The Case of Richard Meynell

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

Bertie was the elder brother, who was Sarah's special friend in the family. So that she at once resented the remark.

"If she's worrying about anything, she's worrying about you," said Sarah tartly, as she went back to the house. "We all know that."

Hester, with her dog beside her, went strolling leisurely through the village street, past Miss Puttenham's cottage on the one hand and the Rectory gates on the other, making for a footpath that led from the back of the village, through fields and woods, on to the Chase.

As she passed beneath the limes that overhung Miss Puttenham's railings she perceived some distant figures in the garden. Uncle Richard, with mamma and Aunt Alice on either side of him. They were walking up and down in close conversation; or, rather, Uncle Richard seemed to be talking earnestly, addressing now one lady, now the other.

What a confabulation! No doubt all about her own crimes and misdemeanours. What fun to creep into the garden and play the spy. "That's what Sarah would do—but I'm not Sarah." Instead, she turned into the footpath and began to mount toward the borders of the Chase. It was a brilliant September afternoon, and the new grass in the shorn hayfields was vividly green. In front rose the purple hills of the Chase, while to the left, on the far borders of the village, the wheels and chimneys of two collieries stood black against a blaze of sun. But the sharp emphasis of light and colour, which in general would have set her own spirits racing, was for a while lost on Hester. As soon as she was out of sight of the village, or any passers-by, her aspect changed. Once or twice she caught her breath in what was very like a sob; and there were moments when she could only save herself from the disgrace of tears by a wild burst of racing with Roddy. It was evident that her brush with Lady Fox-Wilton had not left her as callous as she seemed.

Presently the path forsook the open fields and entered a plantation of dark and closely woven trees where the track was almost lost in the magnificence of the bracken. Beyond this, a short climb of broken slopes, and Hester was out on the bare heath, with the moorland wind blowing about her.

She sat down on a bank beneath a birch tree, twisted and tortured out of shape by the northwesterly gales that swept the heath in winter. All round her a pink and purple wilderness, with oases of vivid green and swaying grass. Nothing in sight but a keeper's hut, and some grouse butts far away; an ugly red building on the horizon, in the very middle of the heath, the Markborough isolation hospital; and round the edge of the vast undulating plateau in all directions the faint smoke of the colliery chimneys. But the colour of the heath was the marvel. The world seemed stained in crimson, and in every shade and combination of it. Close at hand the reds and pinks were diapered with green and gold as the bilberries and the grasses ran in and out of the heather; but on every side the crimson spread and billowed to the horizon, covering the hollows and hills of the Chase, absorbing all lesser tones into itself. After the rain of the morning, the contours of the heath, the distances of the plain, were unnaturally clear; and as the sunshine, the high air, the freshly moving wind, played upon Hester, her irritation passed away in a sensuous delight.

"Why should I let them worry me? I won't! I am here! I am alive! I am only eighteen! I am going to manage my life for myself—and get out of this coil. Now let me think!"

She slid downward among the heather, her face propped on her hands. Close beneath her eyes was an exquisite tuft of pink bell-heather intergrown with bunchberries. And while a whole vague series of thoughts and memories passed through her mind she was still vividly conscious of the pink bells, the small bright leaves. Sensation in her was exceptionally keen, whether for pleasure or pain. She knew it and had often coolly asked herself whether it meant that she would wear out—life and brain—quicker than other people—burn faster to the socket. So much the better if it did.

What was it she really wanted?—what did she mean to do? Proudly, she refused to admit any other will in the matter. The thought of Meynell, indeed, touched some very sore and bitter chords in her mind, but it did not melt her. She knew very well that she had nothing to blame her guardian for; that year after year from her childhood up she had repelled and resisted him, that her whole relation to him had been one of stubbornness and caprice. Well, there were reasons for it; she was not going to repent or change.