"You can behave like a naughty, troublesome girl, without any proper feeling, of course!--if you choose," said Lady Fox-Wilton warmly. "But I trust you will do nothing of the kind. We are your guardians till you are twenty-one; and you ought to be guided by us."
"Well, of course I can"t be engaged to Stephen, if you say I mayn"t--because there"s Stephen to back you up. But if Queen Victoria could be a queen at eighteen, I don"t see why _I_ shouldn"t be fit at eighteen to manage my own wretched affairs! Anyway--I--am--not--going to Paris--unless I want to go. So I don"t advise you to promise that lady just yet. If she keeps her room empty, you might have to pay for it!"
"Hester, you are really the plague of my life!" cried Lady Fox-Wilton helplessly. "I try to keep you--the Rector tries to keep you--out of mischief that any girl ought to be ashamed--of--and--"
"What mischief?" demanded Hester peremptorily. "Don"t run into generalities, mamma."
"You know very well what mischief I mean!"
"I know that you think I shall be running away some day with Sir Philip Meryon!" said the girl, laughing, but with a fierce gleam in her eyes. "I have no intention at present of doing anything of the kind. But if anything could make me do it, it would be the foolish way in which you and the others behave. I don"t believe the Rector ever told you to set Sarah and Lulu on to dog me wherever I go!"
"He told me you were not to be allowed to meet that man. You won"t promise me not to meet him--and what can we do? You know what the Rector feels. You know that he spent an hour yesterday arguing and pleading with you, when he had been up most of the night preparing papers for this commission. What"s the matter with you, Hester? Are you quite in your right senses?"
The girl had clasped her hands behind her back, and stood with one foot forward, "on tiptoe for a flight," her young figure and radiant look expressing the hot will which possessed her. At the mention of Meynell"s name she clearly hesitated, a frown crossed her eyes, her lip twitched.
Then she said with vehemence:
"Who asked him to spend all that time? Not I. Let him leave me alone. He does not care twopence about me, and it"s mere humbug and hypocrisy all his pretending to care."
"And your Aunt Alice--who"s always worshipped you? Why, she"s just miserable about you!"
"She says exactly what you and Uncle Richard tell her to say--she always has! Well, I don"t know about Paris, mamma--I"ll think about it. If you and Sarah will just let me be, I"ll take Roddy for a stroll, and then after tea I"ll tell you what I"ll do." And, turning, she beckoned to a fine collie lazily sunning himself on the drawing-room steps, and he sprang up, gambolling about her.
"Promise you won"t meet that man!" said Lady Fox-Wilton, in agitation.
"I believe he went up to Scotland to-day," said Hester, laughing. "I haven"t the smallest intention of meeting him. Come, Roddy!"
The eyes of the two met--in those of the older woman, impatience, a kind of cold exasperation; in Hester"s, defiance. It was a strange look to pa.s.s between a mother and daughter. Hester turned away, and then paused:
"Oh, by the way, mamma--where are you going?"
Lady Fox-Wilton hesitated unaccountedly.
"Why do you ask?"
Hester opened her eyes.
"Why shouldn"t I? Is it a secret? I wanted you to tell Aunt Alice something if you were going that way."
"Mamma!"
Sarah suddenly emerged from the schoolroom window and ran excitedly across the lawn toward her mother. "Have you heard this extraordinary story about John Broad"s mother? Tibbald has just told me."
Tibbald was the butler, and Sarah"s special friend and crony.
"What story? I wish you wouldn"t allow Tibbald to gossip as you do, Sarah!" said Lady Fox-Wilton angrily. But a close observer might have seen that her bright colour precipitately left her.
"Why, what harm was it?" cried Sarah, wondering. "He told me, because it seems Mrs. Sabin used to be a servant of ours long ago. Do you remember her, mamma?"
Again Lady Fox-Wilton stumbled perceptibly in replying. She turned away, and, with the garden scissors at her waist, she began vaguely to clip off some dead roses from some bushes near her.
"We once had a maid--for a very short time," she said over her shoulder, "who married some one of that name. What about her?"
"Well, she came back from America two days ago. John Broad thought she was dead. He hadn"t heard of her for four years. But she turned up on Tuesday--the queerest old woman! She sat there boasting and chattering--in a silk dress with gold bracelets!--they thought she was going to make all their fortunes. But she must just have been off her head, for she died last night in her sleep, and there were only a few shillings on her--not enough to bury her. There"s to be an inquest this evening, they say."
"Don"t spend all your time chattering in the village, Sarah," said Lady Fox-Wilton severely, as, still with her back toward the girls, she moved away in the direction of the drive. "You"ll never get your dress done if you do."
"I say--what"s wrong with mamma?" said Hester coolly, looking after her.
"I suppose Bertie"s been getting into some fresh bother."
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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sers-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 gra.s.s. Nothing in sight but a keeper"s hut, and some grouse b.u.t.ts 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 gra.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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.
Of late his conduct with regard to Stephen"s proposal had stirred in her a kind of rage. It was not that she imagined herself in love with Stephen; but she had chosen to be engaged to him; and that any one should affect to control her in such a matter, should definitely and decidedly cross her will, was intolerable to her wild pride. If Stephen had rebelled with her, she might have fallen fiercely in love with him--for a month. But he had submitted--though it was tolerably plain what it had cost him; and all her careless liking for him, the fruit of years of very poorly requited devotion on his part, seemed to have disappeared in a night.
Why shouldn"t she be engaged at seventeen--within two months of eighteen, in fact? Heaps of girls were. It was mere tyranny and nonsense. She recalled her interview with Meynell, in which the Rector had roused in her a new and deeper antagonism than any she had yet felt toward his efforts to control her. It was as though he did not altogether believe in his own arguments; as though there were something behind which she could not get at. But if there were something behind, she had a right to know it. She had a right to know the meaning of her father"s extraordinary letter to Meynell--the letter attached to his will--in which she had been singled out by name as needing the special tutelage of the Rector. So far as the Rector"s guardianship of the other children was concerned, it was almost a nominal thing. Another guardian had been named in the will, Lady Fox-Wilton"s elder brother, and practically everything that concerned the other children was settled by him, in concert with the mother. The Rector never interfered, was never indeed consulted, except on purely formal matters of business. But for her--for her only--Uncle Richard--as she always called her guardian--was to be the master--the tyrant!--close at hand. For so Sir Ralph had laid it down, in his testamentary letter--"I commend Hester to your special care. And in any difficulties that may arise in connection with her, I beg for our old friendship"s sake that you will give my wife the help and counsel that she will certainly need.
She knows it is my wish she should rely entirely upon you."
Why had he written such a letter? Since Sir Ralph"s death, two years before, the story of it had got about; and the injustice, as she held, of her position under it had sunk deep into the girl"s pa.s.sionate sense, and made her infinitely more difficult to manage than she had been before. Of course everybody said it was because of her temper; because of the constant friction between her and her father; people believed the hateful things he used sometimes to say about her.
Nor was it only the guardianship--there was the money too! Provision made for all of them by name--and nothing for her! She had made Sarah show her a copy of the will--she knew! Nothing indeed for any of them--the girls at least--till Lady Fox-Wilton"s death, or till they married; but nothing for _her_, under any circ.u.mstances.
"Well, why should there be?" Sarah had said. "You know you"ll have Aunt Alice"s money. _She_ won"t leave a penny to us."
All very well! The money didn"t matter! But to be singled out and held up to scorn by your own father!
A flood of bitterness surged in the girl"s heart. And then they expected her to be a meek and obedient drudge to her mother and her elder sisters; to open her mouth and take what they chose to send her. She might not be engaged to Stephen--for two years at any rate; and yet if she amused herself with any one else she was to be packed off to Paris, to some house of detention or other, under lock and key.
Her cheeks flamed. When had she first come across Philip Meryon? Only the day before that evening when Uncle Richard had found her fishing with him. She knew very well that he was badly spoken of; trust Upcote for gossip and scandal! Well, so was she!--they were outcasts together.
Anyway, he was more amusing to walk and talk with than her sisters, or the dreadful young men they sometimes gathered about them. Why shouldn"t she walk and talk with him? As if she couldn"t protect herself! As if she didn"t know a great deal more of the world than her stupid sisters did, who never read a book or thought of anything beyond the t.i.ttle-tattle of their few local friends.