Chapter Six.
The Other Party.
At the garden-gate of a pretty little house in one of the suburbs of Fanchester, on a sunny evening a few days after Canon Kingsworth’s visit to Applehurst, stood the disinherited heiress, Emberance Kingsworth. Unlike Katharine, she was fully instructed in her rights and in her wrongs; so fully that they were an old story to her, and had lost much of their interest. For life was pleasant enough, pleasanter since her mother and aunts had left off school-keeping; for Emberance did not like teaching, and preferred the various interests of domestic life.
She was very pretty, tall and lithe, with fair fresh colouring, and abundant light-brown hair, well-opened eyes of deep grey, and a certain air of candour and simplicity, serene and single-hearted.
She stood looking down the long suburban road, with its edge of lime trees, its little villas with fanciful gates, breaking the shrubberies of mountain-ash and acacia, lilac and hawthorn, that fronted the road. She made a pretty picture, with the flickering shadows of an acacia tree on her white dress and straw hat, and looked less like an injured heiress brooding over her wrongs, than a happy girl watching wistfully for a possible meeting.
Perhaps her uncle, the Canon, was not exactly the figure that she had expected to see, but as he came in sight down the road, she ran forward to meet him with ready affection.
“Well, my dear,” he said as he kissed her, “I am glad to see you here, for I wanted to have a little chat with you.”
“Did you, uncle?” said Emberance, blushing under her hat, and believing that she guessed the subject of his intended discourse.
“Yes, you are old enough, Emberance, and I hope sensible enough to have some power of judging of your own circumstances.”
“Yes, uncle,” said Emberance. “I think I ought to be allowed to judge a little for myself. Indeed, I could never wish for anything different under any circumstances, and I can’t see what circumstances are likely to arise in my life that could alter matters for me.”
“No,” said the Canon. “I am glad you have not been taught to look far away.”
“Mamma says that I ought to choose from a different circle, but I cannot now. And of course we know that we must wait,” said the girl, timidly, but with firmness.
“Choose? we? wait? hullo!” said the Canon, “what does this mean I should like to know?”
“Oh, uncle,” cried poor Emberance in dismay, “I thought you knew,—I thought you came about it! I thought he told you!”
“I came about something quite different. What is it, my dear? Or must I not pry into young ladies’ secrets?”
Emberance was very fond of her uncle, and after she had recovered her breath and her courage, she began her little story with great straightforwardness.
“It is Malcolm Mackenzie, uncle, and he is going to New Zealand. He has some cousins there, who have a good deal of land. He has a little money, but they say he must come out first and look about him before investing it. He has no one belonging to him to keep him in England. It’s not a bad prospect—for these days, uncle,” said Emberance, with a sort of imploring simplicity, “and his family is just as good as mine. Mother says, however, that there is no knowing how things might change, and that I should never have cared for him if I had seen more people. But I should,—no one can know that but I. It only happened yesterday, uncle, and I told mamma last night. But she says she will not consent to acknowledge an engagement nor to any correspondence. I should be a great deal happier if she would.”
“Well, Emberance, I will hear what your mother has to say about it. You will hardly have any attention to spare for the real object of my visit.”
“Oh, yes, uncle, I shall,” said Emberance, readily.
“You, I believe, have not been kept in ignorance of the circumstances by which your father lost his inheritance?”
“I know that my uncle made my grandfather believe what was not true about him.”
“So we have feared,” said the Canon, “but, my dear, it is right that you should also know that there was very much that was quite true to cause your grandfather anger.”
Emberance coloured as she said in a low voice,—
“Yes, I thought so. But—but that which came after?”
“As to that,” said her uncle solemnly, “there is only One Who knows the truth.”
“Mother says she is sure that—that—he was killed,” said Emberance, faintly.
“She cannot be sure. We know nothing, and have no right to a guess. But, Emberance, my dear, I have always felt that the two who were left orphans on that fatal night, have a special claim on me,—you and your cousin Kate.”
“I do not think we ought to blame Katharine or her mother,” said Emberance with emphasis.
“Her mother, no indeed, Katharine has never been told anything. Her mother has kept her away from Kingsworth, taking grudgingly the least advantage from her inheritance. But they must go there now, and they wish to take you with them. Kate is an odd girl and needs a young companion. Am I doing right in asking you to go for a month or two?”
“I will go,” said Emberance, “if mother will let me. I think, uncle, that though all that dreadful past is a very sad thing in our lives, it would be much better to make a fresh start and forget about it. After all, Kate and I are only girls, it does not matter so much which is the eldest.”
This view, though coinciding with the Canon’s own, surprised him a little as coming from Emberance’s lips; and perhaps she perceived this, for she added a little pleadingly, “One’s wrongs get so tiresome, uncle, and I am very happy as I am.”
The Canon smiled, and left her in the garden as he went in to speak to her mother. Emberance sat down on a bench. Kingsworth and Katharine held but a secondary place in her thoughts just then, and were, as she had said, a very old story.
The old wrong, which had weighed ever since on the mind of the one widow, had been equally fresh in the memory of the other; but instead of a constant remorse, it had been a constant resentment, and in a more commonplace mind had become intensely personal.
Mrs James Kingsworth was not a bad sort of woman; but her loyalty to her dead husband took the form of forgetting and ignoring all his failings, and of laying the utmost stress on all his grievances. Nothing would induce her to believe that Mrs George Kingsworth had not been a party to the old concealment, and she entertained a personal dislike to the girl who stood in her daughter’s place.
She had worked hard and done her best to bring up Emberance well, and as much as possible in accordance with her birth, discouraging the girl from helping and working in the narrow household, sacrificing her own appearance to buy clothes for her, and doing her best to make her a helpless fine lady. But Emberance, like Katharine, was a failure from her mother’s point of view. Her best point was a certain active kindliness, an inveterate sociability and readiness of intercourse and friendliness: which made dependence and exclusiveness utterly alien to her. Another less praiseworthy characteristic was an innate determination to “gang her ain gait.” She liked, too, what was sunshiny and commonplace, and the tragic side of her history bored her. All straits of poverty had long since been over, through a legacy left to her mother and unmarried aunt, and Emberance had had a very prosperous girlhood.
Canon Kingsworth when he left Emberance crossed the little garden and entered by a French window into a pleasant little drawing-room, where sat Mrs Kingsworth, and her sister Miss Bury.
The widow was a pretty woman, fair and fresh like her daughter, but with more regularity of feature; her voice and manner too were bright and pleasant. Miss Bury was a gentler, plainer person, and somewhat of an invalid; but she was the more cultivated person of the two, and had been the mainstay of the former school.
Both ladies rose with alacrity to receive the Canon, the best chair was put forward for him, a cup of tea was sent for, and everything done to honour his visit.
His suggestions were not quite so welcome, at least to Mrs Kingsworth, and it needed all her respect for him to induce her to acquiesce in his proposal that Emberance should visit “her father’s house when in the possession of her enemies.”
“My dear Ellen,” said Miss Bury gently, “I think that is an unwise expression.”
“It is one which is not to the point,” said the Canon gravely.
“Well, uncle,” said Mrs Kingsworth, “I give in to your wish. I think you ought to be consulted about Emberance; but I do consider those who keep my child out of her birthright as her enemies. And now the evil of it is seen. I really think I must confide in you, Uncle Kingsworth.”
“Emberance I believe has done so already. What are the objections to this young gentleman? His personal character?”
“Oh, no,” said Miss Bury; “that is, I might say, irreproachable.”
Mrs Kingsworth admitted as much, and that even the prospect in New Zealand was fair, but after many words her objections resolved themselves into a determination not to allow Emberance to be bound at her age, “when no one knew what might happen.” And to this she held firm, nor, truth to tell, did the Canon greatly care to shake her resolution.
Emberance meanwhile had met her lover in the garden as he came to learn the final decision. He was a tall grave young Scot, manly and decided-looking, and though he was but three years her elder, there was something of awe mingled in the affection with which Emberance looked up in his face and listened to his words.
He was not at all the sort of person that she had ever pictured to herself as a likely choice, for she had been brought up among commonplace influences, and her dreams of the future had been exceedingly commonplace too, and had turned on lovers in quite an ordinary manner. She liked attention, and, as a pretty half-grown girl, had met with a good deal; but she did not intend finally to yield except to an ideal youth, the colour of whose hair, and the expression of whose eyes had been accurately decided upon, while his admiration of herself was to be evident from their first meeting.
Malcolm Mackenzie was rather awkward, and very silent; and Emberance had no idea for a long time that he distinguished her in any way, except by arguing with her and making her feel her observations unaccountably foolish. Nor could he by any stretch of the imagination be called handsome.
Emberance did not know how much pains she took to avoid being considered foolish, till one day Mr Mackenzie overtook her when she was out walking, and with the earnestness and sincerity of the declaration of his feelings which he made, drove the ideal hero for ever out of the remotest corners of Emberance’s memory.
With quite a new humility she forgot all the claims of her pretty face and attractive ways, her little vanities lost their force as she murmured that she was afraid she was very silly, and not nearly good enough to be any one’s choice, certainly not his,—she should be very disappointing to him.
Malcolm Mackenzie had replied that she herself could never disappoint him. If she could only love him as he loved her, only make up her mind to waiting patiently, only be constant and true.
Only! Emberance gave her promise with a little gasp of awe, even when she hoped that a regular engagement might be permitted to guard her constancy, and save her from the temptations that might assail it. She did not hesitate, nor feel any doubt as to her own decision, even her tears at the thought of parting were cheeked in his presence.
“I shall not say that I have done wrong in telling you that I love you,” he said, “because to know your feelings is such a joy to me that I cannot think it can be pain to you. I shall be happy even if I do not hear from you. I shall never doubt you, never fear that you could change. Nor need you.”
“But—things may happen,” murmured Emberance, hardly prepared to emulate this courage, and almost terrified at such entire trust, “and I shall so want to hear of you.”
“Ah, yes,” he said more softly, “letters would be very sweet; but still—we know we love each other, and that is so much to me, that nothing can ever put me out of heart.” Poor Emberance! she felt that this was stern teaching,—a promise, a letter, or a ring, some outward pledge, some little sweetness to soften the long parting would have made all the difference in her eyes. Did she love less, or did she know better than the lad whose utter trust in himself and in her, scorned outward ties and symbols?
Moreover, she had still the hope that her mother would yield, and permit the engagement; but Mrs Kingsworth was firm, and without pledge or promise, beyond the confession of their mutual love, the pair were parted, never to hear from each other again till Emberance was twenty-one, or till Malcolm Mackenzie had a home to offer her. Nor was the affair to be mentioned to any one.
“Because you know, Emmy,” said her mother, “you are not bound in any way.”
Emberance said nothing, but she felt in her secret soul that all the worth of her future life depended on her making good her lover’s trust. It was not bright and easy to have a lover so far out of reach; but even while her tears flowed she felt that Malcolm had left a little of his courage behind him. While he perhaps discovered that silence and separation were hard even to the most high-minded affection.