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Chapter II. Dick.

‘I Should be sorry to have such a temper as General Hawke’s,’ said Dick, looking contentedly round at his aunt, who had established her spoilt boy in the pleasantest place by the prettiest window in her drawing-room. From his low chair there Dick could look over the green slopes and trees which made the upper sides of the Combe. The Penyr was shut out of sight by a rocky bank opposite, running parallel with that on which the houses were built; but there was a long expanse of the Mora to be seen, glowing with deeper and more brilliant colours as the sunset approached. All the water was alive with ships and boats; old men-of-war laid up, steamers gliding swiftly by: the houses and spires of Morebay on the distant shore shone like gold, and the hills beyond stood out faint and clear against the south-east horizon.

Miss Northcote’s long old-fashioned room, with its two south windows, was in shadow. She herself sat away from the window, for she cared more to look at Dick just now than at the view, and he was in the fullest light as he sat with his head thrown back and his arm on the sill, quite in his right place and quite happy. She supposed he was not handsome; he never had been that; his face was too square, his nose was far from being classical. But nobody could help liking the thick brown wavy hair that clustered over his low broad forehead, or those good pleasant eyes of his, or could deny that the beard and the sun-brown and the general manliness of his looks made up for the disappointment that his nose and mouth had formerly been to his friends. Miss page 8 Northcote belonged to a handsome family, who therefore thought themselves entitled to be critical, and she was very glad indeed to be able to approve of Dick’s appearance, now that he was come back to her. On the whole he was very much altered for the better; his slow heavy manner was partly gone, and he had been talking in the nicest way about his grandfather and grandmother, who had died within a few months of each other, not long after he went out. There was a pause, and then Dick began about General Hawke’s temper.

‘Is it so bad?’ said Miss Northcote.

‘Horrid, I am sure. A regular old Turk. Never mind: you shall go and call there with me, for that poor girl’s sake. I promised her that you would. He might have behaved rather differently, after ten years. However, I forgive him.’

‘Explain to me about the girl,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘Did you make friends with her in the train? She looked wretched, poor thing. Who was that formidable person with her?’

‘A governess from the school. She is going back almost directly—a good riddance. Well, we all got in at Paddington. I jumped in at the last moment, and she looked daggers at me; she thought they were going to have the carriage to themselves. I thought the girl seemed very unhappy, so of course I did what civil things I could, without pushing. The governess kept awake as long as she could; but it was very hot, and at last she dropped off, and after we left Bristol the girl and I talked a great deal, at intervals. We found out that we were going to the same place, and she was charmed to find how well I knew Pensand Castle, and all the places and people about here. She has been at school all this time—horribly strict—and she thinks being at General Hawke’s may be better than that, though she does not like him at all. I am so sorry for her,’ said Dick, in page 9 the heartiest manner. ‘She is a little lame—perhaps you noticed it—and her hands have no flesh on them at all, and you saw how pale and sallow and skinny her face was, with those big speaking eyes that somehow make one’s heart ache with their sadness.’

Miss Northcote felt as if she hardly knew her nephew well enough to laugh at him, so she controlled her amusement, and said sympathisingly,

‘Poor thing! how very sad!’

‘So I thought,’ said Dick. ‘I tried to comfort her, you know. I told her the General was sure to be good to her, and I talked to her about you. I told her you were an angel, aunt Kate, so you must keep up the character. You’ll go and see her, won’t you? Never mind the General.’

‘But the General himself invited me,’ said Miss Northcote, smiling. ‘So I think I should have gone, even if you had not been in the question at all.’

‘O, very well, that’s all right. If you take her in hand, I shall not mind so much. Poor little thing!’ said Dick thoughtfully. ‘She is so young, and so weak, one can’t help pitying her.’

‘How old is she? Did she tell you?’

‘No. Fifteen or sixteen, I suppose.’

‘Nineteen at least, I should say.’

‘You don’t mean it? “Why, Mrs. Herbert, my partner’s wife, is only one-and-twenty, and she certainly looks ten years older than Miss Ashley. Nineteen! Is it possible!’

‘Of course I have no more means of knowing than you have. You found out her name, it seems.’

‘I heard it,’ said Dick.

There was a pause, during which he stared out of the window, and Miss Northcote watched him as she sat with some work in her hands. If she had been fond of moralising, she would have said that this relationship of page 10 aunt and nephew was a very pleasant one. She and Dick had always been friends, always been quite at home together: she had helped him out of his scrapes, entered into his pleasures, laughed him out of any nonsense that came into his young head, and tried conscientiously to direct his tastes. But Dick had not been quite satisfactory. He was a charming boy at home, but a terrible one at school—idle, lazy, and mischievous to a degree. He had left school at eighteen, without a good word from his master, and had spent a year at home at St. Denys. There he made several undesirable acquaintances, particularly one family with a young lady in it, who caused so much anxiety to his relations that they decided on sending him out to an old friend who had a farm in New Zealand. There Dick had quite retrieved his character; the life suited him, and the accounts of him that reached home were better and better each year. The obnoxious girl had long since married; and though her husband was dead, and she was living again with her father at St. Denys, Dick’s aunt did not feel much anxiety; she thought he had quite forgotten her. At any rate, no second thoughts seemed to be troubling Dick’s brain that evening, as he sat and looked out over the calm blue waters of the Mora.

‘I call this peace,’ he said presently. ‘Here, you know, one could read poetry. I used to read lots when I was at home that year—do you remember? Tennyson—I thought there was nobody like him. Afterwards, at Auckland I thought he was all stuff—but since I have been with the Herberts I begin to understand him. Herbert says it is just his perfection that makes it difficult to appreciate him. Do you see? One takes more fancy to things that are rugged, and have ups and downs and faults in them: but his things are splendidly cut like a gem, every word in its right place, the thoughts and the words just belonging to each other, and not too much of page 11 either. O, he’s magnificent. I used to read him down in the Combe, and now I mean to do it again.’

‘But not to meet Flora Lancaster there, I trust,’ thought Miss Northcote, remembering those twilight appointments with a pang as if they were yesterday, and the late half-hours she used to spend at that very window, listening for his slow reluctant steps coming up over the stones.

‘There are plenty of old friends hoping to see you,’ she said. ‘You must go over to Carweston one of these days. Mrs. Strange was so glad to hear that you were coming.’

‘To be sure. Very good of her. Is Anthony Strange as mad as ever?’

‘Yes, and as nice as ever.’

‘Ah, aunt Kate, he was always a flame of yours. What a fool he has been!’ said Dick, smiling.

Here their talk was interrupted by a message from an old sick man in the village: he was taken worse, and would Miss Northcote come down and see him? The sun had set, and the soft lovely twilight was stealing over everything, when she and Dick left the house together.

‘You don’t often walk about by yourself after sunset, I suppose?’ said Dick.

‘Now and then. Are you come home to keep me in order? You will find it a hard task, Dick. I am so used to liberty now; and you must remember that every creature in the place knows me.’

‘But when I was young,’ said Dick, ‘there were often ragamuffins from Morebay hanging about here. And I remember that you used to object very much to my being out after dark.’

‘That was quite a different thing. You were sixteen, and I’m sixty.’

‘A very well-preserved old woman,’ said Dick, laughing. page 12 ‘Take my arm, ma’am. You will certainly trip on these stones.’

Old Fenner lived half-way down one of the lanes, a steep winding one, partly overarched by trees. He and his granddaughter inhabited two small low rooms at the top of an old house that was let in flats.

Miss Northcote turned in at the open door, and mounted the broad, clean, uneven stairs, leaving her nephew outside. He lighted a cigar and walked up and down. It was so pleasant to breathe native air again, to see the purple shadows advancing and the lights beginning to flash out on the old river, to hear the familiar accent of the people as they talked in the streets down below, that it never occurred to him to be bored by his aunt’s charitable doings. Aunt Kate was always running after the poor people. She spoilt them, of course, but that had never mattered to Dick, as long as she continued to spoil him. And now, with his older ideas, he was inclined to think that she was quite right. They were very much to be pitied, though certainly not for living in St. Denys, which to him was still the prettiest and most homelike place in the world. How jolly it used to be in those old times, when all the boatmen were his friends, and he knew the rivers as well as any of them!

‘I’ll pull aunt Kate round to Pensand to-morrow,’ Dick decided. ‘The tide will be right in the afternoon.’

He had strolled some yards up the lane, as far as the shadow of the trees. As he turned to come back, advancing slowly into the clearer light, a lady, who was climbing the hill with some fatigue and trouble, stopped short as she passed him.

‘Dick! Mr. Northcote—I don’t think I am mistaken.’

‘O, Miss Cardew!’ said Dick, quite taken by surprise, and beginning to blush, hardened old traveller as he was.

‘Mrs. Lancaster, please,’ she said gently.

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‘Yes; I beg your pardon. I heard, of course, but I forgot for the moment,’ said Dick, taking her hand, and squeezing it with quite sufficient emphasis.

It was a very pretty face that was looking up at him in the twilight, fair, with soft blue eyes, and the red-gold hair that the old painters loved—the face of Dick’s first love, for whom he had dared his grandfather’s anger and his aunt’s alternate laughing and remonstrance. She had been everything to him for a few months then—all the heroines of romance rolled into one; and she, a clever ambitious girl, four or five years older than himself, whose relations were nobodies, had seriously thought of marrying him, simply because he was a gentleman. Aunt Kate, by some wise strategy of hers, had prevented any sentimental parting, at which Dick might have sworn eternal constancy; and Flora Cardew had soon after consoled herself with one of the curates. They went away at once from St. Denys, and report said it was not a happy marriage. Anyhow, the curate died within a few years, and Flora, having quarrelled with his relations, came back to her own. She now lived quietly at home, and was kind to her old father and mother. No one in St. Denys liked her, and yet no one had much to say against her; perhaps, as she herself calmly remarked, it was jealousy. One attraction in Flora was, however, that she never seemed conscious of her own beauty. Her eyes, as they looked up curiously, gently, almost tenderly into Dick’s face, were not asking for any admiration. They only said, ‘How we are both changed! but you, my old friend, are very much improved, and I should hardly have known you.’

All the confusion was on Dick’s side. In the moment of dead silence, as they stood there looking at each other, he caught himself wishing several bad things about Mrs. Lancaster. Did she suppose he was the same fool that went away ten years ago? Then he page 14 repented a little, collected himself, and hoped she was quite well. Mrs. Lancaster sighed.

‘Not very well, thanks. I see you think I am sadly altered. We can’t be young for ever. I daresay I look like a ghost to-night; but I have been shopping at Morebay all day long, and this hill is such a drag when one comes home tired.’

A great pity for weak things was one of the strong points in Dick’s imperfect character. He looked down, saw that she was carying a basket and a large parcel, and took them out of her hands at once, quite with the authority of an old friend.

‘O, never mind—thank you,’ said Mrs. Lancaster faintly.

‘How can you attempt to carry such a load up this hill?’ said Dick.

‘There was nobody else. Our little maid was too busy to come down and meet me. But I can’t let you do it. You are waiting for your aunt; and you only came to-day.’

‘My aunt is safe for ten minutes at least. Yes, I got here this evening. Did you come up by the boat?’

‘I did. It was so lovely on the water. I was thinking of you as I came up, because I heard you were expected. Do you remember frightening me so terribly one night?’

‘What, by dropping into the water down at Morebay—awkward ass!’ said Dick, with a slight laugh. ‘But you were not frightened; you laughed at me.’

‘O, but indeed I was. I wonder now you were not drowned, or did not strike your head against something. I have been nervous at stepping on board ever since. Frightened! how little you knew!’

‘Well, it might have been a bad affair, as I was out without leave. However, as no harm came of it, suppose we forget it. Except Mrs. Cardew’s kindness in drying me so thoroughly before she sent me home. What a plague I must have been! How are Captain and Mrs. Cardew?’

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‘They are very well. They will be glad to hear that you have not forgotten them.’

‘One does not forget old friends so easily.’

‘Don’t you think so? Then I hope you will prove it by coming to see us.’

‘I shall be most happy,’ said Dick, now quite secure of having conquered himself, and placed his old acquaintance on a thoroughly unsentimental footing.

Mrs. Lancaster’s behaviour was as good as could be expected from a born flirt, and a good deal of Dick’s security was based on being pretty well able to meet her on her own ground. He had it in him to become one of those idle wasters of the best thing in this world, and probably might have done so had he stayed in England; but the truth and freedom of his colonial life had both hardened and softened his heart in the right way; and I think one may say for Dick, at this time, that he only flirted with flirts.

When she had got the promise of a visit, Flora became much more cheerful, and discretely avoiding old times, asked many intelligent questions about New Zealand and his doings there.

They turned to the right, still strolling slowly up the hill, and stopped at the iron gate of a little square garden. Here Dick gave up the parcels; but after he had opened the gate and shut it again with the old familiar catch, there were still a few last words to be said, and he stood leaning with his elbows on the top bar, the stars coming out over his head, the air full of roses and jessamine, till one would certainly have fancied that those ten years had vanished like a dream. At last came the final goodnight, with a very cordial shake of the hand; and Dick, remembering his aunt, walked off in a great hurry.

‘As silly as ever, but very nice,’ was Mrs. Lancaster’s verdict, as she went into the house.

Miss Northcote had come down-stairs, and was standing page 16 on the doorstep with Polly Fenner, the old man’s granddaughter, looking up and down the lane for Dick. Polly, a rosy girl of eighteen, thought it great fun, and proposed setting off to hunt for him.

‘He’ll be tired of waiting, and gone home,’ she suggested. ‘I’ll be proud to walk up with you, ma’am.’

‘No, Polly, thank you. Here he is, I think.’

Dick came striding down the hill with the haste of a bad conscience.

‘I hope you have not been waiting long,’ he said politely.

‘O, no. Good-night, Polly;’ and Miss Northcote stepped down into the road and took his offered arm.

‘It was good of you to hurry back,’ she said, as they walked away. ‘Were you visiting some of your old haunts?’

‘No; not exactly. I met an old friend, and walked home with her. Flora Cardew: odd, wasn’t it?’

‘Mrs. Lancaster.’

‘Hang Lancaster! I beg his pardon, poor fellow. I forgot he was dead,’ Dick added penitently. ‘But I am always forgetting his existence. I never saw him, you know. He came the very day I sailed.’

‘Yes, I believe he did,’ said Miss Northcote.

She would not either laugh or remonstrate now. Dick was his own master, and if he chose to be so terribly foolish, there was no help for it. Any remark might only make things worse. But her heart sank very sadly as she walked up the hill, leaning on her nephew’s strong arm. She need not have hoped that Mrs. Lancaster would lose the opportunity;—still she might have waited a few days, Miss Northcote thought, before she pounced upon him. The very first evening—it was almost too hard. Aunts, if they are unmarried, ought to be the least selfish of human beings; and to do Kate Northcote justice, though Dick was the only page 17 relation she had left, she would have given him up without a moment’s thought of her own loss to any one she felt to be worthy of him. But not to Flora Lancaster!

Though his aunt said nothing, Dick understood that the subject was not a welcome one. He thought she need not be afraid, but did not tell her so. He began to talk rather eagerly about his plan for pulling up the Penyr to Pensand Combe, and then went back to his companion in the train. He felt sure she could not be more than sixteen.

‘Well, you may be right, Dick,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘I have not talked to her. But I did not think it such a very young face.’

‘But she had none of the ways of a grown-up person. She was just like a schoolgirl. I wonder how she will get on at Pensand. I suspect the life there will be dreadful to her, for she told me she cared for nothing so much as being free. And General Hawke makes everybody in his house go on by clockwork. Randal used to tell me so. He never could bear it. By the bye, where is Randal?’

‘In London, I think,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘He is here sometimes. He grows more like the General in some things, but he never will be so good-looking.’

‘What a brute he was!’ said Dick reflectively.

‘Was he, Dick? We always look upon him as a respectable character.’

‘Do you? Well, he may be respectable now. But I used to hear things about him in the village that I never told you. I’m not going to rake them up now, so peace be with him. You will go to-morrow afternoon, aunt Kate? We ought to start at half-past three.’

‘Yes; I should like to go very much. You used to be a good boatman.’

‘That’s settled, then.’