Chapter Four.
Things begin to happen.
“The untrue liveth only in the heart
Of vain humanity, which fain would be
Its own poor centre and circumference.”
Rev. Horatius Bonar, D.D.
This afternoon I went up the Scar by myself. First I climbed right to the top, and after looking round a little, as I always like to do on the top of a mountain, I went down a few yards to the flat bit where the old Roman wall runs, and sat down on the grass just above. It was a lovely day. I had not an idea that any one was near the place but myself, and I was just going to sing, when to my surprise I heard a voice on the other side of the Roman wall. It was Angus Drummond’s.
“Duncan Keith, why don’t you say something?” He broke out suddenly, in a petulant tone—rather the tone of a child who knows it has been naughty, and wants to get the scolding over which it feels sure is coming some time.
“What do you wish me to say?”
Mr Keith’s tone was cold and constrained, I thought.
“Why don’t you tell me I am an unhanged reprobate, and that you are ashamed to be seen walking with me? You know you are thinking it.”
“No, Angus. I was thinking something very different.”
“What, then?” asked Angus, sulkily.
“‘Doth He not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until He find it?’”
There was no coldness in Mr Keith’s tone now.
“What has that got to do with it?” growled Angus in his throat.
“Angus,” was the soft answer, “the sheep sometimes makes it a very hard journey for Him.”
I know I ought to have risen and crept away long before this: but I did not. It was not right of me, but I sat on. I knew they could not see me through the wall, nor could they get across it at any place so near that I could not be gone far enough before they could catch sight of me.
“I suppose,” said Angus, in the same sort of sulky murmur, “that is your way of telling me, Mr Keith, that I am a miserable sinner.”
“Are you not?”
“Miserable enough, Heaven knows! But, Duncan, I don’t see why you, and Flora, and Mrs Kezia, and all the good folks, or the folks who think themselves extra good, which comes to the same thing—”
“Does it? I was not aware of that,” said Mr Keith.
“I can’t see,” Angus went on, “why you must all turn up the whites of your eyes like a duck in thunder, and hold up your hands in pious horror at me, because I have done just once what every gentleman in the land does every week, and thinks nothing of it. If you had not been brought up in a hen-coop, and ruled like a copy-book, you would not be so con—so hideously strict and particular! Just ask Ambrose Catterall whether there is any weight on his conscience; or ask that jolly parson, who tackled you and Flora at breakfast, what he has to say to it. I’ll be bound he will read prayers next Sabbath with as much grace and unction as if he had never been drunk in his life. And because I get let in just once, why—”
Angus paused as if to consider how to finish his sentence, and Mr Keith answered one point of his long speech, letting all the rest, go.
“Is it just this once, Angus?”
“I suppose you mean that night at York, when I got let in with those fellows of Greensmith’s,” growled Angus, more grumpily than ever. “Now, Duncan, that’s not generous of you. I did the humble and penitent for that, and you should not cast it up to me. Just that time and this!”
“And no more, Angus?”
Angus muttered something which did not reach me.
“Angus, you know why I came with you?”
“Yes, I know well enough why you came with me,” said Angus, bitterly. “Just because that stupid old meddler, Helen Raeburn, took it into her wooden head that I could not take care of myself, and talked my father into sending me with you now, instead of letting me go the other way round by myself! Could not take care of myself, forsooth!”
“Have you done it?”
“I hadn’t it to do. Mr Duncan Keith was to take care of me, just as if I had been a baby—stuff! There is no end to the folly of old women!”
“I think young men might sometimes match them. Well, Angus, I have taken as much care as you let me. But you deceived me, boy. I know more about it than you think. It was not one or two transgressions that let you down to this pitch. I know you had a private key from Rob Greensmith, and let yourself in and out when I believed you asleep.”
Angus sputtered out some angry words, which I did not catch.
“No. You are mistaken. Leigh did not tell of you or his brother. Your friend Robert told me himself. He wanted to get out of the scrape, and he did not care about leaving you in it. The friendship of the wicked is not worth much, Angus. But if I had not known it, I should still have felt perfectly sure that there had been more going on than you ever confessed to me. Three months since, Angus, you would not have used words which you have used this day. You would not have spoken so lightly of being ‘let in’—let into what? Just stop and think. And twice to-day—once in Flora’s presence—you have only just stopped your tongue from a worse word than that. Would you have said such a thing to your father before we left Abbotscliff?”
“Uncle Courtenay was as drunk as any of them last night,” Angus blurted out.
I did not like to hear that of Father. Till now I never thought much about such things, except that they were imperfections which men had and women had not, and the women must put up with them. Sins?—well, yes, I suppose getting drunk is a sin, if you come to think about it; but so is getting into a passion, and telling falsehoods, and plenty more things which one thinks little or nothing about, because one sees everybody do them every day. It is only the extra good people, like my Aunt Kezia, and Flora, and Mr Keith, that put on grave faces about things of that kind.
But stay! God must be better than the extra good people. Then will He not think even worse of such things than they do?
It was just because those three seemed to think it so awful, and to be inclined to make a fuss over it, that I did not like to hear what Angus said about Father. Grandmamma never thought anything about it; she always said drinking and gaming were gentlemanly vices, which the King himself—(I mean, of course, the Elector, but Grandmamma said the King)—need not be ashamed of practising.
I listened rather uneasily for Mr Keith’s answer. I am beginning to feel a good deal of respect for his opinion and himself, and I did not want to hear him say anything about Father that was not agreeable. But he put it quietly aside.
“If you please, Angus, we will let other people alone. Both you and I shall find our own sins quite enough to repent of, I expect. You have not answered my question, Angus.”
“What question?” grumbled Angus. I fancy he did not want to answer it.
“Would you, three months since, have let your father see and hear what you have let me do within even the last week?”
Angus growled something in the bottom of his throat which I could not make out.
Mr Keith’s tone changed suddenly.
“Angus, dear old fellow, are you happier now than you were then?”
“Duncan, I am the most miserable wretch that ever lived! I want no preaching to, I can tell you. That last text my father preached from keeps tolling in my ear like a funeral bell—and it is all the worse because it comes in his voice: ‘Remember from whence thou art fallen!’ Don’t I remember it? Do I want telling whence I have fallen? Haven’t I made a thousand resolves never, never to fail again, and the next time I get into company, all my resolves melt away and my hard knots come undone, and I feel as strong as a spoonful of water, and any of them can lead me that tries, like an animal with a ring through his nose?”
“Water is not a bad comparison, Angus, if you look at both sides of it. What is stronger than water, when the wind blows it with power? And you know who is compared to the wind. ‘Awake, O North Wind, and come, Thou South; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.’ It is the wind of God’s Spirit that we want, to blow the water—powerless of itself—in the right direction. It will carry all before it then.”
“Oh, yes, all that sounds very well,” said Angus, but in a pleasanter tone than before—not so much like a big growling dog. “But you don’t know, Duncan—you don’t know! You have no temptations. What can you know about it? I tell you I can’t keep out of it. It is no good talking.”
“‘No temptations!’ I wish that were true. But you are quite right as to yourself; you cannot keep out of it. Do you mean to add that God cannot keep you?”
I did not hear Angus’s reply, and I fancy it came in a gesture, and not in words. But Mr Keith said, very softly,—
“Angus, will you let Him keep you?”
Instead of the answer for which I was eagerly listening, another sound came to my ear, which made me jump up in a hurry, almost without caring whether I was heard or not. That was the clock of Brocklebank Church striking twelve. I should be ever so much too late for dinner; and what would my Aunt Kezia say? I got away as quietly as I could for a few yards, and then ran down the Scar as fast as I dared for fear of falling, and came into the dining-room, feeling hot and breathless, just as Cecilia, looking fresh and bright as a white lily, was entering it from the other end. The rest were seated at the table. Of course Mr Keith and Angus were not there.
“Caroline, where have you been?” saith my Aunt Kezia.
I trembled, for I knew what I had to expect when my Aunt Kezia said Caroline in full.
“I am very sorry, Aunt,” said I. “I went up the Scar, and—well, I am afraid I forgot all about the time.”
My Aunt Kezia nodded, as if my frank confession satisfied her, and Father said, “Good maid!” as I slipped into the chair where I always sit, on his left hand. But Cecilia, who was arranging her skirts just opposite, said in that way which men seem to call charming, and women always see through and despise (at least my Aunt Kezia says so),—
“Am I a little late?”
“Don’t name it!” said Father.
“Dear, no, my charmer!” cried Hatty. “Cary’s shockingly late, of course: but you are not—quite impossible.”
Cecilia gave one of her soft smiles, and said no more.
I really am beginning to wish the Bracewells gone. Yet it is not so much on their own account, Amelia is vain and silly, and Charlotte rude and romping; but I do not think either of them is a hypocrite. Charlotte is not, I am sure; she lets you see the very worst side of her: and Amelia’s affectation is so plain and unmistakable, that it cannot be called insincerity. It is on account of that horrid Cecilia that I want them to go, because I suppose she will go with them. Yes, truth is truth, and Cecilia is horrid. I am getting quite frightened of her. I do not know what she means to do next: but she seems to me to be always laying traps of some sort, and for somebody.
I wonder if people ever do what you expect of them? If somebody had asked me to make a list of things that could not happen, I expect that I should have put on it one thing that has just happened.
Sophy and I went up this morning to Goody Branscombe’s cot, to take her some wine and eggs from my Aunt Kezia. Anne Branscombe thinks she is failing, poor old woman, and my Aunt Kezia told her to beat up an egg with a little wine and sugar, and give it to her fasting of a morning: she thinks it a fine thing for keeping up strength. We came round by the Vicarage on our way back, and stepped in to see old Elspie. We found her ironing the Vicar’s shirts and ruffles, and she put us in rocking-chairs while we sat and talked.
Old Elspie wanted to know all we could tell her about Flora and Angus, and I promised I would bring Flora to see her some day. She says Mr Keith—Mr Duncan Keith’s father, that is—is the squire of Abbotscliff, a very rich man, and a tremendous Tory.
“You’re vara nigh strangers, young leddies,” said Elspie, as she ironed away. “Miss Fanny, she came to see me a twa-three days back, and Miss Bracewell wi’ her; and there was anither young leddy, but I disremember her name.”
“Was it Charlotte Bracewell?” said Sophy.
“Na, na, I ken Miss Charlotte ower weel to forget her, though she has grown a deal sin’ I saw her afore. This was a lassie wi’ black hair, and e’en like the new wood the minister has his dinner-table, wi’ the fine name—what ca’ ye that, now?”
“Mahogany?” said I.
“Ay, it has some sic fremit soun’,” said old Elspie, rather scornfully. “I ken it was no sae far frae muggins (mugwort). Mrs Sophy, my dear, ha’e ye e’er suppit muggins in May? ’Tis the finest thing going for keeping a lassie in gude health, and it suld be drinkit in the spring. Atweel, what’s her name wi’ the copper-colourit e’en?”
“Cecilia Osborne,” said I. “What did you think of her, Elspie?”
The iron went up and down the Vicar’s shirt-front, and I saw a curious gathering together of old Elspie’s lips—still she did not speak. At last Sophy said,—
“Couldn’t you make up your mind about her, Elspie?”
“I had nae mickle fash about that, Mrs Sophy,” said Elspeth, setting down her iron on the stand with something like a bang. “And gin I can see through a millstane a wee bittie, she’ll gi’e ye the chance to make up yourn afore lang.”
“Nay, mine’s made up long since,” answered Sophy. “I shall see the back of her with a deal more pleasure than I did her face a month ago. Won’t you, Cary?”
“I don’t like her the least bit,” said I.
“Ye’ll be wiser lassies, young leddies, gin ye’re no ower ready to say it,” said Elspie, coolly. “It was no ane o’ your white days when she came to Brocklebank Fells. Ay, weel, weel! The Lord’s ower a’.”
As we went down the road, I said to Sophy, “What did old Elspie mean, do you suppose?”
“I am afraid I can guess what she meant, Cary.”
Sophy’s tone was so strange that I looked up at her; and I saw her eyes flashing and her lips set and white.
“Sophy! what is the matter?” I cried.
“Don’t trouble your little head, Cary,” she said, kindly enough. “It will be trouble in plenty when it comes.”
I could not get her to say more. As we reached the door, Hatty came dancing out to meet us.
“‘The rose is white, the rose is red,’—
The sun gives light, Queen Anne is dead:
Ladies with white and rosy hues,
What will you give me for my news?”
“Hatty, you must have made that yourself!” said Sophy.
“I have, just this minute,” laughed Hatty. “Now then, who’ll bid for my news?”
“I dare say it isn’t worth a farthing,” said Sophy.
“Well, to you, perhaps not. It may be rather mortifying. My sweet Sophia, you are the eldest of us, but your younger sister has stolen a march on you. You have played your cards ill, Miss Courtenay. Fanny is going to be the first of us married, unless I contrive to run away with somebody in the interval. I don’t know whom—there’s the difficulty.”
“Well, I always thought she would be,” said Sophy, quite good-humouredly. “She is the prettiest of us, is Fanny.”
“So much obliged for the compliment!” gleefully cried Hatty. “Cary, don’t you feel delighted?”
“Is Ephraim here now?” I said, for of course I never thought of anybody else.
“Ephraim!” Hatty whirled round, laughing heartily. “Ephraim, my dear, will have to break his heart at leisure. Ambrose Catterall has stolen a march on him.”
“You don’t mean that Fanny and Ambrose are to be married!” cried Sophy, with wide-open eyes.
“I do, Madam; and my Aunt Kezia is as mad as a hatter about it. She would have liked Ephraim for her nephew ever so much better than Ambrose.”
“Well, I do think!” exclaimed Sophy. “If Ephraim did really care for Fanny, she has used him shamefully.”
“So I think!” said Hatty. “I mean to present him on his next birthday with a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs, embroidered in the corner with an urn and a willow-tree.”
“An urn, you ridiculous child!” returned Sophy. “That means that somebody is dead.”
“Don’t throw cold water on my charming conceits!” pleaded Hatty. “Now go in and face my Aunt Kezia—if you dare.”
We found her cutting out flannel petticoats in the parlour. My Aunt Kezia’s brows were drawn together, and my Aunt Kezia’s lips were thin; and I trembled. However, she took no note of us, but went on tearing up flannel, and making little piles of it upon the table end.
Sophy, with heroic bravery, attacked the citadel at once.
“Well, Aunt, this is pretty news!”
“What is?” said my Aunt Kezia, standing up straight and stiff.
“Why, this about Fanny and Ambrose Catterall.”
“Oh, that! I wish there were nothing worse than that in this world.” My Aunt Kezia spoke as if she would have preferred some other world, where things went straighter than they do in this.
“Hatty said you were put out about it, Aunt.”
“That’s all Hatty knows. I think ’tis a blunder, and Fanny will find it out, likely enough. But if that were all— Girls, ’tis nigh dinner-time. You had better take your bonnets off.”
“What is the matter with my Aunt Kezia?” said I to Sophy, as we went up-stairs.
“Don’t ask me!” said that young lady.
Half-way up-stairs we met Charlotte.
“Oh, what fun you have missed, you two!” cried she. “Why didn’t you come home a little sooner? I would not have lost it for a hundred pounds.”
“Lost what, Charlotte?”
“Lost what? Ask my Aunt Kezia—now just you do!”
“My Aunt Kezia seems unapproachable,” said Sophy.
Charlotte went off into a fit of laughter, and then slid down the banister to the hall—a feat which my Aunt Kezia has forbidden her to perform a dozen times at least. We went forward, made ourselves ready for dinner, and came down to the dining-parlour.
In the dining-room we found a curious group. My Aunt Kezia looked as stiff as whalebone; Father, pleased and radiant; Flora and Mr Keith both seemed rather puzzled. Angus was in a better temper than usual. Charlotte was evidently full of something very funny, which she did not want to let out; Cecilia, soft, serene, and velvety; Fanny looked nervous and uncomfortable; Hatty, scornful; while Amelia was her usual self.
When dinner was over, we went back to the parlour. My Aunt Kezia gathered up her heaps of flannel, gave one to Flora and another to me, and began to stitch away at a third herself. Amelia threw herself on the sofa, saying she was tired to death; and I was surprised to see that my Aunt Kezia took no notice. Fanny sat down to draw; Hatty went on with her knitting; Charlotte strolled out into the garden; and Cecilia disappeared, I know not whither.
For an hour or more we worked away in solemn silence. Hatty tried to whisper once or twice to Fanny, making her blush and look uncomfortable; but Fanny did not speak, and I fancy Hatty got tired. Amelia went to sleep.
At last, and all at once, Flora—honest, straightforward Flora—laid her work on her knee, and looked up at my Aunt Kezia’s grim set face.
“Aunt Kezia, will you tell me, is something the matter?”
“Yes, my dear,” my Aunt Kezia seemed to snap out. “Satan’s the matter.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Aunt,” said Flora.
“’Tis a mercy if you don’t. No, child, there is not much the matter for you. The matter’s for me and these girls here. Well, to be sure! there’s no fool like an old f— Caroline! (I fairly jumped) can’t you look what you are doing? You are herring-boning that seam on the wrong side!”
Alas! the charge was true. I cannot tell how or why it is, but if there are two seams to anything, I am sure to do one of them on the wrong side. It is very queer. I suppose there is something wanting in my brains. Hatty says—at least she did once when I said that—the brains are wanting.
However, we sat on and sewed away, till at last Amelia woke up and went up-stairs; Flora finished her petticoat, and my Aunt Kezia told her to go into the garden. Only we four sisters were left. Then my Aunt Kezia put down her flannel, wiped her spectacles, and looked round at us.
I knew something was coming, and I felt quite sure that it was something disagreeable; but I could not form an idea what it was.
“Girls,” said my Aunt Kezia, “I think you may as well hear at once that I am going to leave Brocklebank.”
I fairly gasped in astonishment. Brocklebank without my Aunt Kezia! It sounded like hearing that the sun was going out of the sky. I could not imagine such a state of things.
“Is Sophy to be mistress, then?” said Fanny, blankly.
“Aunt Kezia, are you going to be married?” our impertinent Hatty wanted to know.
“No, Hester,” said my Aunt Kezia, shortly. “At my time of life a woman has a little sense left; or if she have not, she is only fit for Bedlam. I do not think Sophy will be mistress, Fanny. Somebody else is going to take that place. Otherwise, I should have stayed in it.”
“What do you mean, Aunt Kezia?” said Fanny, speaking very slowly, and in a bewildered sort of way.
Sophy said nothing. I think she knew. And all at once it seemed to come over me—as if somebody had shut me up inside a lump of ice—what it was that was going to happen.
“I mean, my dear,” my Aunt Kezia replied quietly, “that your father intends to marry again.”
Sophy’s face and tongue gave no sign that she had heard anything which was news to her. Fanny cried, “Never, surely!” Hatty said, “How jolly!” and then in a whisper to me, “Won’t I lead her a life!” I believe I said nothing. I felt shut up in that lump of ice.
“But, Aunt Kezia, what is to become of us all? Are we to stay here, or go with you?” asked Fanny.
“Your father desires me to tell you, my dears,” said my Aunt Kezia, “that he wishes to leave you quite free to please yourselves. If you choose to remain here, he will be glad to have you; and if any of you like to come with me to Fir Vale, you will be welcome, and you know what to expect.”
“What are we to expect if we stop here?” asked Sophy, in a hard, dry voice.
“That is more than I can say,” was my Aunt Kezia’s answer.
“But who is it?” said Fanny, in the same bewildered way.
“O Fanny, what a bat you are!” cried Hatty.
“I wonder you ask,” answered Sophy. “I have seen her fishing-rod for ever so long. Cecilia, of course.”
“Cecilia!” screamed Fanny. “I thought it was some middle-aged, respectable gentlewoman.”
Hatty burst out laughing. I never felt less inclined to laugh. My Aunt Kezia had taken off her spectacles, and was going on with her tucks as if nothing had happened.
“Well, I will think about it,” said Sophy. “I am not sure I shall stay.”
“I shall stay,” announced Hatty. “I expect it will be grand fun. She will fill the house with company—that will suit me; and I shall just look sharp after her and keep her in order.”
“Hatty!” cried Fanny, in a shocked tone.
“I hope you will keep yourself in order,” said my Aunt Kezia, drily. “Little Cary, you have not spoken yet. What do you want to do?”
Her voice softened as I had never heard it do before when she spoke to me. It touched me very much; yet I think I should have said the same without it.
“O Aunt Kezia, please let me go with you!”
“Thank you, Cary,” said my Aunt Kezia in the same tone. “The old woman is not to be left quite alone, then? But it will be dull, child, for a young thing like you.”
“I would rather have it dull than lively the wrong way about,” said I; and Hatty broke out again.
“Would you!” said she, when she had done laughing. “I wouldn’t, I promise you. Sophy, don’t you know a curate you could marry? You had better, if you can find one.”
“Not one that has asked me,” was Sophy’s dry answer. “You don’t want me, then, Miss Hatty?”
“You would be rather meddlesome, I am afraid,” said Hatty, with charming frankness. “You would always be doing conscience.”
“Don’t you intend to keep one?” returned Sophy.
“I mean to lay it up in lavender,” said Hatty, “and take it out on Sundays.”
“Hatty, if you haven’t a care—”
“Please go on, Aunt Kezia. Unfinished sentences are always awful things, because you don’t know how they are going to end.”
“You’ll end in the lock-up, if you don’t mind,” said my Aunt Kezia; “and if I were you, I wouldn’t.”
“I’ll try to keep on this side the door,” said Hatty, as lightly as ever. “And when is it to be, Aunt Kezia?”
“The month after next, I believe.”
“Isn’t Cecilia going home first, to see what her friends say about it?”
“She has none belonging to her, except an uncle and his family, and she says they will be delighted to hear it. Hatty, you had better get out of the way of calling her Cecilia. It won’t do now, you know.”
“But you don’t mean, Aunt Kezia, that we are to call her Mother!” cried Fanny, in a most beseeching tone.
“My dear, that must be as your father wishes. He may allow you to call her Mrs Courtenay. That is what I shall call her.”
“Isn’t it dreadful!” said poor Fanny.
“One thing more I have to say,” continued my Aunt Kezia, laying down her flannel again and putting on her spectacles. “Your father does not wish you to be present at his marriage.”
“Aunt Kezia!” came, I think, from us all—indignantly from Sophy, sorrowfully from Fanny, petulantly from Hatty, and from me in sheer astonishment.
“I suppose he has his reasons,” said my Aunt Kezia; “but that being so, I think Sophy had better go home for a while with the Bracewells, and Hatty, too. You, Cary, may go with Flora instead, if you like. Fanny, of course, is arranged for already, as she will be married by then, and will only have to stop at home.”
I thought I would very much rather go with Flora.
“I have had a letter from your Aunt Dorothea lately,” my Aunt Kezia went on, “in which she asks for Cary to pay her a visit next June. But now we are only in March. So, as Cary must be somewhere between times, and I think she would be better out of the way, she will go to Abbotscliff with Flora—unless, my dear,” she added, turning to me, “you would rather be at Bracewell Hall? You may, if you like.”
“I would rather be at Abbotscliff, very much, Aunt Kezia,” said I; and I think Aunt Kezia was pleased.
“Aunt Kezia, don’t send me away!” pleaded Sophy. “Do let me stay and help you to settle at Fir Vale. I should hate to stay at Bracewell, and I should just like bustling about and helping you in that way. Won’t you let me?”
“Well, my dear, we will see,” said my Aunt Kezia; and I think she was pleased with Sophy too. Hatty declared that Bracewell would just suit her, and she would not stay at any price, if she had leave to choose. So it seems to be settled in that way. Fanny will be married on the 30th,—that is three weeks hence; and the week after, Hatty goes with the Bracewells, and I with Flora, to their own homes; and my Aunt Kezia and Sophy will remain here, and only leave the house on the evening before the marriage.
It seems very odd that Father should have wished not to have us at his wedding. Was it Cecilia who did not wish it? But I am not to call her Cecilia any more.
When my cousins came in for tea, they were told too. Charlotte cried, “Well, I never!” for which piece of vulgarity she was sharply pulled up by my Aunt Kezia. Amelia fanned herself—she always does, whatever time of year it may be—and languidly remarked, “Dear!” Angus said, “Castor and Pollux!” for which he also got rebuked. And after a sort of “Oh!” Flora said nothing, but looked very sorrowfully at us. Cec—I mean Miss Osborne—did not appear at all until tea was nearly over, and then she came in from the garden, and Mr Parmenter with her, that everlasting eyeglass stuck in his eye. I do so dislike the man.
Father never comes to tea. He says it is only women’s rubbish, and laughs at Ephraim Hebblethwaite because he says he likes it. I fancy few men drink tea. My Uncle Charles never does, I know; but my Aunt Dorothea says she could not exist a day without tea and cards.
I wonder if it will be pleasant to stay with my Aunt Dorothea. I believe she and my Uncle Charles are living in London now. I should like dearly to see London, and the fine shops, and the lions in the Tower, and Ranelagh, and all the grand people. And yet, somehow, I feel just a little bit uneasy about it, as if I were going into some place where I did not know what I should find, and it might be something that would hurt me. I do not feel that about Abbotscliff. I expect it will be pleasant there, only perhaps rather dull. And I want to see my Uncle Drummond, and Flora’s friend, Annas Keith. I wonder if she is like her brother. And I never saw a Presbyterian minister, nor indeed a minister of any sort. I do hope my Uncle Drummond will not be like Mr Bagnall, and I hope all the gentlemen in the South are not like that odious Mr Parmenter.
Flora seems very much pleased about my going back with her. I do not know why, but I fancied Angus did not quite like it. Can he be afraid of my telling his father the story of the hunt-supper? He knows nothing of what I heard up on the Scar.
I do hope Ephraim Hebblethwaite is not very unhappy about Fanny. I should think it must be dreadful, when you love any one very much, to see her go and give herself quite away to somebody else. And Ambrose thinks of going to live in Cheshire, where his uncle has a large farm, and he has no children, so the farm will come to Ambrose some day; and his uncle, Mr Minshull, would like him to come and live there now. Of course, if that be settled so, we shall lose Fanny altogether.
Must there always be changes and break-ups in this world? I do not mean the change of death: that, we know, must come. But why must there be all these other changes? Why could we not go on quietly as we were? It seems now as if we should never be the same any more.
If that uncle of Cecilia’s would only have tied her to the leg of a table, or locked her up in her bed-chamber, or done something to keep her down there in the South, so that she had never come to torment us!
I suppose I ought not to wish that, if she makes Father happier. Ay, but will she make him happy? That is just what I am uncomfortable about! I don’t believe she cares a pin for him, though I dare say she likes well enough to be the Squire’s lady, and queen it at Brocklebank. Somehow, I cannot trust those tawny eyes, with their sidelong glances. Am I very wicked, or is she?
Will things never give over happening?
This morning, just after I came down—there were only my Aunt Kezia, Mr Keith, Flora, and me in the dining-parlour—we suddenly heard the great bell of Brocklebank Church begin to toll. My Aunt Kezia set down the chocolate-pot.
“It must be somebody who has died suddenly, poor soul!” cried she. “Maybe, Ellen Armathwaite’s baby: it looked very bad when I saw it last, on Thursday. Hark!”
The bell stopped tolling, and we listened for the sound which would tell us the sex and age of the departed.
“One!” Then silence.
That meant a man. Ellen Armathwaite’s baby girl it could not be. Then the bell began again, and we counted. It tolled on up to twenty—thirty—forty: we could not think who it could be.
“Surely not Farmer Catterall!” said my Aunt Kezia, “I have often felt afraid of an apoplexy for him.”
But the bell went on past sixty, and we knew it was not Farmer Catterall.
“Is it never going to stop?” said Flora, when it had passed eighty.
My Aunt Kezia went to the door, and calling Sam, bade him go out and inquire. Still the bell tolled on. It stopped just as Sam came in, at ninety-six.
“Who is it, Sam?—one of the old bedesmen?”
“Nay, Mrs Kezia; puir soul, ’tis just the auld Vicar!”
“Mr Digby!” we all cried together.
“Ay; my mither found him deid i’ his bed early this morrow. She’s come up to tell ye, an’ to ask gin’ ye can spare me to go and gi’e a haun’, for that puir witless body, Mr Anthony Parmenter, seems all but daft.”
Miss Osborne and Amelia came in together, and I saw Cecilia turn very white. (Oh dear! how shall I give over calling her Cecilia?) My Aunt Kezia told them what had happened, and I thought she looked relieved.
“What ails Mr Parmenter?” asked my Aunt Kezia.
“’Deed, and what ails a fule onie day?” said Sam, always more honest than soft-spoken. “He’s just as ill as a bit lassie—fair frichtened o’ his auld uncle, now he is deid, that ne’er did him a bawbee’s worth o’ harm while he was alive. My mither says she’s vara sure he’ll be here the morn, begging and praying ye to tak’ him in and keep him safe frae his puir auld uncle’s ghaist. Hech, sirs! I’ll ghaist him, gin’ he comes my way.”
“Now, Sam, keep a civil tongue in your head,” quoth my Aunt Kezia, “and don’t let me hear of your playing tricks on Mr Parmenter or any one else. You should be old enough to have some sense by this time. I will come out and speak to your mother in a moment. Yes, I suppose we must let you go. What cuckoos there are in this world, to be sure!”
But Mr Parmenter did not wait till to-morrow—he came up this afternoon, just as Sam said he would. Father was not at home, and to my surprise my Aunt Kezia would not take him in, but sent him on to Farmer Catterall’s. I do not think the tawny eyes liked it, for though they were mostly bent on the ground, I saw them give one sidelong flash at my Aunt Kezia which did not look to me like loving-kindness.
I feel to-night what I think Angus means when he says that he is flat. Everything feels flat. Fanny is gone—she was married on Saturday. Amelia, Charlotte, and Hatty set forth on Tuesday, and they are gone. I thought that Ce— Miss Osborne would have gone with them, and have returned by-and-by; but she stays on, and will do so, I hear, almost till my Aunt Kezia goes, when Mrs Hebblethwaite has asked her to stay at the Fells Farm for the last few days before the wedding. It is settled now that my Aunt Kezia and Sophy stay here till the day before it. It does seem so queer for Sophy to be here till then, and not be at the wedding! I don’t believe it is Father’s doing. It is not like him. Flora, Angus, Mr Keith, and I are to start to-morrow; but Mr Keith only goes with us as far as Carlisle—that is, the first day’s journey; then he leaves us for Newcastle, where he has some sort of business (that horrid word!), and I go on with my cousins to Abbotscliff. We shall be met at Carlisle by a Scots gentleman who is travelling thence to Selkirk, and is a friend of my Uncle Drummond. He goes in his own chaise, with two mounted servants, and both he and they are armed, so I hope we shall get clear of freebooters on the Border. He has nobody with him, and says he shall have plenty of room in the chaise. It is very lucky that this Mr Cameron should just be going at the same time as we are. I don’t think Angus would be much protection, though I should not wish him to know I said so.
If Ephraim Hebblethwaite have broken his heart, he behaves very funnily. He was not only at Fanny’s wedding, but was best man; and he looks quite well and happy. I begin to think that we must have been mistaken in guessing that he cared for Fanny. Perhaps it only amused him to talk to her.
Fanny’s wedding was very smart and gay, and everybody came to it. The bridesmaids were we three, Esther Langridge, and two cousins of Ambrose’s, whose names are Annabel Catterall and Priscilla Minshull. I rather liked Annabel, but Priscilla was horrid. (Sophy says I say “horrid” too often, and about all sorts of things. But if people and things are horrid, how am I to help saying it?) I am sure Priscilla Minshull was horrid. She reminded me of Angus’s saying about turning up one’s eyes like a duck in thunder. I never watched a duck in thunder, and I don’t know whether it turns up its eyes or it does not: only Priscilla did. She seemed to think us all (my Aunt Kezia said) no better than the dirt she walked on. And I am sure she need not be so stuck-up, for Mr James Minshull, her father, is only a parson, and not only that, but a chaplain too: so Priscilla is not anybody of any consequence. I said so to Flora, and she replied that Priscilla would be much less likely to be proud if she were.
I was dreadfully tired on Sunday. We had been so hard at work all the fortnight before, first making the wedding dress, and then dressing the wedding-dinner; and when I went to bed on Saturday night, I thought I never wanted to see another. Another wedding, of course, I mean. However, everything went off very well; and Fanny looked charming in her pink silk brocaded with flowers, with white stripes down it here and there, and a pink quilted slip beneath. She had pink rosettes, too, in her shoes, and a white hood lined with pink and trimmed with pink bows. Her hoop came from Carlisle, and was the biggest I have seen yet. The mantua-maker from Carlisle, who was five days in the house, said that hoops were getting very much larger this year, and she thought they would soon be as big as they were in Queen Anne’s time. We had much smaller hoops—of course it would not have been seemly to have the bridesmaids as smart as the bride—and we were dressed alike, in white French cambric, with light green trimmings. Of course we all wore white ribbons. I think Father would have stormed at us if we had put on any other colour. I should not like to be the one to wear a red ribbon when he was by! (Note 1.) We wore straw milk-maid hats, with green ribbon mixed with the white; and just a sprinkle of grey powder in our hair. Cecilia would not be a bridesmaid, though she was asked. I don’t think she liked the dress chosen; and indeed it would not have suited her. But wasn’t she dressed up! She wore—I really must set it down—a purple lutestring, (Note 2.) over such a hoop that she had to lift it on one side when she went in at the church door; this was guarded with gold lace and yellow feathers. She had a white laced apron, purple velvet slippers with red heels, and her lace ruffles were something to look at! And wasn’t she patched! and hadn’t she powdered her hair, and made it as stiff with pomatum as if it had been starched! Then on the top of this head went a lace cap—it was not a hood—just a little, light, fly-away cap, with purple ribbons and gold embroidery, and in the middle of the front a big gold pompoon.
What a contrast there was between her and my Aunt Kezia! She wore a silk dress too, only it was a dark stone-colour, as quiet as a Quakeress, just trimmed with two rows of braid, the same colour, round the bottom, and a white silk scarf, with a dark blue hood, and just a little rosette of white lace at the top of it. Aunt Kezia’s hood was a hood, too, and was tied under her chin as if she meant it to be some good. And her elbow-ruffles were plain nett, with long dark doe-skin gloves drawn up to meet them. Cecilia wore white silk mittens. I hate mittens; they are horrid things. If you want to make your hands look as ugly as you can, you have only to put on a pair of mittens.
The wedding-dinner, which was at noon, was a very grand one. It should have been, for didn’t my arms ache with beating eggs and keeping pans stirred! Hatty said we were martyrs in a good cause. But I do think Fanny might have taken a little more trouble herself, seeing it was her wedding. Now, let us see, what had we? There was a turkey pie, and a boar’s head, chickens in different ways, and a great baron of roast beef; cream beaten to snow (Sophy did that, I am glad to say), candied fruits, and ices, and several sorts of pudding, for dessert. Then for drink, there were wine, and mead, purl, and Burton ale.
Well! it is all over now, and Fanny is gone. There will never be four of us any more. There seems to me something very sad about it. Poor dear Fanny, I hope she will be happy!
“I dare guess she will, in her way,” says my Aunt Kezia. “She does not keep a large cup for her happiness. ’Tis all the easier to fill when you don’t; but a deal more will go in when you do. There are advantages and disadvantages on each side of most things in this world.”
“Is there any advantage, Aunt Kezia, in my having just pricked my finger shockingly?”
“Yes, Cary. Learn to be more careful in future.”
Note 1. The white ribbon, like the white cockade, distinguished a Jacobite; the red ribbon and the black cockade were Hanoverian.
Note 2. A variety of silk then fashionable.