Beechcroft at Rockstone
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‘But that dreadful boy shot right into his mouth,’ said Val, while Fergus went into an ecstasy of laughter. ‘Wasn’t it a shame, Gill?’
‘Indeed it was’ said Gillian. ‘Such ungentlemanly boys ought not to be allowed in the omnibus.’
‘Girls shouldn’t be allowed in the ‘bus, they are so stupid,’ said Fergus. ‘That one—as cross as old Halfpenny—who was she, Val?’
‘Emma Norton! Up in the highest form!’
‘Well, she is a prig, and a tell-tale-tit besides; only Stebbing said if she did, her junior would catch it.’
‘What a dreadful bully he must be!’ exclaimed Gillian.
I’ll tell you what,’ said Fergus, in a tone of profound admiration, ‘no one can hold a candle to him at batting! He snowballed all the Kennel choir into fits, and he can brosier old Tilly’s stall, and go on just the same.’
‘What a greedy boy!’ exclaimed Val.
‘Disgusting,’ added Gillian.
‘You’re girls,’ responded Fergus, lengthening the syllable with infinite contempt; but Valetta had spirit enough to reply, ‘Much better be a girl than rude and greedy.’
‘Exactly,’ said Gillian; ‘it is only little silly boys who think such things fine. Claude doesn’t, nor Harry, nor Japs.’
‘You know nothing about it,’ said Fergus.
‘Well, but you’ve never told me about school—how you are placed, and whom you are under.’
‘Oh! I’m in middle form, under Miss Edgar. Disgusting! It’s only the third form that go up to Smiler. She knows it is no use to try to take Stebbing and Burfield.’
‘And, Gill,’ added Val, ‘I’m in second class too, and I took three places for knowing where Teheran was, and got above Kitty Varley and a girl there two years older than I am, and her name is Maura.’
‘Maura, how very odd! I never heard of any one called Maura but one of the Whites,’ said Gillian. ‘What was her surname?’
This Valetta could not tell, and at the moment Mrs. Mount came up with intent to brush Miss Valetta’s hair, and to expedite the going to bed.
Gillian, not very happy about the revelations she had heard, went downstairs, and found her younger aunt alone, Miss Mohun having been summoned to a conference with one of her clients in the parish room. In her absence Gillian always felt more free and communicative, and she had soon told whatever she did not feel as a sort of confidence, including Valetta’s derivation of spooning, and when Miss Mohun returned it was repeated to her.
‘Yes,’ was her comment, ‘children’s play is a convenient cover to the present form of flirtation. No doubt Bee Varley and Mr. Marlowe believe themselves to have been most good-natured.’
‘Who is he, and will it come to anything?’ asked Aunt Ada, taking her sister’s information for granted.
‘Oh no, it is nothing. A civil service man, second cousin’s brother-in-law’s stepson. That’s quite enough in these days to justify fraternal romping.’
‘I thought Beatrice Varley a nice girl.’
‘So she is, my dear. It is only the spirit of the age, and, after all, this deponent saith not which was the dish and which was the spoon. Have the children made any other acquaintances, I wonder? And how did George Stebbing comport himself in the omnibus? I was sorry to see him there; I don’t trust that boy.’
‘I wonder they didn’t send him in solitary grandeur in the brougham,’ said Miss Ada.
Gillian held the history of the pea-shooting as a confidence, even though Aunt Jane seemed to have been able to see through the omnibus, so she contented herself with asking who George Stebbing was.
‘The son of the manager of the marble works; partner, I believe.’
‘Yes,’ said Aunt Ada. ‘the Co. means Stebbing primarily.’
‘Is he a gentleman?’
‘Well, as much as old Mr. White himself, I suppose. He is come up here—more’s the pity—to the aristocratic quarter, if you please,’ said Aunt Jane, smiling, ‘and if garden parties are not over, Mr. Stebbing may show you what they can be.’
‘That boy ought to be at a public school,’ said her sister. ‘I hope he doesn’t bully poor little Fergus.’
‘I don’t think he does,’ said Gillian. ‘Fergus seemed rather to admire him.’
‘I had rather hear of bullying than patronage in that quarter,’ said Miss Mohun. ‘But, Gillian, we must impress on the children that they are to go to no one’s house without express leave. That will avoid offence, and I should prefer their enjoying the society of even the Varleys in this house.’
Did Aunt Jane repent of her decision on the Thursday half-holiday granted to Mrs. Edgar’s pupils, when, in the midst of the working party round the dining-room table, in a pause of the reading, some one said, ‘What’s that!’—and a humming, accompanied by a drip, drop, drip, drop, became audible?
Up jumped Miss Mohun, and so did Gillian, half in consternation, half to shield the boy from her wrath. In a few moments they beheld a puddle on the mat at the bottom of the oak stairs, while a stream was descending somewhat as the water comes down at Lodore, while Fergus’s voice could be heard above—
‘Don’t, Varley! You see how it will act. The string of the humming-top moves the pump handle, and that spins. Oh!’
‘Master Fergus! Oh—h, you bad boy!’
The shriek was caused by the avenging furies who had rushed up the back stairs just as Miss Mohun had darted up the front, so as to behold, on the landing between the two, the boys, one spinning the top, the other working the pump which stood in its own trough of water, receiving a reckless supply from the tap in the passage. The maid’s scream of ‘What will your aunt say?’ was answered by her appearance, and rush to turn the cock.
‘Don’t, don’t, Aunt Jane,’ shouted Fergus; ‘I’ve almost done it! Perpetual motion.’ He seemed quite unconscious that the motion was kept up by his own hands, and even dismay could not turn him from being triumphant.
‘Oh! Miss Jane,’ cried Mrs. Mount, ‘if I had thought what they boys was after.’
‘Mop it up, Alice,’ said Aunt Jane to the younger girl. ‘No don’t come up, Ada; it is too wet for you. It is only a misdirected experiment in hydraulics.’
‘I told him not,’ said Clement Varley, thinking affairs serious.
‘Fergus, I am shocked at you,’ said Gillian sternly. ‘You are frightfully wet. You must be sent to bed.’
‘You must go and change,’ said Aunt Jane, preventing the howl about to break forth. ‘My dear boy, that tap must be let alone. We can’t have cataracts on the stairs.’
‘I didn’t mean it, Aunt Jane; I thought it was an invention,’ said Fergus.
‘I know; but another time come and ask me where to try your experiments. Go and take off those clothes; and you, Clement, you are soaking too. Run home at once.’
Gillian, much scandalised, broke out—
‘It is very naughty. At home, he would be sent to bed at once.’
‘I am not Mrs. Halfpenny, Gillian,’ said Aunt Jane coldly.
‘Jane has a soft spot for inventions, for Maurice’s sake,’ said her sister.
‘I can’t confound ingenuity and enterprise with wanton mischief, or crush it out for want of sympathy,’ said Miss Mohun. ‘Come, we must return to our needles.’
If Aunt Jane had gone into the state of wrath to be naturally expected, Gillian would have risen in arms on her brother’s behalf, and that would have been much pleasanter than the leniency which made her views of justice appear like unkindness.
This did not dispose her to be the better pleased at an entreaty from the two children to be allowed to join Mrs. Hablot’s class on Sunday. It appeared that they had asked Aunt Jane, and she had told them that their sister knew what their mother would like.
‘But I am sure she would not mind,’ said Valetta. ‘Only think, she has got a portfolio with pictures of everything all through the Bible!’
‘Yes,’ added Fergus, ‘Clem told me. There are the dogs eating Jezebel, and such a jolly picture of the lion killing the prophet. I do want to see them! Varley told me!’
‘And Kitty told me,’ added Valetta. ‘She is reading such a book to them. It is called The Beautiful Face, and is all about two children in a wood, and a horrid old grandmother and a dear old hermit, and a wicked baron in a castle! Do let us go, Gillyflower.
‘Yes,’ said Fergus; ‘it would be ever so much better fun than poking here.’
‘You don’t want fun on Sunday.’
‘Not fun exactly, but it is nicer.’
‘To leave me, the last bit of home, and mamma’s own lessons.’
‘They ain’t mamma’s,’ protested Fergus; but Valetta was touched by the tears in Gillian’s eyes, kissed her, and declared, ‘Not that.’
Whether it were on purpose or not, the next Sunday was eminently unsuccessful; the Collects were imperfect, the answers in the Catechism recurred to disused babyish blunders; Fergus twisted himself into preternatural attitudes, and Valetta teased the Sofy to scratching point, they yawned ferociously at The Birthday, and would not be interested even in the pony’s death. Then when they went out walking, they would not hear of the sober Rockstone lane, but insisted on the esplanade, where they fell in with the redoubtable Stebbing, who chose to patronise instead of bullying ‘little Merry’—and took him off to the tide mark—to the agony of his sisters, when they heard the St. Andrew’s bell.
At last, when the tempter had gone off to higher game, Fergus’s Sunday boots and stockings were such a mass of black mud that Gillian had to drag him home in disgrace, sending Valetta into church alone. She would have put him to bed on her own responsibility, but she could not master him; he tumbled about the room, declaring Aunt Jane would do no such thing, rolled up his stockings in a ball, and threw them in his sister’s face.
Gillian retired in tears, which she let no one see, not even Aunt Ada, and proceeded to record in her letter to India that those dreadful boys were quite ruining Fergus, and Aunt Jane was spoiling him.
However, Aunt Jane, having heard what had become of the youth, met him in no spoiling mood; and though she never knew of his tussle with Gillian, she spoke to him very seriously, shut him into his own room, to learn thoroughly what he had neglected in the morning, and allowed him no jam at tea. She said nothing to Gillian, but there were inferences.
The lessons went no better on the following Sunday; Gillian could neither enforce her authority nor interest the children. She avoided the esplanade, thinking she had found a nice country walk to the common beyond the marble works; but, behold, there was an outbreak of drums and trumpets and wild singing. The Salvation Army was marching that way, and, what was worse, yells and cat-calls behind showed that the Skeleton Army was on its way to meet them. Gillian, frightened almost out of her wits, managed to fly over an impracticable-looking gate into a field with her children, but Fergus wanted to follow the drum. After that she gave in. The children went to Mrs. Hablot, and Gillian thought she saw ‘I told you so’ in the corners of Aunt Jane’s eyes.
It was a further offence that her aunt strongly recommended her going regularly to the High School instead of only attending certain classes. It would give her far more chance of success at the examination to work with others and her presence would be good for Valetta. But to reduce her to a schoolgirl was to be resented on Miss Vincent’s account as well as her own.
CHAPTER IV. – THE QUEEN OF THE WHITE ANTS
The High School was very large. It stood at present at the end of a budding branch of Rockquay, where the managers, assisted by the funds advanced by Lord Rotherwood and that great invisible potentate, the head of the marble works, had secured and adapted a suitable house, and a space round it well walled in.
The various classes of students did not see much of each other, except those who were day boarders and spent the midday recreation time together. Even those in the same form were only together in school, as the dressing-room of those who dined there was separate from that of the others, and they did not come in and out at the same time. Valetta had thus only really made friends with two or three more Rockstone girls of about her own age besides Kitty Yarley, with whom she went backwards and forwards every day, under the escort provided in turn by the families of the young ladies.
Gillian’s studies were for three hours in the week at the High School, and on two afternoons she learnt from the old organist at Rockstone Church. She went and came alone, except when Miss Mohun happened to join her, and that was not often, ‘For,’ said that lady to her sister, ‘Gillian always looks as if she thought I was acting spy upon her. I wish I could get on with that girl; I begin to feel almost as poor Lily did with Dolores.’
‘She is a very good girl,’ said Miss Adeline.
‘So she is; and that makes it all the more trying to be treated like the Grand Inquisitor.’
‘Shall I speak to her? She is always as pleasant as possible with me.’
‘Oh no, don’t. It would only make it worse, and prevent you from having her confidence.’
‘Ah, Jane, I have often thought your one want was gentleness,’ said Miss Ada, with the gesture of her childhood—her head a little on one side. ‘And, besides, don’t you know what Reggie used to call your ferret look? Well, I suppose you can’t help it, but when you want to know a thing and are refraining from asking questions, you always have it more or less.’
‘Thank you, Ada. There’s nothing like brothers and sisters for telling one home-truths. I suppose it is the penalty of having been a regular Paul Pry in my childhood, in spite of poor Eleanor making me learn “Meddlesome Matty” as soon as I could speak. I always do and always shall have ringing in my ears—
‘“Oh! what a pretty box is this, I’ll open it,” said little Miss.’‘Well, you know you always do know or find out everything about everybody, and it is very useful.’
‘Useful as a bloodhound is, eh?’
‘Oh no, not that, Jenny.’
‘As a ferret, or a terrier, perhaps. I suppose I cannot help that, though,’ she added, rather sadly. ‘I have tried hard to cure the slander and gossip that goes with curiosity. I am sorry it results in repulsion with that girl; but I suppose I can only go on and let her find out that my bark, or my eye, is worse than my bite.’
‘You are so good, so everything, Jenny,’ said Adeline, ‘that I am sure you will have her confidence in time, if only you won’t poke after it.’
Which made Miss Mohun laugh, though her heart was heavy, for she had looked forward to having a friend and companion in the young generation.
Gillian meantime went her way.
One morning, after her mathematical class was over, she was delayed for about ten minutes by the head mistress, to whom she had brought a message from her aunt, and thus did not come out at noon at the same time as the day scholars. On issuing into the street, where as yet there was hardly any traffic, except what was connected with the two schools, she perceived that a party of boys were besetting a little girl who was trying to turn down the cross road to Bellevue, barring her way, and executing a derisive war-dance around her, and when she, almost crying, made an attempt to dash by, pulling at her plaited tail, with derisive shouts, even Gillian’s call, ‘Boys, boys, how can you be so disgraceful!’ did not check them. One made a face and put his tongue out, while the biggest called out, ‘Thank you, teacher,’ and Gillian perceived to her horror, that they were no street boys, but Mrs. Edgar’s, and that Fergus was one of them. That he cried in dismay, ‘Don’t, Stebbing! It’s my sister,’ was no consolation, as she charged in among them, catching hold of her brother, as she said,
‘I could not believe that you could behave in such a disgraceful manner!’
All the other tormentors rushed away headlong, except Stebbing, who, in some compunction, said—
‘I beg your pardon, Miss Merrifield, I had no notion it was you.’
‘You are making it no better,’ said Gillian. ‘The gentlemen I am used to know how to behave properly to any woman or girl. My father would be very sorry that my brother has been thrown into such company.’
And she walked away with her head extremely high, having certainly given Master Stebbing a good lesson. Fergus ran after her. ‘Gill, Gill, you won’t tell.’
‘I don’t think I ever was more shocked in my life,’ returned Gillian.
‘But, Gill, she’s a nasty, stuck-up, conceited little ape, that Maura White, or whatever her ridiculous name is. They pretend her father was an officer, but he was really a bad cousin of old Mr. White’s that ran away; and her mother is not a lady—a great fat disgusting woman, half a nigger; and Mr. White let her brother and sister be in the marble works out of charity, because they have no father, and she hasn’t any business to be at the High School.’
‘White, did you say? Maura White!’ exclaimed Gillian. ‘Captain White dead! Oh, Fergus! it must be Captain White. He was in the dear old Royal Wardours, and papa thought so much of him! To think of your going and treating his daughter in that shocking way!’
‘It was what Stebbing said,’ gruffly answered Fergus.
‘If you let yourself be led by these horrid cads—’
‘He is no such thing! He is the crack bat of Edgar’s—’
‘A boy is a cad who can’t behave himself to a girl because she is poor. I really think the apology to me was the worst part or the matter. He only treats people well when he sees they can take care of themselves.’
‘I’ll tell him about Captain White,’ said Fergus, a little abashed.
‘Yes. And I will get the aunts to call on Mrs. White, and that may help them to a better level among these vulgar folk.’
‘But you won’t—’ said Fergus, with an expressive pause.
‘I won’t get you into trouble, for I think you are sorry you treated one of our own in such a manner.’
‘I wouldn’t, indeed, if I had known.’
‘I shall only explain that I have found out whom Maura belongs to. I should go and see them at once, only I must make Val find out where she lives.’
So Gillian returned home, communicating the intelligence with some excitement that she had discovered that Valetta’s schoolmate, Maura White, was none other than the daughter of her father’s old fellow-soldier, whose death shocked her greatly, and she requested to go and call on Mrs. White as soon as she could learn her abode.
However, it seemed to be impossible that any one should live in Rockstone unknown to Aunt Jane.
‘White?’ she said. ‘It can’t be the Whites down by Cliffside. No; there’s a father there, though he generally only comes down for Sunday.’
‘I am sure there are some Whites on the Library list,’ said Miss Ada.
‘Oh yes; but she washes! I know who they must be. I know in Bellevue there are some; but they go to the Kennel Church. Didn’t you come home, Ada, from that function you went to with Florence, raving about the handsome youth in the choir?’
‘Oh yes, we thought it such an uncommon, foreign face, and he looked quite inspired when he was singing his solo.’
‘Yes; I found out that his name was White, a clerk or something in the marble works, and that he had a mother and sister living at Bellevue. I did see the sister when I went to get the marble girls into the G.F.S., but she said something foolish about her mother not liking it.’
‘Yes; nobody under the St. Kenelm influence ever will come into the G.F.S.’
‘But what is she doing?’ asked Gillian. ‘Do you mean Kalliope?’
‘I suppose I do. I saw a rather nice-looking young woman in the department where they make Florentine mosaic, and I believe they said she was Miss White, but she cut me off very short with her mother, so I had no more to do with her.’
‘I am sure mamma would wish me to call on Mrs. White,’ said Gillian.
‘There’s no reason against it,’ said Aunt Jane. ‘I will go with you the first day I can.’
When would that be, wondered Gillian. She told Valetta to talk to Maura and learn the name of the house; and this was ascertained to be 3 Ivinghoe Terrace, Bellevue Road, but Val had very little opportunity of cultivating the acquaintance of town girls, who did not stay to dinner, as she had to go home immediately after school, under Emma Norton’s escort, and perhaps she was not very ardent in the cause, for Kitty Varley and her other friends did not like the child, and she was more swayed by them than perhaps she liked to confess to her sister.
Each morning at breakfast Gillian hoped that Aunt Jane would lay out her day so as to call on Mrs. White; but first there was the working party, then came the mothers’ meeting, followed by afternoon tea at Mrs. Hablot’s for some parish council. On the third day, which might have been clear, ‘a miserable creature,’ as Gillian mentally called her, wrote to beg the Misses Mohun to bring themselves and her niece to make up a lawn-tennis set, since some one had failed. Gillian vainly protested that she did not care about lawn tennis, and could not play unless Jasper was her partner; and Aunt Jane so far sided with her as to say it was very inconvenient, and on such short notice they ought not to be expected. But Aunt Ada clearly wanted to go; and so they went. It was a beautiful place, but Gillian could not enjoy herself, partly because she knew so few of the people, but more because she was vexed and displeased about the Whites. She played very badly; but Aunt Jane, when pressed into the service, skipped about with her little light figure and proved herself such a splendid player, doing it so entirely con amore, that Gillian could not but say to herself, ‘She was bent on going; it was all humbug her pretending to want to refuse.’
That afternoon’s dissipation had made it needful to do double work the next day, and Gillian was again disappointed. Then came Saturday, when Miss Mohun was never available, nor was she on Monday; and when it appeared that she had to go to a meeting at the Cathedral town on Tuesday, Gillian grew desperate, and at her tete-a-tete meal with Aunt Ada, related the whole history of the Whites, and her great desire to show kindness to her father’s old brother-officer’s family, and how much she was disappointed.
Miss Adeline was touched, and indeed, fond as she was of her sister, she could not help being flattered by Gillian’s preference and confidence.
‘Well, my deal, this is a nice day, not too hot or too cold; I do not see why I should not walk down with you and call. If I find it too far, we can take a cab to go back.’
‘Oh, thank you, Aunt Ada; it is very very kind of you, and there is no knowing when Aunt Jane may be able to go. I don’t like to close up my Indian letter till I can say I have seen them.’
Gillian fidgeted a good deal lest, before her aunt’s postprandial repose was over, visitors should come and put a stop to everything, and she looked ready to cut the throat of a poor lady in a mushroom hat, who came up to leave a message for Miss Mohun about a possible situation for one of her class of boys.
However, at last they started, Kunz and all, Miss Adeline quite infected by Gillian’s excitement.
‘So your father and mother were very fond of them.’
‘Papa thought very highly of him, and was very sorry he had to return,’ said Gillian.
‘And she was a beautiful Greek.’
Gillian began to be quite afraid of what she might have said.
‘I don’t think she is more than half Greek,’ she said. ‘I believe her mother was a Gorfiote, but her father was English or Irish. I believe he kept a shop in Malta.’
‘Quite a mixture of nationalities then, and no wonder she is beautiful. That youth had a very striking profile; it quite reminded me of a gem as I saw it against the dark pillar.’
‘I did not say she was very beautiful now,’ said Gillian, feeling a qualm as she recollected the Queen of the White Ants, and rather oddly divided between truthfulness, fear of alarming her aunt into turning back, and desire of giving her a little preparation.
‘Ah! those southern beauties soon go on. Some one told me that Lord Byron’s “Maid of Athens,” whose portrait I used to think the loveliest thing in the world, became a great stout woman, but was quite a mother to all the young Englishmen about. I remember I used to try to hold my head and keep my eyelids down like the engraving in an old book that had been my mother’s.’
‘Oh! I think I have seen it at Beechcroft,’ said Gillian, very much amused, for she now perceived whence arose Aunt Ada’s peculiar turn of the head and droop of the eyelashes, and how the conscious affectation of childhood had become unconsciously crystallised.