page break

Chapter VI. A Visit to Flora.

Dick went to church with his aunt on Sunday morning. There he saw Mrs. Lancaster again, sitting in the front row of the choir, and was obliged to confess that she had gone off very little in those ten years. Her complexion was not quite so blooming, but Dick thought the extra refinement made up for that, and she certainly dressed much better. In fact, she looked very pretty and elegant, and no one would have imagined that she belonged to her rough old sailor father, who sat half-way down the church, bristling with red and gray whiskers, and growling the responses, quite out of time and tune with everybody else.

Miss Northcote and Dick were overtaken by these two, as they climbed the hill on their way home from church. Flora was passing on with a bow, and a smile for Dick at the end of it, but old Cardew stopped to shake hands with him.

‘Well, Mr. Northcote! You’ve come back more of a man than you went, if one may judge by appearances.’

‘I hope so,’ said Dick.

‘Yes, he does credit to New Zealand, Captain Cardew, does he not?’ said Miss Northcote.

‘Good-morning, ma’am,’ said the Captain. ‘I hope you’re well. The best thing you can do for a young fellow is to send him to the other side of the world. Nothing like it for breaking off old ties.’

‘If that’s the only use of it—’ began Dick, but the Captain did not stay to listen to him.

Mrs. Lancaster, who had not stopped with her father, page 47 had reached the corner just above, where they turned down to their own house, and was looking back for him.

‘Good-day to you,’ he said, flourishing his stick, and he hurried on after his daughter.

‘I don’t dislike that old fellow,’ said Dick to his aunt.

‘He used to be very good to me. What a thorough old salt he is! He must find it hard to understand that he is Mrs. Lancaster’s father.’

‘He admires her very much, I think,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘I am glad they are so fond of each other—she and her parents. If she did not take care of them, they would be very lonely.’

‘Aunt Kate, that is the first good word I ever heard you say for her.’

‘Is it, Dick? Well, I may have reasons for not liking her, but I never said or thought that she was without natural affection.’

‘No; that would have been rather too hard on her. She will marry again some day; don’t you suppose so?’

‘Very likely she may.’

‘I still think there are two remarkable things about her,’ Dick went on, as they walked up the lane. ‘She is so ladylike, considering what her parents are—and she never seems the least ashamed of them.’

‘Ladylike; yes,’ said Miss Northcote. ‘Taking the word with the meaning that your grandmother used to give it. Not a lady, but a fair imitation of one.’

‘Well, of course,’ said Dick rather impatiently. ‘Not an aristocrat, like you. We don’t think so much of those things in the colonies.’

‘Ah, I forgot that! Who was your friend Mrs. Herbert?’

‘O, she!—an old Norfolk family. No doubt about her. But there’s a man on the next station—nobody knows who his wife was, yet we are all very friendly together.’

page 48

‘And is there no difference between her and Mrs. Herbert?’

‘Of course, a thousand differences.’

‘And I must venture to think, that if you were to renew your acquaintance with Mrs. Lancaster now—see much of her, I mean—you would soon find out a thousand differences between her and any lady you know.’

‘At any rate she is prettier than most of them.’

‘Very pretty indeed; there I quite agree with you. She has that immense advantage. And as you say, she is not ashamed of her parents—which one likes, of course.’

Dick had not much more to say in favour of his old friend; it was, indeed, a subject on which neither of them could talk very openly, and they were both willing to drop it.

Kate Northcote was vexed with herself, and yet could not help feeling anxious and unhappy. She would have given worlds to turn Dick’s thoughts away from this woman, who might have her good points, but was, she felt sure, ambitious, designing, and unscrupulous. What could be more natural than that she should try to renew the old flirtation? And Kate could not feel sure about Dick. As a lad he had been sensitive to any flattery and attention, and she could not think that his character was entirely changed, strengthened as it might be. In fact, she thought him very much the same; his old acquaintances, his old amusements, all had their charm and interest for him still.

That afternoon Mrs. Lancaster was sitting alone in the drawing-room at Rose Cottage. The little room was quite in shade, for the sun-blinds were down, and there was an almost overpowering scent of roses. The stillness and sleepiness that belong to some Sunday afternoons were there in full strength.

page 49

Flora made no pretence to read, or do anything but doze, as she leaned back in the coolest and shadiest corner. She liked to sit in this room, which was quite of her own creating. To her father and mother it was a sort of china-shop, in which they could never be comfortable, though all the screens and trays and ivory ornaments had been brought home by Captain Cardew in his sea-going days. They were very willing, however, that Flora should be a lady, and have this room to herself; they very much preferred staying in the dark parlour on the other side of the passage, where they sat opposite each other in shabby old leather armchairs, and where Captain Cardew was allowed to smoke. Mrs. Cardew, who was weak, was sometimes torn between her admiration for her daughter and her love for her husband, and would take her work and chat with Flora in the drawing-room. But Flora would presently begin to write a letter, or go off into one of her dreaming fits, and then Mrs. Cardew got fidgety; and then her husband called her, and she jumped up and hurried away quite readily.

The parlour had one decided advantage over the drawing-room: it commanded the garden-gate and the bit of stony lane beyond it. And that afternoon Mrs. Cardew, who was looking out as usual, was startled by the sudden appearance of a gentleman at the gate. She stared a moment, to be sure that he was coming in, and then hurried out to warn her daughter. It would never do for Flora to be caught in a sound nap, such as the Captain was enjoying at this moment.

But something had already roused Flora, and she was sitting awake with her hands before her, ready to receive any number of visitors.

‘Dick Northcote, I suppose,’ said she.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Cardew. ‘He has grown a beard, and that does change people so—’

‘I told you he had. Where are you going, mother?

page 50

‘Why, dear, I’m not fit to be seen. I took off my best cap.’

‘Never mind. He won’t know anything about that. Stay and see him.’

‘But, dear—’

‘Yes, you must. You look charming.’

Mrs. Cardew, of course, obeyed, but she had some vanity of her own, and was truly sorry to be caught in her old cap. She had been very pretty once—prettier than Flora, the Captain said—and even now, though she had grown stout, and her fair skin had reddened, no one could deny that she was a good-looking woman. A compliment from Flora always made her happy, and she believed she might be looking worse, but still the cap was a trial.

Dick’s entrance and his friendly greeting soon made her forget it. She had always been fond of him, when he was a good-for-nothing boy, and had wondered how his relations could be so cruel as to send him away from them. Whenever the home atmosphere had been gloomy, Dick had known himself sure of a welcome at Rose Cottage, and of all the petting that Mrs. Cardew could add to her daughter’s smiles. In those days the Captain still went to sea, and the women had it all their own way. Dick would have been rather ungrateful, perhaps, if he had forgotten those pleasant stolen hours, when he had never troubled himself to think of Flora’s motives, and had really believed, sometimes, that she liked him better than anybody else.

Mrs. Cardew hardly realised that this was the same Dick, this broad-shouldered person who sat and talked to her so agreeably about St. Denys and Morebay, and everybody in them, while Flora looked on, and only put a word in now and then. In old times, when Flora was in the room, her mother had been quite accustomed to being nobody, but Dick seemed to have brought better page 51 manners back with him from New Zealand. A harder heart, too, which perhaps was the real explanation.

Mrs. Cardew liked him so much, however, that she ventured on an allusion to those old times. She wondered, now, if Mr. Northcote had forgotten the rose-tree he planted under this window. And she had been thinking to herself how fond he used to be of cocoanut biscuits: did he like them still? Flora frowned, and Dick laughed, colouring slightly.

‘I am afraid that is one of the innocent tastes that disappear as one grows older. I wish I was a schoolboy again, if it was only for the sake of your biscuits. I believe one really loses, in life, more than one gains—don’t you think so?’ turning suddenly to Flora.

‘I’m not sure that I do,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘No—one learns to understand things—to value them rightly. I don’t know why I should answer your question so seriously, though. You were talking about biscuits.’

‘So we were,’ said Dick. ‘They are not so good as they used to be, Mrs. Cardew, are they?’

Mrs. Cardew’s opinion was that you might say that of most things. They got dearer and worse, and very soon even St. Denys would not be a cheap place to live in.

‘If it wasn’t for Captain Cardew’s being connected with the dockyard, I can’t be sure that we should stay here,’ said she. ‘Only my daughter likes it, and, of course, we consider her.’

‘Now, mother, you know it would break your heart to leave it,’ said Mrs. Lancaster. ‘Dear old St. Denys! There is no place like it, I think.’

‘Well, I suppose we shall end our days here,’ said Mrs. Cardew. ‘I’ll go and see if the Captain is awake. The best of us are sleepy on Sunday afternoons, Mr. Northcote.’

page 52

‘Then of course the Captain is,’ said Dick, getting up to open the door. ‘Don’t disturb him for me.’

‘Ah, that was just like your old nonsense,’ said Mrs. Cardew, with an affectionate sort of laugh.

Dick shut the door after her, came back to the window, and sat down rather nearer Mrs. Lancaster than before. She looked at him, and smiled. There was always a sort of understanding about Flora, a native genius which told her other people’s thoughts. It gave her a curious power of attraction. Dick was not at all in love with her now, and was criticising her all the time; but yet, now and then, an unreasonable feeling came over him of being on the edge of a precipice, and obliged to jump down. It was an absurd feeling; he was quite aware of it, and supposed it was a relic of his old Flora-worship.

‘It was very kind of you to call so soon,’ she said, after a moment’s pause.

‘Not at all,’ said Dick; ‘I have been wishing to come: but I was obliged to go to Pensand and other places.’

‘Pensand!’ said Flora, seeming interested. ‘Have you seen General Hawke’s ward—this pretty Miss Ashley?’

‘Yes. We travelled down from town together, as it happened.

‘And is she so pretty?’

Dick hesitated. ‘Well—you would not say so—and I don’t think I should. She has very fine eyes.’

‘They are everything to some people.’

‘Did the General tell you about her? He seems very fond of her.’

‘Dear me, no! The General—how should he? I never see him.’

‘Ah?—I didn’t know,’ said Dick, rather surprised at the sudden sharpness of her manner.

page 53

For a minute or two the conversation was checked; then Dick, finding it dull, moved to the window and looked out under the sun-blind into the garden.

‘It’s a shame to shut out your view,’ he said. ‘Ah, here is my rose! What glorious flowers! May I have one?’

‘This is your size, I think,’ said Mrs. Lancaster, cutting off a red bud.

‘Thank you; exactly,’ said Dick, arranging it in his button-hole.

She looked hard at him for a moment. What a change from ten years ago! Then their eyes met, and she knew that he was thinking of the same thing.

She bent forward to look into the garden, but almost immediately turned back into the room, and sat down in her old place.

Dick stood leaning against the window, with a slight feeling of discomfort; for a moment the silence was awkward.

‘Well, do you find St. Denys bearable, now you are come back to it?’ she said, in her usual voice, which was quiet and sweet—for there was nothing strong-minded about Flora.

‘Bearable! I think as you do—there is no place like it.’

‘Indeed! you are very constant. You don’t wish yourself anywhere else?’

‘Never. It is home to me.’

‘That is odd,’ said Flora; ‘but I must confess that I have the same feeling; when I was away I was not happy. All the sunshine seemed to have stayed here. What fun we used to have when we were young!’

Dick felt sorry for Lancaster, who had taken his bride away into the north of England. But he was rather glad that those old times were to be turned into a joke. She was right, of course; it was fun, though page 54 in boyish days it had seemed to be something much graver. Even now, it seemed a little odd that she should allude to those days with a smile.

‘Fun to you and death to me,’ he said solemnly. ‘How can you laugh? What a life you used to lead me! I have often wondered since how you could be so cruel.’

‘Perhaps we had better not talk about it, as your memory is so good,’ said Mrs. Lancaster. ‘But I don’t think we need owe each other a grudge on the subject.’

‘On the contrary—’ said Dick. He pulled himself up short, being determined not to say anything foolish. It would not do at all to get into another scrape with Flora, pretty as she was; he could not inflict the Cardew connection on his aunt, or on himself either, were she ten times prettier. Still, a little gentle flirtation was amusing, and could do no harm; he was quite determined to be drawn no further than he chose to go. So he asked Mrs. Lancaster if she still spent her evenings in the combe. The question had a strange effect upon her; she changed colour suddenly, gave him an odd quick glance, and looked away, nervously playing with her watch-chain.

‘The combe? O, yes, I go there sometimes. But I don’t much care for it. It gets damp in the evening, and as one grows older one thinks about that, Mr. Northcote.’

‘Perhaps one does, if one is very wise,’ said Dick. He was looking at her in some wonder; her discomposure was so evident, and she did not seem to be able to recover herself at once.

‘I’m sorry you have given it up,’ he said, after a pause. ‘To me the combe is one of the charms of St. Denys. And the lane going down to it—I wonder how many people have talked nonsense in that lane.’

‘Hundreds, no doubt,’ said Flora quietly. But there page 55 was still a little disturbance in her manner, a slight coldness towards Dick, which he could not understand.

Their talk flagged. Flora’s spirits and smiles had deserted her, and her visitor began to feel that he had better go.

Mrs. Cardew had not reappeared. She and the Captain had probably wit enough to know that they were not wanted.

Dick wished his old friend good-bye, and left her, without any hint of meeting again; but his thoughts about her were certainly not quite indifferent. His aunt, though she knew very well where he had been, heard no particulars of the visit.