CHAPTER X

FRANSDALE

"Ankle-deep in English grass I leaped, And clapped my hands, and called all very fair." --ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

It was mid-October. St. Luke's summer brooded over the solitary acres of heather, which crowned the hills that flung encradling arms about Fransdale.

The golden bracken was turning brown, but the heather still carried its glory of purple. The woodlands were forsaking their devotion to pure green, and rioted in every hue of red and yellow, and the light air sang and hummed about the uplands of the glorious land. All the summer had been fine; the becks had sunk to musical murmurings; one might walk from Tod's Trush to the Three Howes, across country, without getting bogged.

In a stable-yard surrounded by grey stone out-buildings stood the Reverend Edmund Chetwynd-Cooper, harnessing his horse to the dog-cart. Near him a big, loose-limbed, clumsy girl, who had evidently outgrown her strength, stood listlessly watching him through half-shut eyes.

"How old is Cousin Melicent?" she asked, in a voice which always sounded fretful.

"I have told you I believe her to be about sixteen."

"Nearly as old as I am. I wonder whether we shall like her?"

"I hope you understood what I said at dinner-time. There is to be no intimacy until we have decided that Melicent is a fit companion for you. No intimacy, mind."

His voice was even and quiet, low-pitched and cultivated. He was a handsome, dark man, with regular features, and a cold, blue eye; clean shaven but for a straight line of black whisker down each cheek, which made him look vaguely out of date.

His daughter looked at him with a sidelong glance.

"All right, father," she said, in a kind of formula, adding, in an injured tone: "I should have thought you might take one of us to meet her."

"I do not know what luggage there may be."

Mr. Cooper would not have said, "I don't know," for the world; and the fact was typical of his extreme correctness.

"Where is your mother?" he asked, when the last strap was adjusted. "I promised her a lift as far as the Mill. Go, Madeline, and tell her I am ready."

The girl slouched away, with a bored expression; and the parson, having fetched the dust-rug and whip, walked the mare out of the yard and up to the door of the square, uncompromising grey stone Vicarage.

Nothing could have been finer than the prospect. The church and Vicarage stood near the head of the Dale, close to the bolder, wilder, more heathery part, and looked down on the valleyland, the trout stream and rich meadows below. The minutes ticked on, while the vicar waited. Presently Madeline emerged.

"Mother says she won't be long."

"Will you tell her please, that I positively must start in five minutes."

The girl disappeared. The five minutes elapsed; three more passed. The vicar got into the trap. Madeline once more appeared.

"Mother thinks, before she starts, she had better give Bee a dose of her tonic."

"Then tell her I am off without her. The train will not wait, even for your mother."

He was just going out of the gate, when a window-sash was raised, and a voice cried:

"Aidmund! Aidmund!"

He checked the horse.

"Well? Come if you are ready," he said, quite temperately, his voice showing no annoyance.

"Oh, no, I can't do that; but I thought it would be so capital if you could get me one or two things in Birdmore? I shan't be very long writing them down."

"You should have thought of that before."

"My darling boy, think how busy I have been all this morning, preparing--"

The rest was lost, for the vicar had driven away. His cold eyes were quite gentle, but he did draw in his breath sharply once; at the thought, perhaps, of this helpmeet of his, in this remote village, where nothing ever interrupted her simple routine of duties--incapable of being ready for a drive at three o'clock in the afternoon.

The old mare had to step out. Mrs. Cooper had succeeded in making her husband ten minutes late; and nine miles of very bad road lay between him and the Junction. The train which was to bring his niece was just coming to a standstill in the little wayside station, as the old mare, conscious of having been hustled, trotted into the station-yard.

The vicar hastened through the booking-office, out upon the asphalte platform, whereon a small, slender girl in black stood lonely beside some solid-looking packing-cases and one modest trunk. She wore her left arm in a sling. He came slowly forward, with a resolute smile of greeting on his face.

"Are you Melicent?"

She raised her eyes searchingly to his face. "Yes, I am."

"You are not at all like your mother," he said, scanning the pale face.

"No; father did not think me like her."

"You have managed your journey well?"

"Oh, yes, thank you, it was all quite easy."

"How did you manage last night in London?"

"I went home with some people who were kind to me on the voyage; Mr. and Mrs. Helston."

"I expected a taller niece," he said kindly.

"I am small for my age, I know."

His anxious gaze was fixed upon the packing-cases. There were three of them, and their bulk suggested weight.

"Do those cases belong to you?" he asked.

"Yes; my father's books and valuables. He left them all to me, and my guardian insisted that Mrs. Lutwyche should give them up."

"Well, I don't quite know how they are going to be conveyed up the Dale," he said, in perplexity.

"Oh, that's all right," said Millie, with _sang-froid_. "Mr. Dow is going to take them in his waggon."

"Mr. Dow!" ejaculated the vicar, in a tone compounded of equal parts of astonishment and displeasure.

A big Cleveshire Dalesman, of the more prosperous type--handsome, well-dressed, a striking figure in his riding breeches and gaiters, now approached, lifting his cap from his fair hair, his eyes twinkling with a kind of enjoyment which he peculiarly relished.

"Your niece and me has been getting acquainted," he said, in his unrenderable soft-vowelled Dale speech. "Makin' friends, as you may say." It sounded more like: "Mäakin' freänds, as you mäay säa." But the phonetic rendering of dialect is a weariness, and will not here be attempted. "Fair enjoyin' werselves we've been, ever since leavin' York Station. I'm goin' to take her goods up t' Dale for her, since I expect you've only t' old mare an't' cart with you, Mr. Cooper."

Mr. Cooper could barely acknowledge the kindness, for angry mortification. He was a Southerner, planted down among people whom he disliked, because he did not in the least understand them. His idea of the peasant's correct attitude was a servile obedience to the parson, and that kind of gratitude which is rightly said to consist of a lively sense of favours to come. The sturdy independence, and I'm-as-good-as-you indifference of the North Country, was a positive offence to him, his only armour against it being a crust of ever increasing cold dignity and aloofness, which the Dalesmen saw, and chuckled over. His wife, who had come among them, ready with the ministrations which she understood--with condescending smiles, ill-made soup, old clothes and patronage--found no market for these commodities. A premature exhibition of them had produced such a condition of feeling, that now, as she came down the road, full of amiable intentions, the village became a desert, everyone slipping within doors and disappearing, sooner than encounter her.

Moreover, the Dale was full of nonconformity; and the attitude of the vicar towards dissent was that of silent, rigid dislike--of his wife, that kind of shocked horror with which some people talk of "the heathen."

So the Chetwynd-Coopers dwelt as aliens in their Northern parish, attributing their failure solely to causes exterior to themselves, and resolutely setting the advantages of fine moorland air, and the low price of provisions, against the vague depression which their isolation naturally caused.

But, among all the thorns in the vicar's dignified flesh, Farmer Dow, of Crow Gate Farm, the leading Dissenter in the Dale, was the sharpest. Poor Millie could not have made a more unfortunate entry upon the scenes, than under his auspices. The ice in the vicar's voice, as he declined his kindness, was obvious to the bystanders. But Dow was not to be denied. He had promised Millie that her goods should be taken up, and taken up they should be, that very night. She had taught him more about South Africa in half-an-hour than the newspapers had taught him in half a year. She was coming to tea with his mother, at Crow Gate, and going to keep him posted in the war news. He owed it to her to see after her baggage, after such entertainment. He helped her into the trap with such _empressement_ that the onlookers were deeply moved; and the vicar's heart was hot within him as he drove away. His niece was, as he had feared, hopelessly Colonial.

But it was not the vicar's habit to speak in anger. Experience had given him a power of self-control which would have kindled the admiration of his parishioners, had they guessed what manner of man lay hidden under the dry, precise manner.

He waited until he had himself well in hand, and then commenced conversation--not upon the burning topic.

"I am sorry to see that you have hurt your arm."

Millie, whose eyes were fixed in deep, increasing interest on the country they were passing through, looked up.

"It was the old woman," she said. "I thought Mr. Mayne might have told you. She sjambokked me pretty nearly to death, and threw me down and dislocated my arm."

The clear, soft voice, evenly cadenced, giving out this astonishing information, raised fresh tumult in the vicar's bosom.

"Do you mean your step-mother?" he asked, in horror.

"Yes. Mr. Mayne had to go to Leitersdorp to get the will proved. He was away three days, and she made up her mind to take it out on me."

"To take what out?"

"She was mad because father made him my guardian. She wanted to sell me to a Yankee; he'd given her ten pounds on account. So Mr. Mayne told her it was a case of hands off, because it was his show. So she got the children to catch and hold me, and they managed to tie me up; and she just went on until she was tired," said Millie unemotionally.

The vicar had no words. Uppermost in his mind was deep, abiding thankfulness that he had brought none of his daughters with him to meet this astounding young person. What would his wife say to this? Such people, they knew, existed in the pages of those sensational novels which cannot be too severely condemned by the well-regulated; but that his own sister's child should have been strung up and thrashed! ... The current of hot sympathy in him must have found vent in indignant words; but it was invaded by another thought. The carefully guarded propriety of his own children must suffer no contact with naked facts of life like this; and such was the feeling that spoke first.

"I must ask you not to mention this. I should say, I must order you not to tell your cousins, or Miss Lathom, their governess, how you came by your injuries. To your aunt, in private, it may be alluded to, but I cannot have so scandalous a thing generally known."

Millie looked up swiftly.

"I can keep a thing dark, if I am given the tip," she said, with amusement that sounded a little contemptuous.

He was conscious of great annoyance.

"I give no tips. I merely say that this must not be mentioned," he said frigidly. "We will refer to it later. And now to touch upon another matter. In England the--ah--fusion of classes to which you have probably been accustomed is not desirable. The vicar's niece cannot, with propriety, be on terms of equality with a farmer like Dow."

"Oh," said Millie, "why not?"

"We are socially Mr. Dow's superiors, and we must not let him forget his place, as these Dalesmen are most apt to do."

"I should have thought," said Millie reflectively, "that they would never be likely to forget their place, so long as we were sure of ours."

The vicar again felt uncomfortable. His wife and he were well-born--people of just enough consequence to be eager that nobody should forget it; undeniably belonging to the county set, but much ignored by that set, as being poor and desperately dull.

"You see, at home we shouldn't have been socially superior to Mr. Dow," said Millie.

"You have much to learn here," returned her uncle; and as he spoke, he was inly deciding that the girl was impossible.