Beechcroft at Rockstone

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'But I had learnt Hermia,' she said, 'and I saw it was politeness, so
I wouldn't, and Anna Vanderkist is ever so much prettier, besides
being used to acting with Gerald. She did look perfectly lovely,
asleep on the moss in the scene Mrs. Grinstead painted and devised
for her! There was---'

'Oh! not only the prettiness, I don't care for that. One gets enough
of the artistic, but the fun---the dear fun.'

'There was fun enough, I am sure,' said Gillian. 'Puck was Felix---
Pearl's brother, you know---eleven years old, so clever, and an awful
imp---and he was Moon besides; but the worst of it was that his dog---
it was a funny rough terrier at the Vicarage---was so furious at the
lion, when Adrian was roaring under the skin, that nobody could hear,
and Adrian got frightened, as well he might, and crept out from under
it, screaming, and there fell the lion, collapsing flat in the middle
of the place. Even Theseus---Major Harewood, you know, who had tried
to be as grave as a judge, and so polite to the actors---could not
stand that interpolation, as he called it, of "the man in the moon---
not to say the dog," came down too soon---Why, Fly---'

For Fly was in such a paroxysm of laughter as to end in a violent fit
of coughing, and to bring Lady Rotherwood in, vexed and anxious.

'Oh, mother! it was only---it was only the lion's skin---' and off went
Fly, laughing and coughing again.

'I was telling her about the acting or Midsummer Night's Dream at
Vale Leston,' explained Gillian.

'I should not have thought that a suitable subject for the day,' said
the Marchioness gravely, and Fly's endeavour to say it was her fault
for asking about it was silenced by choking; and Gillian found
herself courteously dismissed in polite disgrace, and, as she felt,
not entirely without justice.

It was a great disappointment that Aunt Jane did not think it well to
take any of the young people to their home with her. As she said,
she did not believe that they would catch anything; but it was better
to be on the safe side, and she fully expected that they would spend
most of the day with Mysie and Fly.

'I wish I could go and talk to Kalliope, my dear,' she said to
Gillian; 'but I am afraid it must wait another day.'

'Oh, never mind,' said Gillian, as they bade each other good-night at
their doors; 'they don't know that I am come home, so they will not
expect me.'

CHAPTER XIII. ST. VALENTINE'S DAY

Miss Mohun came back in the dark after a long day, for once in her
life quite jaded, and explaining that the health-officer and the
landlord had been by no means agreed, and that nothing could be done
till Sir Jasper came home and decided whether to retain the house or
not.

All that she was clear about, and which she had telegraphed to Aden,
was, that there must be no going back to Silverfold for the present,
and she was prepared to begin lodging-hunting as soon as she received
an answer.

'And how have you got on?' she asked, thinking all looked rather
blank.

'We haven't been to see Fly,' broke out Valetta, 'though she went out
on the beach, and Mysie must not stay out after dark, for fear she
should cough.'

'Mysie says they are afraid of excitement,' said Gillian gloomily.

'Then you have seen nothing of the others?'

'Yes, I have seen Victoria, said Aunt Adeline, with a meaning smile.

Miss Mohun went up to take off her things, and Gillian followed her,
shutting the door with ominous carefulness, and colouring all over.

'Aunt Jane, I ought to tell you. A dreadful thing has happened!'

'Indeed, my dear! What?'

'I have had a valentine.'

'Oh!' repressing a certain inclination to laugh at the bathos from
the look of horror and shame in the girl's eyes.

'It is from that miserable Alexis! Oh, I know I brought it on
myself, and I have been so wretched and so ashamed all day.'

'Was it so very shocking! Let me see---'

'Oh! I sent it back at once by the post, in an envelope, saying,
"Sent by mistake."'

'But what was it like? Surely it was not one of the common shop
things?'

'Oh no; there was rather a pretty outline of a nymph or muse, or
something of that sort, at the top---drawn, I mean---and verses written
below, something about my showing a lodestar of hope, but I barely
glanced at it. I hated it too much.'

'I am sorry you were in such a hurry,' said Aunt Jane. 'No doubt it
was a shock; but I am afraid you have given more pain than it quite
deserved.'

'It was so impertinent!' cried Gillian, in astonished, shame-stricken
indignation.

'So it seems to you,' said her aunt, 'and it was very bad taste; but
you should remember that this poor lad has grown up in a stratum of
society where he may have come to regard this as a suitable
opportunity of evincing his gratitude, and perhaps it may be very
hard upon him to have this work of his treated as an insult.'

'But you would not have had me keep it and tolerate it?' exclaimed
Gillian.

'I can hardly tell without having seen it; but you might have done
the thing more civilly, through his sister, or have let me give it
back to him. However, it is too late now; I will make a point of
seeing Kalliope to-morrow, but in the meantime you really need not be
so horribly disgusted and ashamed.'

'I thought he was quite a different sort!'

'Perhaps, after all, your thoughts were not wrong; and he only
fancied, poor boy, that he had found a pretty way of thanking you.'

This did not greatly comfort Gillian, who might prefer feeling that
she was insulted rather than that she had been cruelly unkind, and
might like to blame Alexis rather than herself. And, indeed, in any
case, she had sense enough to perceive that this very unacceptable
compliment was the consequence of her own act of independence of more
experienced heads.

The next person Miss Mohun met was Fergus, lugging upstairs, step by
step, a monstrous lump of stone, into which he required her to look
and behold a fascinating crevice full of glittering spar.

'Where did you get that, Fergus?'

'Up off the cliff over the quarry.'

'Are you sure that you may have it?'

'Oh yes; White said I might. It's so jolly, auntie! Frank Stebbing
is gone away to the other shop in the Apennines, where the old boss
lives. What splendiferous specimens he must have the run of! Our
Stebbing says 'tis because Kally White makes eyes at him; but any
way, White has got to do his work while he's away, and go all the
rounds to see that things are right, so I go after him, and he lets
me have just what I like---such jolly crystals.'

'I am sure I hope it is all right.'

'Oh yes, I always ask him, as you told me; but he is awfully slow and
mopy and down in the mouth to-day. Stebbing says he is sweet upon
Gill; but I told him that couldn't be, White knew better. A
general's daughter, indeed! and Will remembers his father a
sergeant.'

'It is very foolish, Fergus. Say no more about it, for it is not
nice talk about your sister.'

'I'll lick any one who does,' said Fergus, bumping his stone up
another step.

Poor Aunt Jane! There was more to fall on her as soon as the door
was finally shut on the two rooms communicating with one another,
which the sisters called their own. Mrs. Mount's manipulations of
Miss Adeline's rich brown hair were endured with some impatience,
while Miss Mohun leant back in her chair in her shawl-patterned
dressing-gown, watching, with a sort of curious wonder and
foreboding, the restlessness that proved that something was in store,
and meantime somewhat lazily brushing out her own thinner darker
locks.

'You are tired, Miss Jane,' said the old servant, using the pet name
in private moments. 'You had better let me do your hair.'

'No, thank you, Fanny; I have very nearly done,' she said, marking
the signs of eagerness on her sister's part. 'Oh, by the bye, did
that hot bottle go down to Lilian Giles?'

'Yes, ma'am; Mrs. Giles came up for it.'

'Did she say whether Lily was well enough to see Miss Gillian?'

Mrs. Mount coughed a peculiar cough that her mistresses well knew to
signify that she could tell them something they would not like to
hear, if they chose to ask her, and it was the younger who put the
question---

'Fanny, did she say anything?'

'Well, Miss Ada, I told her she must be mistaken, but she stuck to
it, though she said she never would have breathed a word if Miss
Gillian had not come back again, but she thought you should know it.'

'Know what?' demanded Jane.

'Well, Miss Jane, she should say 'tis the talk that Miss Gillian,
when you have thought her reading to the poor girl, has been running
down to the works---and 'tis only the ignorance of them that will
talk, but they say it is to meet a young man. She says, Mrs. Giles
do, that she never would have noticed such talk, but that the young
lady did always seem in a hurry, only just reading a chapter, and
never stopping to talk to poor Lily after it; and she has seen her
herself going down towards the works, instead of towards home, ma'am.
And she said she could not bear that reading to her girl should be
made a colour for such doings.'

'Certainly not, if it were as she supposes,' said Miss Mohun, sitting
very upright, and beating her own head vigorously with a very prickly
brush; 'but you may tell her, Fanny, that I know all about it, and
that her friend is Miss White, who you remember spent an evening
here.'

Fanny's good-humoured face cleared up. 'Yes, ma'am, I told her that
I was quite sure that Miss Gillian would not go for to do anything
wrong, and that it could be easy explained; but people has tongues,
you see.'

'You were quite right to tell us, Fanny. Good-night.'

'People has tongues!' repeated Adeline, when that excellent person
had disappeared. 'Yes, indeed, they have. But, Jenny, do you really
mean to say that you know all about this?'

'Yes, I believe so.'

'Oh, I wish you had been at home to-day when Victoria came in. It
really is a serious business.'

'Victoria! What has she to do with it? I should have thought her
Marchioness-ship quite out of the region of gossip, though, for that
matter, grandees like it quite as much as other people.'

'Don't, Jane , you know it does concern her through companionship for
Phyllis, and she was very kind.'

'Oh yes, I can see her sailing in, magnificently kind from her
elevation. But how in the world did she manage to pick up all this
in the time?' said poor Jane, tired and pestered into the sharpness
of her early youth.

'Dear Jenny, I wish I had said nothing to-night. Do wait till you
are rested.'

'I am not in the least tired, and if I were, do you think I could
sleep with this half told?'

'You said you knew.'

'Then it is only about Gillian being so silly as to go down to Miss
White's office at the works to look over the boy's Greek exercises.'

'You don't mean that you allowed it!'

'No, Gillian's impulsiveness, just like her mother's, began it, as a
little assertion of modern independence; but while she was away that
little step from brook to river brought her to the sense that she had
been a goose, and had used me rather unfairly, and so she came and
confessed it all to me on the way home from the station the first
morning after her return. She says she had written it all to her
mother from the first.'

'I wonder Lily did not telegraph to put a stop to it.'

'Do you suppose any mother, our poor old Lily especially, can marry a
couple of daughters without being slightly frantic! Ten to one she
never realised that this precious pupil was bigger than Fergus. But
do tell me what my Lady had heard, and how she heard it.'

'You remember that her governess, Miss Elbury, has connections in the
place.'

'"The most excellent creature in the world." Oh yes, and she spent
Sunday with them. So that was the conductor.'

'I can hardly say that Miss Elbury was to be blamed, considering that
she had heard the proposal about Valetta! It seems that that High
School class-mistress, Miss Mellon, who had the poor child under her,
is her cousin.'

'Oh dear!'

'It is exactly what I was afraid of when we decided on keeping
Valetta at home. Miss Mellon told all the Caesar story in plainly
the worst light for poor Val, and naturally deduced from her removal
that she was the most to blame.'

'Whereas it was Miss Mellon herself! But nobody could expect
Victoria to see that, and no doubt she is quite justified in not
wishing for the child in her schoolroom! But, after all, Valetta is
only a child; it won't hurt her to have this natural recoil of
consequences, and her mother will be at home in three weeks' time.
It signifies much more about Gillian. Did I understand you that the
gossip about her had reached those august ears?'

'Oh yes, Jane, and it is ever so much worse. That horrid Miss Mellon
seems to have told Miss Elbury that Gillian has a passion for low
company, that she is always running after the Whites at the works,
and has secret meetings with the young man in the garden on Sunday,
while his sister carries on her underhand flirtation with another
youth, Frank Stebbing, I suppose. It really was too preposterous,
and Victoria said she had no doubt from the first that there was
exaggeration, and had told Miss Elbury so; but still she thought
Gillian must have been to blame. She was very nice about it, and
listened to all my explanation most kindly, as to Gillian's interest
in the Whites, and its having been only the sister that she met, but
plainly she is not half convinced. I heard something about a letter
being left for Gillian, and really, I don't know whether there may
not be more discoveries to come. I never felt before the force of
our dear father's saying, apropos of Rotherwood himself, that no one
knows what it is to lose a father except those who have the care of
his children.'

'Whatever Gillian did was innocent and ladylike, and nothing to be
ashamed of,' said Aunt Jane stoutly; 'of that I am sure. But I
should like to be equally sure that she has not turned the head of
that poor foolish young man, without in the least knowing what she
was about. You should have seen her state of mind at his sending her
a valentine, which she returned to him, perfectly ferociously, at
once, and that was all the correspondence somebody seems to have
smelt out.'

'A valentine! Gillian must have behaved very ill to have brought
that upon herself! Oh dear! I wish she had never come here; I wish
Lily could have stayed at home, instead of scattering her children
about the world. The Rotherwoods will never get over it.'

'That's the least part of the grievance, in my eyes,' said her
sister. 'It won't make a fraction of difference to the dear old
cousin Rotherwood; and as to my Lady, it is always a liking from the
teeth outwards.'

'How can you say so! I am sure she has always been most cordial.'

'Most correct, if you please. Oh, did she say anything about Mysie?'

'She said nothing but good of Mysie; called her delightful, and
perfectly good and trustworthy, said they could never have got so
well through Phyllis's illness without her, and that they only wished
to keep her altogether.'

'I dare say, to be humble companion to my little lady, out of the way
of her wicked sisters.'

'Jane!'

'My dear, I don't think I can stand any more defence of her just now!
No, she is an admirable woman, I know. That's enough. I really must
go to bed, and consider which is to be faced first, she or Kalliope.'

It was lucky that Miss Mohun could exist without much sleep, for she
was far too much worried for any length of slumber to visit her that
night, though she was afoot as early as usual. She thought it best
to tell Gillian that Lady Rotherwood had heard some foolish reports,
and that she was going to try to clear them up, and she extracted an
explicit account as to what the extent of her intercourse with the
Whites had been, which was given willingly, Gillian being in a very
humble frame, and convinced that she had acted foolishly. It
surprised her likewise that Aunt Adeline, whom she had liked the
best, and thought the most good-natured, was so much more angry with
her than Aunt Jane, who, as she felt, forgave her thoroughly, and was
only anxious to help her out of the scrape she had made for herself.

Miss Mohun thought her best time for seeing Kalliope would be in the
dinner-hour, and started accordingly in the direction of the marble
works. Not far from them she met that young person walking quickly
with one of her little brothers.

'I was coming to see you,' Miss Mohun said. 'I did not know that you
went home in the middle of the day.'

'My mother has been so unwell of late that I do not like to be
entirely out of reach all day,' returned Kalliope, who certainly
looked worn and sorrowful; 'so I manage to run home, though it is but
for a quarter of an hour.'

'I will not delay you, I will walk with you,' and when Petros had
been dismissed, 'I am afraid my niece has not been quite the friend
to you that she intended.'

'Oh, Miss Mohun, do you know all about it? It is such a relief! I
have felt so guilty towards you, and yet I did not know what to do.'

'I have never thought that the concealment was your fault,' said
Jane.

'I did think at first that you knew,' said Kalliope, 'and when I
found that was not the case, I suppose I should have insisted on your
being told; but I could not bear to seem ungrateful, and my brother
took such extreme delight in his lessons and Miss Merrifield's
kindness, that---that I could not bear to do what might prevent them.
And now, poor fellow, it shows how wrong it was, since he has
ventured on that unfortunate act of presumption, which has so
offended her. Oh, Miss Mohun, he is quite broken-hearted.'

'I am afraid Gillian was very discourteous. I was out, or it should
not have been done so unkindly. Indeed, in the shock, Gillian did
not recollect that she might be giving pain.'

'Yes, yes! Poor Alexis! He has not had any opportunity of
understanding how different things are in your class of life, and he
thought it would show his gratitude and---and---Oh, he is so
miserable!' and she was forced to stop to wipe away her tears.

'Poor fellow! But it was one of those young men's mistakes that are
got over and outgrown, so you need not grieve over it so much, my
dear. My brother-in-law is on his way home, and I know he means to
see what can be done for Alexis, for your father's sake.'

'Oh, Miss Mohun, how good you are! I thought you could never forgive
us. And people do say such shocking things.'

'I know they do, and therefore I am going to ask you to tell me
exactly what intercourse there has been with Gillian.'

Kalliope did so, and Miss Mohun was struck with the complete
accordance of the two accounts, and likewise by the total absence of
all attempt at self-justification on Miss White's part. If she had
in any way been weak, it had been against her will, and her position
had been an exceedingly difficult one. She spoke in as guarded a
manner as possible; but to such acute and experienced ears as those
of her auditor, it was impossible not to perceive that, while Gillian
had been absolutely simple, and unconscious of all but a kind act of
patronage, the youth's imagination had taken fire, and he had become
her ardent worshipper; with calf-love, no doubt, but with a distant,
humble adoration, which had, whether fortunately or unfortunately,
for once found expression in the valentine so summarily rejected.
The drawing and the composition had been the work of many days, and
so much against his sister's protest that it had been sent without
her knowledge, after she had thought it given up. She had only
extracted the confession through his uncontrollable despair, which
made him almost unfit to attend to his increased work, perhaps by his
southern nature exaggerated.

'The stronger at first, the sooner over,' thought Miss Mohun; but she
knew that consolation betraying her comprehension would not be safe.

One further discovery she made, namely, that on Sunday, Alexis,
foolish lad, had been so wildly impatient at their having had no
notice from Gillian since her return, that he had gone to the garden
to explain, as he said, his sister's non-appearance there, since she
was detained by her mother's illness. It was the only time he had
ever been there, and he had met no one; but Miss Mohun felt a sinking
of heart at the foreboding that the mauvaises langues would get hold
of it.

The only thing to be decided on was that there must be a suspension
of intercourse, at any rate, till Lady Merrifield's arrival; not in
unkindness, but as best for all. And, indeed, Kalliope had no time
to spare from her mother, whose bloated appearance, poor woman, was
the effect of long-standing disease.

The daughter's heart was very full of her, and evidently it would
have been a comfort to discuss her condition with this kind friend;
but no more delay was possible; and Miss Mohun had to speed home, in
a quandary how much or how little about Alexis's hopeless passion
should be communicated to its object, and finally deciding that
Gillian had better only be informed that he had been greatly
mortified by the rude manner of rejection, but that the act itself
proved that she must abstain from all renewal of the intercourse till
her parents should return.

But that was not all the worry of the day. Miss Mohun had still to
confront Lady Rotherwood, and, going as soon as the early dinner was
over, found the Marchioness resting after an inspection of houses in
Rockquay. She did not like hotels, she said, and she thought the top
of the cliff too bleak for Phyllis, so that they must move nearer the
sea if the place agreed with her at all, which was doubtful. Miss
Mohun was pretty well convinced that the true objection was the
neighbourhood of Beechcroft Cottage. She said she had come to give
some explanation of what had been said to her sister yesterday.

'Oh, my dear Jane, Adeline told me all about it yesterday. I am very
sorry for you to have had such a charge, but what could you expect of
girls cast about as they have been, always with a marching regiment?'

'I do not think Mysie has given you any reason to think her ill
brought up.'

'A little uncouth at first, but that was all. Oh, no! Mysie is a
dear little girl. I should be very glad to have her with Phyllis
altogether, and so would Rotherwood. But she was very young when Sir
Jasper retired.'

'And Valetta was younger. Poor little girl! She was naughty, but I
do not think she understood the harm of what she was doing.'

Lady Rotherwood smiled.

'Perhaps not; but she must have been deeply involved, since she was
the one amongst all the guilty to be expelled.'

'Oh, Victoria! Was that what you heard?'

'Miss Elbury heard it from the governess she was under. Surely she
was the only one not permitted to go up for the examination and
removed.'

'True, but that was our doing---no decree of the High School. Her own
governess is free now, and her mother on her way, and we thought she
had better not begin another term. Yes, Victoria, I quite see that
you might doubt her fitness to be much with Phyllis. I am not asking
for that---I shall try to get her own governess to come at once; but
for the child's sake and her mother's I should like to get this
cleared up. May I see Miss Elbury?'

'Certainly; but I do not think you will find that she has
exaggerated, though of course her informant may have done so.

Miss Elbury was of the older generation of governesses, motherly,
kind, but rather prim and precise, the accomplished element being
supplied with diplomaed foreigners, who, since Lady Phyllis's failure
in health, had been dispensed with. She was a good and sensible
woman, as Jane could see, in spite of the annoyance her report had
occasioned, and it was impossible not to assent when she said she had
felt obliged, under the circumstances, to mention to Lady Rotherwood
what her cousin had told her.

'About both my nieces,' said Jane. 'Yes, I quite understand. But,
though of course the little one's affair is the least important, we
had better get to the bottom of that first, and I should like to tell
you what really happened.'

She told her story, and how Valetta had been tempted and then bullied
into going beyond the first peeps, and finding she did not produce
the impression she wished, she begged Miss Elbury to talk it over
with the head-mistress. It was all in the telling. Miss Elbury's
young cousin, Miss Mellon, had been brought under rebuke, and into
great danger of dismissal, through Valetta Merrifield's lapse; and it
was no wonder that she had warned her kinswoman against 'the horrid
little deceitful thing,' who had done so much harm to the whole
class. 'Miss Mohun was running about over the whole place, but not
knowing what went on in her own house!' And as to Miss White, Miss
Elbury mentioned at last, though with some reluctance, that it was
believed that she had been on the point of a private marriage, and of
going to Italy with young Stebbing, when her machinations were
detected, and he was forced to set off without her.

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