, mamma, that’s lovely of you!” cried Kate. “I never, never could have borne to stay at home.”
“Thank you, Aunt Mary, we did wish very much to go,” said Emberance.
“I suppose you did,” said Mrs Kingsworth. “Your uncle thought that I ought to take you, and he wishes to give you your dresses for the occasion.”
“Oh, how very kind!” cried Emberance, with an immediate sense of delightful provision for many a Fanchester gaiety, beyond the special occasion, while Kate danced about the room, without a care for the future.
The white dresses, with white heather and fern leaves, promised to be equally becoming to Kate’s vivid roses and chestnut locks, and to her cousin’s blush-rose fairness and slender grace; and though Emberance was far the handsomer girl of the two, Katharine’s chances were doubtless balanced by her heirship.
“I do hope I shall get some partners,” she said energetically, one day, when the two girls had gone to play lawn-tennis at the Vicarage. “I hope I shall dance every dance.”
“Will you dance with me, Miss Kingsworth?” said Fred Clare, a youth of eighteen, at home, in an interval between school and college.
“Oh, yes,” said Kate, heartily. “I should like to dance the first dance with you, because I can dance easily with you; and perhaps I shall not be able to manage it with strange partners.”
“Fred, Fred, this is too bad,” said his uncle. “You take an unfair advantage of your opportunities. Miss Kingsworth, is Fred to be the only one to obtain a promise beforehand?”
Major Clare was a handsome man of thirty, tall, dark-haired, and sunburnt, fulfilling very fairly a girl’s ideal of an Indian officer. He had a pleasant laugh in his eyes, and a touch of satire not quite so pleasant in his voice; and his elder brother the Vicar, and still more the Vicar’s wife, found him rather an incongruous element in the clerical household. Not that he was otherwise than perfectly decorous and well-conducted, or in the eyes of his relations other than a proper suitor for the heiress of Kingsworth, supposing his inclinations turned that way; but somehow under his influence, lawn-tennis, boating, and other amusements usurped a good deal more than their usual share of the family life. Fred, Minnie, and the younger ones were only too ready to follow his lead, and Rose, the eldest daughter, who was more soberly inclined, was cross because studies and parish work were neglected, and if she maintained some order, diminished the harmony of the family circle. But the Major had no other home, and did not seem at present inclined to dispose of himself elsewhere.
Katharine blushed at his remark, and said with a little restraint,—
“Oh, no, I should be very glad to dance with any one.”
“For how many balls will you retain so much humility?” said Major Clare, laughing. “Let me take advantage of it while it lasts, and ask for two dances.”
Kate assented, but she looked a little uncomfortable, and as a general move towards the lawn-tennis ground enabled her to speak to him apart, she said,—
“Major Clare, I did not mean to ask you to ask me to dance just now.”
Major Clare looked at her with a slight air of amusement. “What has made you think of that?” he said.
“Well, I think Emberance looked at me,” said the candid Kate.
“I should not have thought your cousin’s eyes so formidable.”
Something was added about the charm of simplicity, which Katharine was not quite sure whether she liked or not; but, enough consciousness was awakened to add a touch of excitement to her preparations for her first ball.