Chapter Fifteen.
Love Lane.
Emberance, meanwhile, had been welcomed home with great warmth by her mother and aunt, who had both missed her cheerful young presence, and set herself energetically to take up all her broken threads, and resume the little duties that had been interrupted by her long visit. Emberance taught at a Sunday school, and helped to manage a lending library, and a working party, besides ruling despotically over the caps and other ornaments of her mother and aunt, and being a leading spirit at a choral class in the neighbourhood.
She felt dull when she first came back; but she had too much sense and too much management of herself to fret and dawdle like poor Kate; there was no use, she thought, in thinking more of Malcolm than could be helped.
Her mother was disappointed at finding her so unaltered. She had vaguely hoped that “something might happen” to her daughter during her long absence, and when she could not gather that Emberance had received any offers, and seemed to take up her old life just where she left it, she hazarded a hint.
“At any rate, Emberance, I suppose the society you met at Kingsworth was very superior to the Fanchester set,—of course excepting the cathedral.”
“Well, yes,—in some ways perhaps; but we went out very little.”
“I dare say the young men were of a different stamp from any you could meet here?”
“They were more in the style of Mr Mackenzie,” said Emberance with a flush, which was a literal falsehood, however true in spirit; for neither Walter Kingsworth, nor Major Clare, nor Alfred Deane were at all in the style of her grave young Scot.
“Ah, you might forget that romance, for young Mackenzie is never likely to do much—”
“How do you know, mother,—have you heard?” cried Emberance eagerly.
“Yes, his aunt was telling me the other day that he found it a bad speculation,—more capital was required than he could ever hope for.”
Emberance said nothing. She believed that the report was made the worst of for her benefit, and she did not think her Malcolm would give in so easily; but it cost her some hot stinging tears.
Oh, why—why did things go so ill with her? She wished most heartily that she was by Malcolm’s side, scrubbing the floor and cooking the dinner, while he felled trees and drove up cattle. She knew that she could have borne anything cheerfully then, but to wait and have her life spoiled, and no hope of sharing his—Emberance cried and chafed, and, for the first time, wished that she was heiress of Kingsworth. What good was the place to Kitty?
Emberance however rebuked herself for these thoughts by reflecting how wicked Malcolm would have thought them. Nor had she nearly so much time as Kate to indulge in sorrowful musings; for besides all her ordinary business, the Canon had her a good deal at his house, and, as her mother expressed it, “took very gratifying notice of her.”
She had originally met Malcolm Mackenzie at the house of his uncle, who was the principal doctor in Fanchester, and scraps of intelligence of a kind that was not very reassuring reached her from this source. Malcolm had arrived, and had written, but could not say that he saw his way much yet. He was afraid his little capital would not go very far,—still it was early days to despond, and he hoped for the best. If one thing failed, he should try another. Emberance knew that these discouraging facts were purposely brought to the hearing of the penniless girl with whom Malcolm had foolishly entangled himself. She felt miserable, and tried to distract her mind by enjoying to the utmost all her little gaieties; with the result of causing Mrs Mackenzie to write to her nephew that “Emberance Kingsworth was looking particularly well, and was much admired. She was a bit of a fine lady, and more than a bit of a flirt. It is very well for you, my dear boy, that there is no real engagement,—a most unfit girl for a settler’s wife.” And this assurance in more complimentary forms met Emberance very often.
She had been out one day for a walk with some of her girl friends, and coming back with them just at dusk, with the intention of giving them a cup of tea, she found the household in rather an unusual state of excitement.
“Well, Emmy,” her mother said, “it is a great pity that you were out. A friend of yours has been here to see you.”
“A friend of mine?” said Emberance, as she inquired into the state of the teapot. “Oh, Lily Wood, I suppose, she was coming to stay with her aunt.”
“No, my dear,” said Miss Bury, “one of your friends from Kingsworth.”
“Not Katie come already? I can’t guess, mamma; I hate guessing.”
“Well, my dear, it was Major Clare. He said that he was going to return shortly to his brother’s, and would be glad to take any message or parcel for you. A most agreeable person.”
There was a kind of consciousness in her mother’s manner which annoyed Emberance extremely. She was greatly surprised at Major Clare’s visit, and set it down to a possible desire to reopen relations with Katharine.
“I dare say he might like to have a message to take to Kingsworth,” she said in a tone intended to convey to her friends and to her mother that his interest was in another direction. “Where is he staying?” she added; “how did he come here?”
“He was staying, he said, in the neighbourhood, and would call again. Such pleasing manners!”
The Major had evidently created a favourable impression, and Emberance could not help being secretly flattered that he had sought her out, even with a view to renew his relations with Katharine.
The Major did call again, and Emberance also met him at Canon Kingsworth’s. He was very agreeable, and said very little about Kate, rather renewing that sort of manner which in the early days of Kingsworth had made Emberance doubt of his real intentions. She perceived that all her relations, including the Canon, regarded his appearance as significant; and indeed that excellent old gentleman would probably not have regarded a young lady’s change of mind towards a not very eligible suitor as a matter of great regret. And Emberance knew herself to be charming, the Major confirmed in her that sweet sense of the power of attraction, which is more intoxicating to a girl than the knowledge of beauty or any other personal advantage. It would take too long to tell all the little incidents, all the words, and half the glances that carried a vain man a little further than he had intended, and went far to turn the head of a vain girl.
Emberance looked prettier and took more trouble with her dress than usual during this important fortnight. But if she had a vain head she had an honest heart, and Major Clare’s former attentions to Katharine could not be forgotten. It was flattering to be preferred to her heiress-cousin; but still he had won Kate’s affections first, and Emberance never really contemplated his urging any serious suit upon her. Only it was pleasant to be known as the object of his attentions.
“I am a foolish, horrid girl,” thought Emberance, “and it is a mean thing to care about, but that’s all, and I am sure they are all mistaken in fancying he has any serious intentions. Besides, as if I would listen to any one but Malcolm. I never, never will.”
She was walking by herself home from the High Street, where she had gone to buy some little bit of finery, and down the lane that led by a short cut to the suburban district where she lived. It was only a dull lane, narrow and dirty, with a wall on one side and a close-clipped hedge on the other; but Emberance always chose it because it was here that she and Malcolm had met on the day when he had told her of his love and of his poverty, and asked her if she could bear to wait while he made his home, if she could put up with the weariness and the waiting that fell to the lot of a poor man’s betrothed.
“Oh, I can!” Emberance had answered warmly, and Love Lane or Hatchard’s Lane, as it was called, according to the tastes of the speaker, always brought her promise to her mind. She stopped a minute in her walk, and looked over the hedge across the cabbages in Hatchard’s market garden, and said to herself,—
“I’m not bearing it, I’m trying to escape it. I am giving in just as mother always said I should. And all because I like to feel that a man like Major Clare admires me. And I can’t even tell Malcolm that I am sorry.”
Tears filled her eyes and dimmed the long rows of cabbages. Emberance said a little prayer to herself, and made up her mind. She would stick to her true love and to her true self. Not bound indeed! Did not her conscience bind her?
“Ah, Miss Kingsworth, good morning. I am just coming from your house. Mrs Kingsworth gave me a hope of meeting you.”
Emberance turned with a violent blush to see Major Clare standing beside her.
“Is this a favourite walk of yours?” he said as she gave him a confused greeting.
“Yes,” said Emberance, “it is.”
“From a fine sense of natural beauty?” said Major Clare, lightly.
“No,” said Emberance, as bluntly as Kate could have, spoken. “It’s not pretty. But I don’t care about that.”
“Indeed, there are times when outward beauty makes very little difference to us!”
“Yes,” said Emberance, “but it would not do for me to think very much about places being pretty,—or particularly comfortable, because,—because I’m not likely to live in pretty or comfortable places.”
“Why, how so?” said Major Clare, surprised.
“Because,” said Emberance, looking straight before her, “a girl who hopes to be a settler’s wife mustn’t care about comforts. I am engaged to be married, Major Clare. I—I prefer to tell my friends about it, but mother would rather nothing was said, as we expect to wait for a long time first. But my uncle knows it, and Katharine.”
She made her little speech in a ladylike and dignified manner, though her face was crimson, and she wished that the old wall would tumble down and hide her.
Of course her motive in the confidence could not but be apparent enough, hard as she had tried to hide it; and Major Clare felt a pang of intense vexation as he felt that a second time his tale had been stopped before it was uttered. But he kept his counsel.
“Indeed! allow me to congratulate you,” he said lightly. “You have kept your secret well, Miss Kingsworth; no one would have guessed it.”
“I was desired to keep it,” said Emberance, ashamed. “Please do not mention it in Fanchester.”
“Of course,” said Major Clare, “I feel your confidence an honour,—most undeserved, I am sure, and unexpected.”
Emberance hated the Major more intensely as they walked down the remaining bit of Love Lane together than she had ever hated any one in her life. He had carried off the rebuff cleverly, and had stung her too keenly to allow her to perceive that he was stung also.
They wished each other good morning cheerfully and courteously, and parted at the lane’s end. Emberance hurried home feeling rather small and foolish; but with a sense of relief predominating. She was duly asked if she had met the Major, and after a little preamble her mother said,—
“It is very pleasant to meet any one who is so discriminating. He is well acquainted with all our family history, and takes a very proper view of it.”
“Mamma, what have you been saying to him?” cried Emberance vehemently and rather disrespectfully.
“Nothing, I assure you, that he did not know before. He only expressed his sympathy with us, and said that your unconsciousness of any wrong couldn’t hide how well you were fitted—in short, one couldn’t help seeing that he thought you would make a much better heiress than Kate.”
Emberance stood for a moment with her hat in her hand.
“Then,” she said, with much emphasis, “he is worse than any villain in a book.”
She walked away without further explanation, and Major Clare vanished from the lives of Emberance and Katharine Kingsworth.
He returned to India still unmarried,—still faithful, his brother said, to his first love. And perhaps he was so, but his efforts to replace her, and his love of producing an impression had made a crisis in the life and in the character of the two Kingsworth cousins.