Elizabeth had, from twenty-five to thirty-two, been spared from home by her father to take care of his stepmother in London, where she had beguiled her time with a certain amount of authorship under a nom de plume, and had been introduced to some choice society both through her literary abilities and her family connections.
Four years previous the old lady had died, leaving her a legacy, which, together with her gains, would have enabled her to keep such a home in town as to remain in touch with the world to which she had been introduced; but she had never lost her Stokesley heart enough for the temptation to outweigh the disappointment she would have caused at home, and the satisfaction and rest of being among her own people. So she only went up for an occasional visit, and had become the brightness of the house, and Susan’s beloved partner in all her works.
Her father, who understood better than did her mother and sister what she had given up, had insisted on her having a sitting-room to herself, which she embellished with the personal possessions she had accumulated, and where she pursued her own avocations in the forenoon, often indeed interrupted, but never showing, and not often feeling, that it was to her hindrance, and indeed the family looked on her work sufficiently as a profession, not only to acquiesce, but to have a certain complacency in it, though it was a kind of transparent fiction that MESA was an anagram of her initials and that of Stokesley. Her mother at any rate believed that none of the neighbours guessed at any such thing.
Stokesley was a good deal out of the world, five miles from the station at Bonchamp, over hilly, stony roads, so that the cyclist movement had barely reached it; the neighbourhood was sparse, and Mrs. Merrifield’s health had not been conducive to visiting, any more than was her inclination, so that there was a little agitation about first calls.
The newcomers appeared at church on Sunday at all the services. A bright-faced girl of one-and-twenty, with little black eyes like coals of fire, a tight ulster, like a riding habit, and a small billycock hat, rather dismayed those who still held that bonnets ought to be the Sunday gear of all beyond childhood; but the mother, in rich black silk, was unexceptionable.
Refusing to be marshalled up the aisle to the seat which persistent tradition assigned to the Gap in the aristocratic quarter, daughter and mother (it was impossible not thus to call them) sat themselves down on the first vacant place, close to a surviving white smock-frock, and blind to the bewildered glances of his much-bent friend in velveteen, who, hobbling in next after, found himself displaced and separated alike from his well-thumbed prayer and hymn book and the companion who found the places for him.
‘It ain’t fitty like,’ said the old man confidentially to Susan, ‘nor the ladies wouldn’t like it when we comes in with our old coats all of a muck with wet.’
‘The principle is right,’ said Bessie, when this was repeated to her; ‘but practice ought to wait till native manners and customs are learnt.’
The two sisters offered to save their mother the first visit—leave her card, or make her excuses; but Mrs. Merrifield held that a card thus left savoured of deceit, and that the deed must be womanfully done in person. But she would not wait till the horses could be spared, saying that for near village neighbours it was more friendly to go down in her donkey-chair; and so she did, Bessie driving her, and the Admiral walking with them.
The Gap had, ever since Bessie could remember, been absolutely shrouded in trees, its encircling wall hidden in ivy bushes, over which laburnums, lilacs, pink thorns, and horse chestnuts towered; and the drive from the seldom-opened gate was almost obstructed by the sweeping arms of laurels and larches.