CHAPTER XI

MELICENT'S COUSINS

"Girls' heads are not like jam-pots, which, if you do not fill them will remain empty; a filling there will be, of some kind."--JULIANA HORATIA EWING.

They had been crawling for some time slowly up a steep lane with hedges; now suddenly they emerged at the top, and a long sigh of wonder escaped Millie as she saw the moorland spread before her in all its untamed splendour. Great headlands, facing northwards, jutted forth into the heather, as into a purple sea; and on the brink of one of these the travellers found themselves, overlooking a vast stretch of wild country. The descent down which they must go was almost a precipice. Something in the keen racing air, the height, the freedom, the glory of it all, took Melicent by the throat England was like this--like this! Sunlight, colour, the adorable odour of peat and bracken, drawn out by the sun, the blue mysteries of distance ... it came about her like compelling arms. Solitude, silence, spacious calm--here were elements that appealed to the depth of her being. Reserved as she was, she had nearly cried aloud to her unknown uncle for sympathy in her sudden rush of feeling for the land of her forefathers. He had checked the mare to a walk, and was coaxing her downhill with caution and skill.

"Our roads are not much to boast of hereabouts," he said at last, as the cart slewed itself over a lump in the road, designed to prevent heavy rainfall from washing out the roadway on the violent slope. "But I daresay you are not much better off in Africa."

"Not much to boast of! They are glorious!" breathed Millie, insensible of jolting in her admiration. "We have nothing like this in Africa!"

"A few miles further on, I can show you a road, compared with which, this might be a billiard-table," he said cheerfully.

Millie became aware that he referred to surface and gradients, and not to landscape.

"Oh, I see," she replied lamely. "I was thinking of--of the heather."

"You will see plenty of that," was the composed answer. "It begins to grow all over the road, at no great distance from here."

Conversation did not seem easy. Millie was at no time talkative, and they fell silent, and so remained while they traversed several miles of open moor, crossed a desolate ridge, and presently found themselves dipping again into a lane with hedges, in all their autumn glory of ripe blackberries, fluffy travellers' joy, coral honeysuckle berries and wayfaring tree.

"Now we are in Fransdale," said Mr. Cooper.

They were labouring along, in narrow, sandy, toilsome windings, when the hoot of a motor, up somewhere over their heads, made Mr. Cooper start. He was leading the mare, and proceeded to drag her as far as he possibly could to the side of the lane--half-way up the hedge, in fact. The next moment the car came in sight, tearing downhill at a speed which was evidently calculated upon the certainty of clear roads. It began to bray loudly, as though, in response to the warning, the vicar could cause his dog-cart to vanish into thin air. Millie surveyed it with interest, and as it whizzed by, within an inch of their off-wheel, she caught sight of a young, handsome, bored face, and that of an older man beside it. They raised their hats as they swept by, having most narrowly missed smashing the cart to fragments: but the vicar seemed quite pleased, and not at all annoyed.

"Sir Joseph Burmester and his son--our big land-owners hereabouts," he explained.

"Oh!" said his niece; adding, after reflection: "Are they our social equals?"

For some reason, the question annoyed the vicar; he relapsed into silence.

Mrs. Cooper prided herself upon keeping all her Southern customs up here in the North. When Melicent came downstairs to tea, she saw none of that wonderful pastry without which no Cleveshire tea-table is complete. Her five girl-cousins and their governess were assembled to be introduced to their new relative. They stared at her with a passive and stony indifference. Madeline was seventeen, Gwendolen sixteen, Theodora fifteen, Barbara fourteen, and Beatrice twelve. Even Beatrice was quite as tall as Melicent; and the elder girls were vast, the two eldest nearing five-foot-ten, after the fashion of the modern girl, and not in the least as yet knowing how to manage their swelling proportions. In their outgrown, scanty frocks, and big, thick legs, they looked rather like men in a farce, dressed up to represent little girls. Two or three of them were handsome, but they all struck Millie as singularly expressionless. Their faces were like masks.

Mrs. Chetwynd-Cooper's hair was pale flaxen, and being brushed away very tightly from the face, gave the impression of her having no hair at all. The odd look of being out of date, achieved in her husband's case by side-whiskers, was bestowed upon her by long earrings. The couple looked like the Papa and Mamma of a virtuous family, in a very early Victorian story-book.

Mrs. Cooper sat down to table with a determined cheerfulness which Melicent soon learned was her characteristic. It somehow succeeded in producing deep depression in others. At least, nobody spoke; and the girl found herself with her attention fixed, with a fatal fascination, upon her aunt's smile and her aunt's earrings, and longing for something to divert her eye.

Her uncle's depression was a very real and well-defined thing that evening. There was something about his new niece which he found himself disliking with quite unchristian vehemence. He had confided to his wife that extreme care would be necessary, and that the new-comer must by no means be let loose among their own children. Mrs. Cooper could not share his depression. She had the boundless self-confidence of an entirely stupid woman. She had made her own girls models of all that girls should be. No slang was ever heard in the Vicarage; no loud voices; no unruly expression of opinion. Why should she not be equally successful with this raw material, doubtless sent by Providence to her good guidance?

Melicent sat watching her five munching cousins, and thought they were something like cows. Their eyes were vacant, their appetites steady. She was just wondering whether all talking at meals was forbidden, when Gwendolen, who sat next her, tossed back her long hair, and asked:

"How did you hurt your arm?"

Melicent's voice was soft, but singularly clear. It had a carrying quality.

"Uncle Edmund says I am not to tell you," she replied.

Mr. Cooper was all the more angry, because he felt sure that his niece could and would have skated ably over this thin ice had he not repudiated all wish to "keep things dark." She had done exactly what he told her to do, and he wanted to box her ears.

"Give us news of your Cochin China hen, Gwendolen," he broke in. "Has she been laying away again?"

"Yes, in the hedge," said his daughter, giving her reply in lifeless tone and fewest words; and silence fell again.

"Oh, by the way, I have a pleasant surprise for Melicent," said Mrs. Cooper suddenly, her countenance wreathed in smiles. She always spoke as though coaxing a very young child, who needed encouragement and reassurance; and her niece resented it as actively as did the villagers. "What do you think arrived for you this morning, Melicent? Theo, darling, if you look on mother's desk, you will find a letter for Cousin Melicent. I suppose the mail travels faster than the boat you came in, Melicent."

Theo brought a letter and handed it to her cousin, who took it with composure.

"I wonder whom that comes from?" said Mrs. Cooper archly.

"It's from Hubert Mestaer."

"And who is that?" pursued the lady, delighted that everybody's attention was so skilfully diverted from the broken arm.

"He is one of the men who wanted to marry me," said Millie clearly.

In the deadly pause that followed, she caught a glance, hastily passing under lowered lids, between Miss Lathom and her two elder pupils.

But the valiant Mrs. Cooper was equal even to this occasion.

"When dear Melicent has been with us a little longer, she will know that we do not talk of such things," she cooed, blushing as coyly as the heroine in a novel by Charles Reade.

The blush was not to be seen reflected on the stolid countenances of her daughters. They chewed on.

"What things?" asked Millie, bewildered.

"Our offers of--marriage," said her aunt, bringing out the bold word with a gulp. "You are a little young, darling, to be thinking of marriage for a great many years, are you not?"

"Yes; that is what I told them," replied Millie simply, fixing surprised eyes upon the lady's embarrassment.

The vicar cleared his throat.

"Perhaps you had better give that letter to your aunt, Melicent, and let her judge whether it is a fit one for you to receive."

Melicent removed her look of surprise from one end of the table to another.

"I think it would be playing it very low down on Bert to let anybody see his letter," she said, with decision.

"My girls show me all their letters," said her aunt, still smiling and coaxing.

"I beg your pardon if it sounds rude," replied her niece, "but I shall not show you mine."

The vicar rose from table with decision.

"We will discuss this at another time," he said. "Melicent will, of course, conform to the rules of the house while she is with us. For what we have received, etc. A word, Miss Lathom, please." Then, as the girls filed past, he said low in the governess's ear: "On no account is she to be left alone with her cousins for a moment."

The girls filed soberly out, led the way upstairs, through a swing-door, along a passage, into a shabby old room with deep window-seats, an aged rocking-horse, shelves of story books and disabled toys, an ink-stained, battered table, a high fire-guard, and all the usual accessories of the nursery turned schoolroom.

They fastened the swing-door behind them as they went through, carefully closing the door of the school-room also; and then all, as it were, exhaling a gasp of relief, turned to their cousin again with transfigured faces.

"Now we can talk! Now we can be ourselves! Now we can have some fun!" they cried, surrounding her.

The masks were dropped, the real girls appeared, tossing back their hair, stretching their limbs, assuming every possible attitude of comfort and inelegance. They all talked at once, crowding round; and the transition was so abrupt and so complete as to bewilder her.

"One moment," said Gwendolen, who was the handsomest, and seemed to take the lead, rather than the petulant and anæmic-looking Madeline. "Be cautious, girls! we may very likely be raided this evening; she's sure to poke her nose in after Melicent. Put out the things. Did you hoist the weight, Babs?"

"Yes, I did," said Barbara.

"That's all right. If you hear the weight fall in the passage, that's mother," said Madeline, explaining to Melicent: "You see, it gives us a minute to reform in."

They all went to a cupboard, pulled out work, thimbles, and so on, arranged them on the table, chairs in place; then threw themselves on the floor, in the various attitudes which their weak, overgrown spines demanded, with pillows wedged under them.

"Now for peace and happiness," said Gwen. "Oh, it was grand to hear you stand up to them, my dear! But it's no good, you know; you will have to knuckle under. They've got nothing else to do but bully us; and after all, it's not much they can do, you know. It's as easy as possible to circumvent them."

"Oh, hold your tongue, Gwen! don't chatter so," said Madeline crossly. "Give Melicent a chance. Go on, Melicent, tell us all about it. How was your arm hurt?"

Melicent looked surprised. "I told you I promised Uncle Edmund not to say," she replied.

"Oh, gammon! we absolve you from that," laughed Theo, slipping a warm arm about her cousin's neck.

"But I can't absolve myself, you see," said Millie soberly.

"Do you mean to say you won't tell us?"

"I never break my word."

Gwendolen laughed.

"We're five against one, and the youngest is as big as you," she said, half in fun, half menacing.

Millie smiled her own little smile of disdain.

"I'm more than a match for the lot of you," she said coolly. "I shall say just what I think to you, as I did to Aunt Minna. And it's this. I hate underhand ways."

Miss Lathom, who was seemingly poring over the correction of some exercises, grew uncomfortably red.

"We're not underhand," said Gwen hotly. "'Tommy'"--indicating her preceptress with a wave of the hand--"knows all about our goings on."

"Tommy" looked up nervously.

"When you have lived here a little while, Miss Lutwyche," she said, "you will see that the poor girls must have some indulgences. Their mother expects impossibilities."

"Well, why do they stand it?" asked Millie.

"We don't stand it," returned Maddie. "But you had better all shut up, girls; perhaps Melicent's a tell-tale."

"If you had any sense, you'd see that I've just proved that I'm not," remarked Melicent.

"How have you proved it?"

"If I keep my word to Uncle Edmund, of course I shall keep my word to you. I promise not to tell tales; and, when I promise, you can go away and bet on it."

The universal squeal of merriment at her funny phrase restored harmony.

"Of course," said Gwen, "I see that it's best to be straightforward; but we're not allowed to be. We simply have to make our own pleasures, unknown to them. We should never read a book, nor get a letter, nor meet a soul, nor do anything but get up, have meals, do lessons, go to bed. Mother won't let us read a book she hasn't read first; and as she never opens a book herself from year's end to year's end, there is an end of that. We mustn't have a letter unless she sees it; so of course we have to have our letters sent, addressed to Tommy, to Bensdale Post Office; and then there's the adventure of walking over to fetch them. You mayn't go out without saying where you've been, nor spend a halfpenny without telling her what you bought. She must really expect us to cheat, you know; and so we do."

"Maddie's going on for eighteen, and Gwen only a year younger," chimed in Theo, "and they're not supposed even to know what a young man is, let alone think about one. Gwen's awfully gone on Freshfield, who is Sir Joseph Burmester's agent. Well, if it was guessed, I don't know what would happen, for you see Freshfield is not our social equal--"

"My dears," broke in Miss Lathom, who was on thorns, "I think all this is very imprudent. Let your cousin wait a while, and see how she likes her aunt's system."

"I shall dislike it very much," said Melicent; "but I shall say so. Why don't you speak out?"

"Because we're dead sick of rows," said Maddie sulkily. "There were nothing but rows till Tommy came. No governess would stay; they simply couldn't stand mother. Then at last Tommy turned up, and we saw what a decent old sort she was, so we thought out our plans, and now we do get our fun somehow, and as long as we hold our tongues at meals, it's all right."

"Well, I'm very sorry for you," said Millie, "but I think it would be much simpler to say what you mean. The strongest always wins. If you stuck together, they would have to give in."

The girls laughed sardonically. "You don't know mother," they said.

"Well, we shall soon see," said Barbie, who was the silent one of the five. "Let Millie try her way, and see what happens."

Millie laughed. "I certainly shan't try yours," she said.

"But you won't side against us with mother?" suddenly said Gwen.

"Rather not. That isn't my way."

"Are you never afraid of anybody?" asked Theo earnestly.

"Of course not; what can people do?" contemptuously asked the girl who had been sjambokked.

Theo cuddled up against this new champion as if the sense of strength were pleasant to her.

"Show us your love-letter, won't you, darling?" she said persuasively.

"Certainly not," replied Millie at once.

"Then I won't show you my notes from Freshfield," said Gwen.

"Of course not. It's mean to show men's letters."

"We shouldn't do such a thing, except just among ourselves," replied Maddie indignantly; "and we hoped you'd be one of us, though goodness knows there's more than enough of us already."

"Look here," said Gwen eagerly, "we know you must be the real kind of natural girl--not the sort like mother believes in, Ethel May in the Daisy Chain, you know--we know you are not that sort, or you would not be having lovers to write to you all the way from Africa. You do like pretty clothes, and dancing, and young men--"

"No, I don't," said Millie, in her decided way. "I've had enough of young men to last me a good while. I want to see no more young men for years to come. I only want one thing really badly"--she looked almost pleadingly at Tommy's red, snub-nosed countenance, as if her sole hope lay there--"I want to learn!" cried out the girl who was to corrupt the Vicarage household.

"To learn!" The words were echoed in six different tones.

"Not _lessons_?" asked Babs incredulously.

"Everything," replied Millie, resting her pointed chin on her small hand. "I want to know things, and understand them, and find out how to earn my living; to do something ... or make something ... I don't know what, as yet. I want to get a grip on the world, and watch for my place there, and take it!"

There was complete silence for quite a long time. At last--

"You talk as if you were a boy," said Gwen. "What can girls do?"

"Everybody can do what they must do," quietly replied Millie. "I've got to earn my living, and so have you, I suppose."

"Earn our living! Mother would have a fit!" cried Maddie.

"But Uncle Edmund said in his letter that he was poor," said Millie, puzzled. "What should you do if he died?"

"Get married, if we could," laughed Theo. "Willie and Georgie say we're such frights, we never shall. But we think Gwen is good-looking, and you see she's got a lover already; and she says when she's married she'll see after all of us--take us out of this hateful old Dale, and go to live at Brighton or London or some place where we could make friends. Nobody will make friends here, because mother's such an old stick-in-the-mud--"

The filial sentiment died away, for there was the sound of a soft thud.

"The weight, girls! Mother!" whispered Bee; and in a moment, with a dexterity born of long practice, the whole flock of lounging girls had arisen, slipped into place, and were busily stitching when Mrs. Cooper, with her smile, her long neck, and her earrings, peeped archly round the door.

"Making friends?" said she, beaming.

"Yes, Mrs. Cooper," said Tommy, looking up.

The governess was feeling decidedly uncomfortable. She had repeatedly warned her pupils, during the preceding days, to hold aloof at first from the new-comer, until they had decided whether she could be taken into confidence. But Millie's love-letter, and still more, her calm refusal to show it, had sent the barriers down with a rush, and the girls had not been able to think of prudence with such a keen new interest in their blank lives. Tommy's heart was full of apprehension. She was afraid of this girl who wanted to learn. She knew that she had nothing to teach her.

Melicent had not moved a muscle when the general rush was made. She sat still in the window-seat, upright and solitary.

"Dear Melicent must join our happy little sewing circle," said Mrs. Cooper, beaming round. "No idle hands at the Vicarage, as you see, darling."

"I cannot use my arm very well yet," said Melicent.

"Oh, we give you one evening's grace," responded the lady playfully. "Have you been taught to work?"

"No."

"Oh, how sad! Why, Miss Lathom, we have a task before us! Can you not use a needle at all?"

"Oh, yes. I can make and mend my clothes, and so on. But I had to teach myself."

There was a silence. "You don't mean that you made the suit you have on?"

"Yes."

"Oh," said Mrs. Cooper. The wind was taken out of her sails. "Why, you are quite a _genius_! We shall have to take _lessons_. But now, I came to ask you to come with me, and I will show you your room, and we will have a little talk."

Millie rose obediently, and followed her aunt from the room; as they went, the masks dropped, the girls lifted their heads and looked at each other with intense interest.

"She's going to make her show the letter."