Chapter Seven
Friendship
“Oh, Emberance! I am so glad to have a friend! I never have had any one to talk to, I have thought of you ever since the day I was confirmed. Oh, how I have wished that I could be confirmed every year!”
Katharine Kingsworth was standing in a little breakfast room in the Canon’s house at Fanchester. The grey towers of the cathedral with a background of trees just touched with the vivid tints of autumn, were visible through the window; but Katharine heeded nothing but Emberance, almost devouring her with her round brown eyes, and standing before her at a little distance like a kitten ready to spring.
“It is very nice for cousins to be acquainted,” said Emberance.
“Oh, yes! and I have always been shut up by myself! You’ll teach me all that other girls do, and we will be friends.”
And suddenly the kitten sprang, and throwing her arms round Emberance, hugged her, and kissed her with irresistible warmth.
All the kindliness of Emberance’s nature awoke at the appeal, and all lurking sense of their relative positions yielded at the clasp of Katharine’s hands, and then at the warm touch of her lips.
“I will love you, Katharine,” she said, earnestly, “and friends we will be, I promise.”
The words did not mean nearly so much after all, to Katharine who knew no reason to prevent their friendship, as to the speaker, but they were entirely satisfactory to her, and as she subsided on to the floor at Emberance’s feet, she looked up at her and laughed joyfully.
She seemed so youthful a creature that Emberance felt as if she must go back to old methods of making acquaintance and begin, “How many lessons do you do?” – “Tell me something about yourself,” she said, wishing to find out what Katharine knew of the family history.
“There’s nothing to tell, I have lived all my life shut up at Applehurst. Uncle Kingsworth says mamma came away from Kingsworth because some very sad things happened there. I suppose it was my father dying so young, but that’s a long while ago, and we can begin fresh.”
“Katharine,” interposed Emberance who had been watching the street from the window, “here is my mother, she is coming to call on yours, let us go into the drawing-room.”
“Oh yes, I should like to see a morning call. No one ever called but the Rector and old Miss Evesham, and I want to see Aunt Ellen too.”
Emberance followed her as she jumped up and ran into the drawing-room, with considerably more anxiety as to the result of the interview, to which Mrs James Kingsworth had worked herself up, with much doubt and disinclination.
There she stood in her best attire, greeting her sister-in-law with scrupulous politeness, while she was received with a careful courtesy that was anything but cordial.
In flew Katharine, her blooming face all smiles, right into her aunt’s arms.
“How d’ye do, Aunt Ellen? I’m so glad to see you. I’m so glad to have an aunt. Oh, thank you for letting me have Emberance to stay!”
“I am sure, my dear, it will be a pleasure to Emberance,” said the aunt, won over spite of herself and utterly taken by surprise, while the Canon’s wife noted the contrast with the previous greeting of Emberance and Mrs George Kingsworth, when the latter’s scrupulous cordiality had had so evident a strain in it as to abash the girl altogether.
“We shall indeed feel bound to make your daughter’s visit pleasant to her,” she said. “I am yielding to Katharine’s great wish in going to Kingsworth.”
“Oh,” said Katharine, “so long as we came away from Applehurst, I don’t think I much mind where we go to. Anything for a change.”
The remark was made too eagerly to sound exactly flippant; but Emberance did think it sounded odd; and wondered what she should find in this vehement little creature when the first effervescence had subsided. Katharine’s chatter carried off the difficulties of the visit however, and Mrs James Kingsworth returned home with her distinct feelings of resentment somewhat confused.
A few days were passed at Fanchester, during which Katharine enjoyed the delights of buying herself some new clothes, and as she expressed it, “saw a party,” as the Canon thought it well to give one and show the world his various relations sitting at the same dinner table.
He was a good deal perplexed by Katharine. Her unrestrained eagerness, and her self-absorption somewhat repelled him; while her affectionateness and merriment were pleasant. Everything seemed equally enchanting to her, and he suspected her of want of sense and discrimination, while her mother watched her with painful earnestness. Could self-sacrifice or high principle be expected from a girl who derived actual delight from finding herself with a pair of white kid gloves?
Emberance was a little overpowered by her, but she liked her, and better still, oddly enough, she liked the grave clear-eyed Aunt Mary, who looked so unjoyful, and behaved with such odd, cold graciousness towards herself. On the whole Katharine was sorry when the day came for their journey to Kingsworth, though the travelling charmed her. The Canon and his wife accompanied them, anxious to make the return as little painful as possible for Mrs Kingsworth.
It was a wild wet evening, and as they drove from the station, the roaring of the sea grew louder and louder in their ears; Emberance caught glimpses of it covered with foam at intervals as the second carriage, in which the two girls were, wound up a steep road towards the house through the dusk of the evening.
Katharine peeped and exclaimed at each dim object that they passed, but even she fell silent, and Emberance felt an increasing excitement, as they drove up to the door of a substantial square-built house. In the open doorway stood Mrs George Kingsworth, her black figure defined by the lights behind her. She put aside Katharine as the two girls ran up the steps, and taking Emberance by both hands gave her a sudden silent kiss, then drew back and let them pass in together.
“Is this Kingsworth?” cried the outspoken Kate. “Dear me, it isn’t as pretty as Applehurst.”
Indeed, Kingsworth had few attractions beyond the wide sea view from its windows. It was perched upon the top of the cliffs, and what was called the park was really only a bit of enclosed down with a few stunted trees in it. The house had not been built by the Kingsworths and was hardly important enough to rank as a “country place;” while the rooms were small, low, and old-fashioned. The buying of it back had been a piece of sentiment; which its intrinsic advantages hardly warranted. There was, however, part of a ruined tower on the edge of the cliff, called Kingsworth Castle, and to the old Canon the wild sweep of the wind, the dash of the waves on the rocks, and the cry of the sea birds had a charm which all the quiet of his Cathedral Close could not rival. To him, Kingsworth was home, and now in old age his associations passed over the terrible tragedy that had broken that home to pieces, and went back to happy boyish days, when he had little thought to see his father’s proudly regained possession, the property of a thoughtless girl.
To Mrs Kingsworth the place had never been pleasant. All the unhappy doubts and disappointments of her married life and their terrible culmination, seemed borne back to her with every familiar sound and sight, till she wondered how she should ever bear her stay. The next morning rose bright and sunny after the rain, and the Canon asked the two girls if they would like to walk to the shore with him. Both agreed readily, Emberance with a certain trepidation, since she knew that somewhere among those wild rocks had occurred the mysterious tragedy which had left herself and Katharine fatherless. She had never realised the old story among her busy surroundings; but it came back upon her now with a strange vague sense of horror.
Katharine meanwhile tripped along the narrow path before them, sparkling with eagerness and chattering over every conceivable subject.
She was a pretty creature in her bloom and brightness, and to those better informed there was something pathetic in her unconsciousness.
Canon Kingsworth led them down to the shore, which, save for the promontory where Kingsworth stood, was bleak and uninteresting, stretching away in low chalky cliffs.
The “rocks” were of limestone, and insignificant in size and shape; but below them was a wide expanse of sand. The place had none of the grandeur often seen on the coast, and was impressive only from a certain wild dreariness, unfelt in the sparkling sunshine of the September morning. To Katharine it had all the charm of her first sea view, and she ran about picking up shells and seaweed, and demanding information on them with equal ignorance and eagerness.
The tide being low, they walked round by the sands to Kingsworth village, which was untidy, picturesque, and slatternly. There was a pretty Church, long and low, with a square weather-stained tower: and the Vicarage, which had hitherto been in possession of an old Vicar, who remembered the Canon’s boyhood, had now fallen into other hands, and was filled with a large lively young family named Clare.
Mr Clare met them as they came up the little irregular street, and the Canon introduced himself and his nieces, on which followed an inspection of the Church; the Vicar was perplexed at finding so little to indicate which young lady was his future Lady of the Manor, till he remarked that Mrs Clare and his daughters were intending to call, when Katharine sparkled up and said eagerly, “Oh, yes, please; I hope they will. When will they come?”
“This niece,” said Canon Kingsworth, “has led so solitary a life that companions are a new pleasure to her; but we think it right that she should make acquaintance with her future home.”
Katharine was intensely eager about this promised visit, which seemed to her like the beginning of her new life, and her sudden springs to the window whenever she fancied that she heard the front door bell, and her constant references to the subject annoyed her mother inexpressibly.
Kate had not long to wait; for the next day brought Mrs Clare and her daughters, pleasant lively people, the two girls quite as desirous of the acquaintance as Miss Kingsworth herself could be, though they expressed it with somewhat more reserve. This rosy-cheeked girl rushing into friendship as if she had been fourteen instead of nineteen was not at all the heiress that they had expected.
Emberance was a very great assistance in all the difficulties of the new life. She made herself agreeable to the various families who came to call, and she kept Kate in order, and instructed her in various small pieces of social etiquette, taught her how to arrange her hair and when it was correct to wear gloves, and tried to induce her to regard the dinner parties to which they were duly invited with something like composure.
The Clares were their only near neighbours, and the only people with whom during the next few weeks the girls became in any degree really intimate, and with whom Kate learnt the joys of girlish companionship. And she did enjoy it with an intensity of delight, a want of proportion in her pleasure that sorely perplexed Mrs Kingsworth, who, on her part, deprived her of what might have been a counterbalancing and sobering influence, in forbidding her to visit among the cottages or to take up any of the parish work to which the Clares might have introduced her, and which she would have taken up quite as eagerly as anything else under their auspices. She flew into the drawing-room one day on her return from a visit to the Vicarage, exclaiming, —
“Mamma! there are two of the dearest old women, a red cloak one of them has, and Mrs Clare has asked me to go and read to them, and she says I may take them tea and sugar. She told me to ask you, but of course you will like me to do this, because no one can say it is not useful and sensible.”
Mrs Kingsworth’s face assumed the intensely grave expression, which it wore when she felt that a hard task was laid upon her. She feared that awkward revelations might be made to Katharine in the course of such visits, and not being able to give her this chief reason for a refusal, she fell back on secondary ones.
“I am sorry to disappoint you, Katie, but I don’t think you have the necessary experience, and you do not know how much self-denial it costs to be regular in such a duty.”
“But I can’t have experience unless I begin. Mrs Clare says they like something young and cheerful.”
“I am sorry, Kate, but it cannot be. I will explain to Mrs Clare.”
Kate looked vexed for a moment, but she did not dream of resisting, and soon, too soon, as thought her mother, her wayward fancy turned to some fresh object of interest.
So “Kitty,” as her new friends called her, was thus deprived of an important means of forming her character for herself, and also of taking kindly to the increase of Church privileges offered by Mr Clare to his parishioners, and which her mother felt to be a refreshment come back to her from the days of her youth. Kate indeed had no objection to frequent services, as they afforded opportunities of meeting her friends, the one object on which at present her heart was set. She took to them as part of the new and delightful life in which she met with new pleasures. She learned to play lawn-tennis and croquet, went out blackberrying, and boating, and enjoyed herself so intensely in the new young companionship, that she never speculated on past or future.
Emberance found things pleasant enough, but she felt as if there were years of life between herself and her cousin, as she thought of Malcolm Mackenzie’s ship tossing on the waves which never rose without costing her an unreasonable sense of apprehension. She was also much more considerate of Mrs Kingsworth than was Katharine; who never heeded her coldness or her silence, or the slight sarcasms bestowed on her vehement delights, setting it all down as “mamma’s way.”
Chapter Eight
Society
It was a still evening late in October. The level rays of the setting sun struck on the Kingsworth rocks till the little cove had almost the warmth of summer. Soft rosy clouds floated over the blue vault and reflected their colour on the rippling water, and on the white wings of the sea birds which hovered between sea and sky.
Katharine Kingsworth was sitting on a smooth dry stone with her feet on the warm sand, the red light brightening her face and hair, and making her little figure in its warm dark dress a picturesque object in the scene.
Katharine was alone and a little thoughtful, though her thoughts were pleasant ones, as she compared her present life with the dulness of Applehurst.
“Kitty is as fresh as if she had spent all her life on a desert island,” one of the Clares had said of her, that morning.
“Well, Applehurst was a desert house if not a desert island,” Kate had replied. “You were all brought up differently. I wonder why – ”
Some instinct checked the expression of her wonder on the girl’s lips; but for the first time she realised how unlike her life was to that of other girls, and to feel that the circumstances of it were peculiar.
“Emberance’s father and mine were drowned,” she thought, “so mamma disliked the place for ever afterwards. That might be; but why should she shut me up at Applehurst, and make me so different to other girls? Why does she seem to dislike all my pleasure and to hint that it won’t last. I don’t think she is as kind to me as Mrs Clare is to her daughters; how pleased she was for them to go to the picnic.”
A certain hurt look came across Kate’s bright face as these thoughts passed through her mind.
“When I am twenty-one I shall be able to do as I like,” she thought. “I know that, because Minnie Clare let out that their father said they must not ask me now to give any money to do up the church, as I could not promise it rightly; but I think I shall ask mamma if I may not give them some now.”
A pause in Katharine’s reflections as she watched the gulls dipping into the water and floating upwards again towards the clouds, then —
“I suppose girls who have been all brought up together are much more amusing and know much better what to say than I do. I wonder – I wonder – if Major Clare observed any difference when he walked home with us yesterday from the Vicarage – ”
“Why, Kate, are you actually here by yourself?” said Emberance, descending on her from the park above. “That is something unusual.”
“It is rather nice to sit and think a little sometimes,” said Kate.
“Well, I think so; but you never seem to have much to think about,” said Emberance sitting down by her side.
“Why shouldn’t I have as much to think about as you?”
Emberance laughed, a little conscious laugh, and a pretty blush came over her face.
“I don’t think you have, Kitty.”
“I do think,” said Kate, “only there is so much to do. I think what it will be like when I can spend my money as I please. I suppose when I am twenty-one mamma will not be able to prevent me.”
“I suppose not,” said Emberance a little drily.
“But, Emmy, don’t you think it would be just as proper for me to wear a jacket trimmed with fur, as for Miss Deane at Mayford?” said Katharine with great emphasis.
“Of course, why not? Why don’t you get one? That black cloth is rather shabby. I would have a fur jacket if I could afford it directly.”
Katharine looked at her and the colour rose a little in her face.
“Mamma looked at me,” she said, “when I asked her about it, and said in her slow way, ‘It would cost a great deal. Your cousin has not one.’ And then, Emmy, I said, I supposed that I – that mamma had more money than Aunt Ellen – and so – ”
“So you might get one. Of course, Kitty, don’t blush about it,” said Emberance kindly. “I shan’t be jealous.”
“But,” said Katharine, “mamma looked at me and the tears came into her eyes, and she said, as if she hated me, ‘So you can enjoy pleasures your cousin does not share,’ and went away.”
“That was very hard on you, Kate,” said Emberance warmly. “Aunt Mary should not have said so. Never mind, let us go in presently and talk about jackets, and I’ll tell her I have some seal-skin trimming at home quite good. I don’t want a new jacket.”
Katharine threw her arms round her cousin and kissed her with an odd sense of gratitude.
“Dear, dear Emmy, I should like you to have one too,” she said. “When I am twenty-one I’ll give you one.”
“Do,” said Emberance laughing, “and trim it with grey fur. What a funny little child you are, Kitty!”
“Emberance,” said Kate suddenly, “I never thought about it before. We are cousins. Why am I rich instead of you?”
“Because grandpapa left Kingsworth to your father and not to mine,” said Emberance turning her head away with a sudden stiffness.
“Why?” said Kate.
“I don’t quite know.”
“Was he the eldest?”
“No,” said Emberance reluctantly.
“Then, mamma thinks it wasn’t fair,” cried Kate with sudden quickness of apprehension.
“Nonsense, Kitty, it is all over and done with now, and can’t be altered. It is no concern of ours, and I am sure I am very happy; let us talk of something else. What did you think of Major Clare?”
“Oh, he was very entertaining, he told me a long story about a tiger, and he is going to give Minnie a necklace made of its teeth. It seems odd that Mr Clare’s brother should be so young. And I like Mr Alfred Deane, too. Do you think they’ll dance with us if we go to the ball?”
“Very likely.”
“Do you like dancing?”
“Oh very much indeed, I hope we shall go,” said Emberance with involuntary heartiness, and then the thought crossed her, that an engaged girl, with a lover at the Antipodes, ought not to be elated at the thought of going to a ball.
But Emberance was very simple and natural, and though the ball would have been finer if her Robin had been there (by the way Malcolm Mackenzie hated dancing,) she could not regard it wholly with indifference.
It had been much under discussion, Mrs Kingsworth having wished to refuse Mrs Deane’s invitation, and Kate naturally being equally in favour of accepting it, and indeed vehemently angry at being deprived of the pleasure. Every day seemed to Mrs Kingsworth to make it plainer that her view of Kate’s selfishness and frivolity was right. Every day the girl seemed to her a less likely person to sacrifice pleasure and self-importance to the highest sense of right; every day she felt that she could not tell her her wishes without the chance of bitter mortification. And so she was cold to Kate, and the girl who was inconsiderate and selfish from want of knowledge of other people’s views, opposed her more and more.
Emberance did not of course know that her aunt meditated a great act of restitution, but she perceived that she regarded her as an injured person, and having always heard her mother call her Aunt Mary a usurper, it came with a great surprise to her to find Aunt Mary of the same opinion. She perceived, too, how Katharine always appeared in a less amiable light to her mother than to any one else, how the frank caresses and innocent gaiety that made her a favourite among her friends, were chilled and repressed by the dread of criticism.
On this occasion as the two girls came back to the house together, Emberance said, —
“You should not be so vehement about gaieties in talking to Aunt Mary, Kitty; she thinks you care for nothing else.”
“But how can I help being vehement when I feel so?” said Katharine, opening her round eyes; “and I do care immensely about the ball.”
“So do I; but still one ought not to be frivolous, and you might show a little more interest in other things.”
“But Emmy,” said Kate, “I don’t think I have found out yet what sort of things I do like.”
Emberance laughed and desisted, a little ashamed of having suggested a prudential motive, when she saw how entirely it failed of being understood.
“I suppose,” she said, “that seeing all the neighbours here, reminds Aunt Mary of old times, and makes her sad. We ought to remember that.”
Kate looked a little impatient.
“That was so very long ago,” she said, as she ran into the house, and opened the drawing-room door.
Mrs Kingsworth was writing a note. “Katharine, I have accepted Mrs Deane’s invitation,” she said.
“Have you? Oh, mamma, that’s lovely of you!” cried Kate. “I never, never could have borne to stay at home.”
“Thank you, Aunt Mary, we did wish very much to go,” said Emberance.
“I suppose you did,” said Mrs Kingsworth. “Your uncle thought that I ought to take you, and he wishes to give you your dresses for the occasion.”
“Oh, how very kind!” cried Emberance, with an immediate sense of delightful provision for many a Fanchester gaiety, beyond the special occasion, while Kate danced about the room, without a care for the future.
The white dresses, with white heather and fern leaves, promised to be equally becoming to Kate’s vivid roses and chestnut locks, and to her cousin’s blush-rose fairness and slender grace; and though Emberance was far the handsomer girl of the two, Katharine’s chances were doubtless balanced by her heirship.
“I do hope I shall get some partners,” she said energetically, one day, when the two girls had gone to play lawn-tennis at the Vicarage. “I hope I shall dance every dance.”
“Will you dance with me, Miss Kingsworth?” said Fred Clare, a youth of eighteen, at home, in an interval between school and college.
“Oh, yes,” said Kate, heartily. “I should like to dance the first dance with you, because I can dance easily with you; and perhaps I shall not be able to manage it with strange partners.”
“Fred, Fred, this is too bad,” said his uncle. “You take an unfair advantage of your opportunities. Miss Kingsworth, is Fred to be the only one to obtain a promise beforehand?”
Major Clare was a handsome man of thirty, tall, dark-haired, and sunburnt, fulfilling very fairly a girl’s ideal of an Indian officer. He had a pleasant laugh in his eyes, and a touch of satire not quite so pleasant in his voice; and his elder brother the Vicar, and still more the Vicar’s wife, found him rather an incongruous element in the clerical household. Not that he was otherwise than perfectly decorous and well-conducted, or in the eyes of his relations other than a proper suitor for the heiress of Kingsworth, supposing his inclinations turned that way; but somehow under his influence, lawn-tennis, boating, and other amusements usurped a good deal more than their usual share of the family life. Fred, Minnie, and the younger ones were only too ready to follow his lead, and Rose, the eldest daughter, who was more soberly inclined, was cross because studies and parish work were neglected, and if she maintained some order, diminished the harmony of the family circle. But the Major had no other home, and did not seem at present inclined to dispose of himself elsewhere.
Katharine blushed at his remark, and said with a little restraint, —
“Oh, no, I should be very glad to dance with any one.”
“For how many balls will you retain so much humility?” said Major Clare, laughing. “Let me take advantage of it while it lasts, and ask for two dances.”
Kate assented, but she looked a little uncomfortable, and as a general move towards the lawn-tennis ground enabled her to speak to him apart, she said, —
“Major Clare, I did not mean to ask you to ask me to dance just now.”
Major Clare looked at her with a slight air of amusement. “What has made you think of that?” he said.
“Well, I think Emberance looked at me,” said the candid Kate.
“I should not have thought your cousin’s eyes so formidable.”
Something was added about the charm of simplicity, which Katharine was not quite sure whether she liked or not; but, enough consciousness was awakened to add a touch of excitement to her preparations for her first ball.