CHAPTER I.

How Bee Goode, of Boston, Came to England.

The stage coach from Plymouth to London had left two passengers at Liddon, a little manufacturing town in a dimple of the great chalk downs of Dorsetshire. Dobson, the coachman with the big carriage from Haslem Towers looked at them perplexed. His orders from his master, Colonel Sir John Haslem, were to meet the stage. Vere Haslem, Sir John's fifteen-year-old grandson and heir, had gone to Plymouth to meet his cousin, Beatrice Haslem, from York, in the mysterious far-off Canadas. But Vere was not to be seen, and there only alighted from the coach an enormous negress with a scarlet and orange turban and a small white girl whom Dobson did not notice for a minute. He was wondering in horror if this awful-looking savage could possibly be his master's granddaughter. He knew that Mary Haslem had made a runaway marriage with an unknown American twenty years before, and that her father had sworn never to forgive her. But she and her husband were dead, and he had consented that the Canadian guardians of her youngest child, Beatrice, should send her to him, and call her by her mother's name of Haslem.

Dobson had a vague idea that all Americans were Red Indians, and thinking that this black woman might be a variation of the race, he touched his cap in some trepidation, saying questioningly: "Miss Beatrice Haslem?"

"I am Miss Bee Goode, of Boston," said the child by the side of the woman, in a composed, distinct voice. Dobson looked at her; a slip of an eleven-year-old girl, pale-faced beside the rosy English children, and wearing the miniature woman's dress which was the fashion of the day--a green stuff gown, short-sleeved and cut low at the neck, with its waist-line under her arms, and a straight, narrow skirt. On her yellow curls she wore a very large straw bonnet trimmed with flowers, and tied under her chin with huge bows of ribbon. Long black lace mitts and a handbag of gay flowered chintz completed her costume.

"She's Haslem all right--furren too, though," thought Dobson embarrassed by her unchildlike, shrewd, gray eyes. Then he said aloud, "I was to meet Mr. Vere, and Miss Beatrice Haslem, Miss."

"I do not like my cousin Vere," said the child calmly, "and he stayed behind at Plymouth. Also my name is Goode, and unless you call me by it I will not go with you to see my grandfather."

Dobson looked helpless, and a boy came forward from among the interested spectators of the little scene. He looked about fifteen, with a sturdy figure, and honest, good-tempered face. He wore a tall black silk hat, and a man's suit of bright blue cloth, the coat with long flapping tails and a very high stiff collar. "Dobson," he said, "I have the pony here, and if Miss Bee is willing I can drive her to the Towers, while you take her maid and the baggage. And Dobson, you needn't mention Mr. Vere not being here." Then turning to Bee he added formally, "I am Ned Edgar, at your service, Miss Bee, I think you may have heard of me."

Ned had thought Bee very homely till he spoke to her; then he saw her eyes grow soft in an instant, and her cold little face flashed with smiles that made her fascinating, if not lovely. "Oh, I know your father," she exclaimed, "He is Mr. Edgar, fur-trader, of York in Upper Canada. I love him and Mrs. Edgar, your step-mother. I have lived with them since my mother died; and I was hoping to meet you when I came here."

So Ned drove Bee through the narrow streets of the town, pointing out the old house in its big garden, where he lived with Dr. Brown, his dead mother's father. "He is a Friend," said Ned, "but as the Friends have no meeting house here we go to the Methodist chapel--that's it there--we call it Noah's Ark."

"I know Mr. Edgar went to Canada when you were born and your mother died," said Bee. "But he never said you were a Methodist; he don't like them at all."

"I'm not a professor yet," Ned answered, then had some trouble to explain to Bee what it meant. The woollen workers of Liddon were almost all Methodists, while out of the town the gentry and their farmer tenants went to the Church of England, the two classes living entirely separate lives. Ned went to school with Vere Haslem, and a friendship had grown between the boys, partly because it was discouraged by the elders on both sides. To Sir John, Ned was a tradesman's son, brought up in the unspeakable religion of the Quakers, and a most unfit companion for a Haslem, all of whom were "soldiers and gentlemen". While in straight-laced Liddon to become a professor--to profess conversion--was the one aim in life. They took their religion very seriously; classes, preachings, and quarterly meetings were their only dissipations, and many heads were shaken over Ned's friendship with handsome, idle Vere, brought up to think a gentleman's business was war, his amusements heavy drinking and hunting, and his only religion a soldier's code of honour. And Liddon groaned over Sundays at the Towers, spent in cock-fighting, hunting or cards, winding up with the dinner, where often every man, including the parish rector, got drunk.

Ned wondered how bright, odd, Bee would get on with her autocratic grandfather; then asked how it happened Vere was not with her.

"I detest the creature," said Bee decidedly. "He laughed at my name, and went with some horrid boys to a cock-fight. And as it was time for the stage to start I came on with Mammy Chloe and left him."

"Vere generally wriggles out of his scrapes," said Ned, "and I expect he posted up after you, but Sir John will be very angry with him if he knows he didn't obey him and come with you."

"I don't tell tales," said Bee contemptuously; then she exclaimed in delighted wonder, for they had left the town, and driven through great gates into a wooded park.

It was Haslem Towers, Ned told her, and Bee forgot to keep up her air of American indifference to all things English as they drove up the long winding avenue of glorious oaks and elms. Large-eyed deer moved among the trees, and Bee exclaimed again as she saw a flash of water. They came out by a little lake where white swans sailed, and beyond it, flanked by pleasure gardens, rose a stately pile of white stone--the Towers.

"The three towers are two hundred feet high and the newest part of it is three hundred years old," said Ned. "I don't know when a Haslem didn't live here."

"Cousin Vere said he would have it all when grandfather dies," said Bee. "It's too good for him. Who will have it when he dies?"

"Oh, he'll grow up and have children most likely, but just now the next heir is Captain Percy Haslem. His wife, Mrs. Betty, is staying at the Towers, and he is visiting there, for his regiment is marching from Ireland across England, and is camping to-night in this neighbourhood."

They went through the great doors into a vast hall, where Bee was welcomed by Sir John, a militant looking old gentleman, sharp-tongued, rather thick-headed, and very soft-hearted where his own were concerned. With him was Betty Haslem, a very pretty young woman, with affectedly languid manners, and dressed in a high-waisted, narrow-skirted Empire gown of flowered muslin. Her fair hair was piled on the top of her head, and ringlets hung down on either side.

They were both prepared to be very kind to a nervous child, but Bee was not at all shy. She said she had let Ned bring her because she knew his father, and no one asked after Vere. Betty's afternoon "dish of tea" was brought in, with more solid refreshments, which Ned found he had to sit down to with Bee. He refused to touch the fruit pie which was pressed on him, then the sweet cakes too, while he felt himself growing furiously red under Betty's disdainful eyes.

"I protest, uncle," she said to Sir John, "I never knew a boy to refuse everything sweet before. What ails the creature?"

"He is a Methodist, Betty," said Sir John dryly, "and I believe that it's one of the articles of their faith not to eat sugar."

"A Methodist! I hear of them everywhere," exclaimed Betty. "But I shall die of curiosity if someone doesn't tell me at once why the creatures won't eat sweets."

"It is only sugar that Friends and many Methodists won't eat, Mrs. Haslem," said Ned flushing. "We are pledged not to taste sugar or rum till slavery is abolished in our West Indies. We use honey for sweetening."

"Then you can't make pastry or light cakes," said Betty; "honey would make them soggy."

"I have never tasted pie in my life, Mrs. Haslem," smiled Ned.

"You can when you go to your father in Canada," said Bee, "for there they get their sugar out of maple trees, and anyhow Canada abolished slavery in 1797."

Sir John asked Bee about her voyage, and she answered directly, "We had a very quick one, sir, only twenty-seven days. We left Quebec on July 14 and reached Plymouth on August 10. There were forty-two ships in our convoy, with the warship 'Primrose' to guard us from the wicked French."

Sir John chatted with her, so pleased with her intelligence and fearlessness, that when at last she boldly said that she must be called by her father's name, he only laughed. "She's too fine for rough handling," he thought.

"A little thoroughbred all through," he told Mrs. Betty later, "and a few years of proper English living will make her ashamed to own that she had such a scoundrel father. I'll wager that she's all Haslem, not a low drop of blood in her. Queer too, when her father was one of that crew of pirates and matricides who, with less morals than savages, fought us under Washington, and made most of our American colonies into an infernal Republic. Ay, and now in 1810, when we're fighting single-handed with that crowned hyena Bonaparte, all their sympathy is with those French assassins."

Meanwhile Betty talked to Ned, dropping her scorn and affection. The boy's simple manliness had won her respect, and when he left she shook hands with him, though Sir John raised his eyebrows. "It's no kindness, Betty, to give the lower class ideas above their station," he said. "Ned will do well unless he thinks he ought to be better than his birth made him, then he'll go wrong, mark my words. He's being educated too much as it is."

"La, uncle," yawned Betty, "it's easy to see you were born long before the French Revolution; since that upset nobody really believes in anything. I'm an atheist in politics as well as in religion."

"Don't, Betty, before the child. I'm thankful you are a lady-born."

"And so can't go wrong, eh? Well, I was taught that as long as a man's not a coward or liar, everything can be excused, and I really think Methodism is as excusable as some things I have been required to overlook in fine gentlemen. A boy who refuses sweets for conscience' sake, and won't give way even when a woman ridicules him can never be a coward or tell a lie. And if I were Vere's guardian, I should encourage his friendship with Ned Edgar."

Sir John frowned, but before he could retort, Vere, a very handsome boy, came in. He was followed by Percy Haslem in his captain's uniform, who, like Betty, his wife, spoke and moved with affected langour.

Sir John spoke irritatedly to Vere. "How is it, sir, that you left your cousin to be brought home by that doctor's boy?"

"Oh, Ned's all right, sir. He met the coach and claimed Bee because his father was her guardian in Canada, so I rode over to meet Cousin Percy."

"Insolence," growled Sir John. "To think he had such assurance, and I was blaming you for running off and letting him do it. Mark my words, it would be a kindness to give that boy a lesson that would break his proud spirit, otherwise he'll end on the gallows."

"Don't uncle, before the child!" mimicked Betty. "You'll frighten her."

"I'm not ever afraid of white men," said Bee calmly. "I'm only afraid of Red Indians when they have war paint on. I hate them; and I despise white men who tell lies."

"Haslem all through," chuckled Sir John, but Vere flushed angrily. He knew by instinct that Bee would not tell tales, but he hated her for her contempt of him, as he had never hated anyone before.

Sir John was talking to Percy who had just returned from unhappy south Ireland to whom England then was too busy to show justice, much less mercy. His regiment had been recruited there, and the country was in such dangerous ferment that all Irish soldiery had been withdrawn, and English sent there. Sir John denounced all Irish, "Traitors and papists!" he growled. "A heavy hand and the cat o' nine tails is the only way to keep them down."

"This regiment isn't all Papists, sir," put in Vere. "A little soldier spoke to me, saying he was a Methodist, and asking if there were any 'serious people' near. I told him that Liddon was the prize serious town in England, and that it had a Methodist chapel called Noah's Ark, because only those who go to it can be saved. I made him think I was 'serious', and he told me--Cousin Betty, you'll die of laughing when you hear--he, a private in the ranks, and Irish at that, preaches, yes preaches, in the streets, and in Methodist chapels when the regiment halts over Sunday near one. He'll be trying to speak in Noah's Ark to-morrow."

"Impossible," said Sir John angrily. "Percy, do you know what Vere means?"

"Very much what he says, sir. The man is George Ferguson, north Irish, born in Derry. He worked there in a muslin factory till a year ago, when the hard times caused by the war threw him out of work. There was nothing to do anywhere, he had a young wife, and finding she would be taken on the strength of the regiment if he enlisted, he did so, to save them both from starving. He is a strong Methodist, with a taste for preaching, and the regiment, who are nearly all Catholics, nick-named him the Swaddler Priest."

"The what?" exclaimed Betty.

"Swaddler, my dear. The first Methodist preacher who went to Ireland in the days of Mr. Wesley, preached his first sermon on the text, 'She brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes', and Irish Methodists are always called Swaddlers."

"And whenever did you become an authority on Methodism?" exclaimed Sir John.

"Ferguson has been my servant, sir, and while I am an infidel myself, I find him interesting. He can read and write, but he must have a hard life. He probably thought that entering the ranks would only mean the irksomeness of a discipline he had never been accustomed to, and the possible dangers of war. He didn't realize he would have to live in the closest companionship with men of, unfortunately, our lowest class, and their brutish tastes must hurt his self-respect. Yet I have never known him anything but serenely cheerful. He not only keeps himself above his surroundings, but he does it as if the effort were enjoyable, and tries to preach somewhere each Sunday."

"I should have thought it impossible for a north Irish Protestant to live in a south Irish regiment," commented Betty.

"I don't usually know much of what happens in barracks," said Percy, "but I was told--not by Ferguson--that when we were in Dublin he joined some Methodists who were preaching on the streets, and they gave out he would speak in their chapel the next Sunday. His comrades told him they would whip him if he did, but of course he went, and coming back, lay down on his cot and went to sleep quietly. No one disturbed him; the man who told me said they thought they might find themselves up against something bigger than they liked if they did. I think that men of our people, no matter if they are unsaintly themselves, respect a saint. Ferguson lives a strictly correct life, never touches drink, always does his duty, and is always cheerful and ready to do a kind act for a comrade."

"What does the fellow preach about?" growled Sir John.

"I heard him once speaking just outside the barracks to a crowd of soldiers and passers-by, and he spoke so strongly against swearing, that I refrain from profanity in his presence, fearing that he might think it his duty to reprove me if I did."

"What's England coming to," shouted Sir John, "when a private soldier is allowed to set himself up as a teacher? The end will be like when she let cobblers and tinkers usurp the place of ordained clergymen, and under that man whose name shall never be spoken in Haslem Towers while I live, dipped sacrilegious hands in the blood of her sainted king, Charles I. And when you allow a man to go as far as this Ferguson does, Percy Haslem, you are a traitor to your king."

"My dear uncle," said the unruffled Percy, "when Mr. Wesley began his work many thought as you do, but since then, the Supreme Being, or Fate, put a full stop to that period of the world's history by the French Revolution. Now no one is sure when our dear lower classes may not demand our heads; but we are quite sure that we would rather have a revolution of Bible readers than of atheists, so we let men like Ferguson alone."

* * *

So Bee spent her first evening at Haslem Towers, and on the Sunday morning went with the family to the beautiful old parish church, which only lacked a preacher and congregation to make it a perfect place of worship, for in the pulpit a curate dashed through the magnificent liturgy, and the congregation was a handful of farmers and the Towers' servants.

Bee sat in the great square pew trying to follow the service as she had learned to in York with Mrs. Edgar, while Betty lolled in a corner with a novel, and Vere was studying out a trick with a pack of cards. Sir John worshipped by doing nothing whatever, and only Percy, good-humouredly, thinking Bee might feel alone, looked at his prayer book when he remembered it.

In the afternoon Vere slipped off to the Methodist Sunday School, which he attended sometimes when his grandfather forgot to forbid it. He brought home the news that Ferguson had come to the school and been asked to speak, which he did so well, that it was announced he would preach that evening. "I was with Ned," said Vere, "when one of the elders asked Ferguson. Dr. Brown was there too; he looked odd in his drab coat and broad-brimmed hat by the soldier's scarlet. Ferguson seemed taken aback. He said, 'How do you know that I am not an impostor?' And the elder said directly, 'You would be the very first I ever met in the army; a hypocrite could never stand it there. He would be in torment indeed if he tried to wear a mask as a soldier among soldiers.' Then Dr. Brown asked him to have a dish of tea with them. Methodism is awfully upsetting. Think of even a Quaker, who is a doctor, asking a private soldier, the lowest class of all, to sit down with his wife!"

"Vere," said Betty, "you shall take me to this ridiculous Noah's Ark to-night. I am dying to hear this Ferguson creature. We will take Bee too, and Percy can come to keep us out of mischief."