Kate stamped her foot in her passion.
‘If I were to write to the Lord Chancellor, I am sure he would let me!’ she cried.
‘But you are not a ward in Chancery—you are my ward,’ said Mr. Courtenay, blandly.
‘Then I will run away!’ cried Kate, once more stamping her foot. ‘I will not stay here. I hate Langton-Courtenay, and everybody that is unkind, and the people who hate me. I tell you I hate them, Uncle Courtenay! I will run away!’
‘I don’t doubt it, for one,’ said Miss Blank, quietly; ‘but with whom, Miss Kate, I should like to know? I daresay your plans are all laid.’
Mr. Courtenay did not see the blank stare of surprise with which Kate, all innocent of the meaning which was conveyed to his ear by these words, surveyed her adversary. His own better-instructed mind was moved by it to positive excitement. Even if Miss Blank had been premature in her suggestion, still there could be little doubt that lovers were a danger from which Kate could not be kept absolutely safe. And there were sons at the Rectory, one of whom, a good-looking young fellow of twenty, he had himself seen coming forward with a look of delighted recognition. Danger! Why, it was almost more than danger; it seemed a certainty of evil—if not now, why, then, next year, or the year after! Mr. Courtenay, like most old men of the world, felt an instinctive distrust of, and repugnance to, parsons. And a young parson was proverbially on the outlook for heiresses, and almost considered it a duty to provide for himself by marriage. All this ran through his disturbed mind as these two troublesome feminine personages before him waited each for her answer. ‘Confound women! They are more trouble than they are worth, a hundred times over!’ the old bachelor said to himself.
CHAPTER VIII.
Mr. Courtenay was much too true to his instincts, however, to satisfy these two applicants, or to commit himself by any decision on the spot. He dismissed Miss Blank with the formal courtesy which he employed towards his inferiors, begging her to wait until to-morrow, when he should have reflected upon the problem she had laid before him. And he sent away Kate with much less ceremony, bidding her hold her tongue, and leave the room and leave things alone which she did not understand. He would not listen to the angry response which rose to her lips; and Kate had a melancholy night in consequence, aggravated by the miserable sensation that she had been snubbed in presence of Miss Blank, who was quite ready to take advantage of her discomfiture. When Kate’s guardian, however, was left alone to think, it is probable that his own reflections were not delightful. He was not a man apt to take himself to task, nor give way to self-examination, but still it was sufficiently apparent to him that his plan had not succeeded as he had hoped in Kate’s case. What he had hoped for had been to produce a quiet, calm girl, who would do what she was told, whose expectations and wishes would be on a subdued scale, and who would be reasonable enough to feel that his judgment was supreme in all matters. Almost all men at one time or another of their lives entertain the idea of ‘moulding’ a model woman. Mr. Courtenay’s ideal was not high—all he wanted was submissiveness, manageableness, quiet manners, and a total absence of the sentimental and emotional. The girl might have been permitted to be clever, to be a good musician, or a good artist, or a great student, if she chose, though such peculiarities always detract more or less from the air of good society which ought to distinguish a lady; but still Mr. Courtenay prided himself upon being tolerant, and he would not have interfered in such a case. But that this ward of his, this representative of his family, should choose to be an individual being with a very strong will and marked characteristics of her own, exasperated the old man of the world. ‘Most women have no character at all,’ he repeated to himself, raising his eyebrows in wondering appeal to Providence. Had the happy period when that aphorism was true, departed along with all the other manifestations of the age of Gold?—or was it still true, and was it the fault of Providence, to punish him for his sins, that his share of womankind should be so perverse? This was a question which it was difficult to make out; but he was rather inclined to chafe at Providence, which really does interfere so unjustifiably often, when things would go very well if they were left to themselves. The longer he thought of it, the more disgusted did he become—at once with Miss Blank and with her charge. What a cold-hearted wretch the woman must be! How strange that she should not at least ‘take an interest’ in the girl! To be sure he had made it a special point in her engagement that she should not take an interest. He was right in doing so, he felt sure; but, still, here was an unforeseen crisis, at which it would have been very important to have lighted on some one who would not be bound by a mere bargain. The girl was an unmanageable little fool, determined to have her own way at all risks; and the law would not permit him to shut her up, and keep her in the absolute subjection of a prison. She must have every advantage, forsooth—freedom and society, and Heaven knows what besides; education as much as if she were going to earn her living as a governess; and even that crowning horror, Lovers, when the time came. Yes, there was no law in the realm forbidding an heiress to have lovers. Miss Blank might resign, not wishing to compromise herself: but he, the unhappy guardian, could not resign. It was not illegal for a young man to speak to Kate—any idle fellow, with an introduction, might chatter to her, and drive her protectors frantic, and yet could not be put into prison for it. And there could be little doubt that, simply to spite her guardian, after she had worried him to death in every other way, she would fall in love. She would do it, as sure as fate; and even if she met with opposition she was a girl quite capable of eloping with her lover, giving unbounded trouble, and probably throwing some lasting stigma on herself and her name. It was premature, as Miss Blank said; but Miss Blank was a person of experience, learned in the ways of girls, and doubtless knew what she was saying. She had declined to have anything further to do with Kate; she had declared her own sway and ‘lovers’ to be quite incompatible. But Mr. Courtenay could not give a month’s warning, and what was he to do?
If there was but anybody to be found who would ‘take an interest’ in the girl! This idea flashed unconsciously through his mind, and he did not even realise that in wishing for this, in perceiving its necessity, he was stultifying all the previous exertions of his guardianship. Theories are all very well, but it is astonishing how ready men are to drop them in an emergency. Mr. Courtenay was in a dreadful emergency at present, and he prayed to his gods for some one to ‘take an interest’ in this girl. Her Aunt Anderson! The suggestion was so very convenient, it was so delightfully ready a way of escape out of his troubles, that he felt it necessary to pull himself up, and look at it fully. It is not to be supposed that it was a pleasant or grateful suggestion in itself. Had he been in no trouble about Kate, he would have at once, and sternly, declined all invitations (he would have said interference) on the part of her mother’s family. The late Mr. Courtenay had made a very foolish marriage, a marriage quite beneath his position; and the sister of the late Mrs. Courtenay had been discouraged in all her many attempts to see anything of the orphan Kate. Fortunately she had not been much in England, and, until the present, these attempts had all been made when Kate was a baby. Had the young lady of Langton-Courtenay been at all manageable, they would have been equally discouraged now. But the very name of Mrs. Anderson, at this crisis, breathed across Mr. Courtenay’s tribulations like the sweet south across a bed of violets. It was such a temptation to him as he did not know how to withstand. Her mother’s family! They had no right, certainly, to any share of the good things, which were entirely on the Courtenay side; but certainly they had a right to their share of the trouble. This trouble he had borne for fifteen years, and had not murmured. Of course, in the very nature of things, it was their turn now.