CHAPTER II
DICK’S TROUBLES BEGIN
It was with mixed feelings that Clare Kenwardine got down from the stopping train at a quiet station and waited for the trap to take her home. The trap was not in sight, but this did not surprise her, for nobody in her father’s household was punctual. Clare sometimes wondered why the elderly groom-gardener, whose wages were very irregularly paid, stayed on, unless it was because his weakness for liquor prevented his getting a better post; but the servants liked her father, for he seldom found fault with them. Kenwardine had a curious charm, which his daughter felt as strongly as anybody else, though she was beginning to see his failings and had, indeed, been somewhat shocked when she came home to live with him not long before.
Now she knitted her level brows as she sat down and looked up the straight, white road. It ran through pastures, and yellow cornfields where harvesters were at work, to a moor on which the ling glowed red in the fading light. Near the station a dark firwood stretched back among the fields and a row of beeches rose in dense masses of foliage beside the road. There was no sound except the soft splash of a stream. Everything was peaceful; but Clare was young, and tranquillity was not what she desired. She had, indeed, had too much of it in the sleepy cathedral town she had left.
Her difficulty was that she felt drawn in two different ways; for she had inherited something of her father’s recklessness and love of pleasure, though her mother, who died when Clare was young, had been a shy Puritan. Clare was kept at school much longer than usual; and when she insisted on coming home she found herself puzzled by her father’s way of living. Young men, and particularly army officers, frequented the house; stylish women came down from town, often without their husbands; and there was generally some exciting amusement going on. This had its attraction for Clare; but her delicate refinement was sometimes offended, and once she was even alarmed. One of the young men had shown his admiration for her in a way that jarred, and soon afterward there had been a brawl over a game of cards.
Kenwardine had then suggested that she make a long visit to her aunts, in the cathedral town. They had received her gladly but she soon found her stay there irksome. The aunts were austere, religious women, who moved in a narrow groove and ordered all their doings by a worn-out social code. Still, they were kind and gave Clare to understand that she was to stay with them always and have no more to do with Kenwardine than duty demanded. The girl rebelled. She shrank with innate dislike from license and dissipation, but the life her aunts led was dreary, and she could not give up her father. Though inexperienced, she was intelligent and she saw that her path would not be altogether smooth now that she was going home for good. While she thought about it, the trap arrived and the shabby groom drove her up the hill with confused apologies.
An hour or two after Clare reached home, Lance and Dick Brandon entered the house and were met by Kenwardine in the hall. He wore a velvet jacket over his evening clothes and Dick noticed a wine-stain on the breast. He was thin, but his figure was athletic, although his hair was turning gray and there were wrinkles about his eyes.
“Very glad to see your cousin,” he said to Lance, and turned to Dick with a smile. “Soldiers have a particular claim on our hospitality, but my house is open to anybody of cheerful frame of mind. One must relax now and then in times like these.”