Bonnie Kate: a story from a woman's point of view

Front matter

I dflRROHDS' 3/6 SERIES OF POPULAR NOVELS, By WELL-KNOWN AUTHORS. (Crown &vo.. Cloth.) Uniform -with "Bonnie Kate." i. LOUIS DRAVCOTT. By Mrs. Leith Adams, and Edition. ». GEOFFREY STIRLING. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 5lh Edition. 3. BONNIE KATE. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 2nd Edition. 4. A NEW OTHELLO. By Hon. Iza Duffus Hardy. 2nd Edition. 5. THE MAID OF LONDON BRIDGE. By Somerville Gibney. 6. EVELINE WELLWOOD. By Major Noeris Paul. 7. OLD LATTIM.ERS LEGACY. By J. S. Fletcher. 8. THAT LITTLE ■( 1IRI,. Hy Curtis Yoeke. 4th Edition. 9. DUDLEY/^Sy Curtis Ybrke. 3rd Edition. 10. THE WILD gUTt[I___\a_4jg. By Curtis Yorke. 3rd Edition. 11. THE BRl^WN. PORTMANTEAU, and other Stories. By Cu_t^i[;Vi;rKE,/2nd Edition. 12. HUSH ! By CuTT-fis Yorke. 3rd Edition. 13. ONCE ! By Curtis Yorke. 2nd Edit on. 14. A ROMANCE OF .MODERN LONDON.

By Curtis Yorke. 2nd Edition. 15. HIS HEART TO WIN. By Curtis Yorke. 2nd Edition. 16. DARRELLCHEVASNEY. By Curtis Yorke. 17. BETWEEN THE SILENCES, and other Stories. By Curtis Yorke. [In the Press. 18. THE PEYTON ROMANCE. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 2nd F.dition. [Shortly. OTHERS IN PREPARATION. LONDON: JARROLD &, SONS, 10 and 11, Warwick Lane. A STORY. FROM A WOMAN'S POINT OF VIEW. MRS. LEITH ADAMS &Hs<! (Mrs. R. S. DE COTJRCY LAFFAN), Author of " Aunt Hepsy's Foundling " " Louis Draycott" (C Geoffrey Stirling,'" " My Land of Betilah, " Madelon Lemoine," " Tlie Peyton Romance " etc. " Lore is not lo*e Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove : Oh no ! it is an ever fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken, It is the star to eve-y wai.derirg bark Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken."

Slmkesptart's Sonnet-, No. J66. SECOND EDITION. LONDON : JARROLD & SONS, 10 & 11, WARWICK LANE, E.C. [AU Bights Reserved.] 1804. WotringliT jDc&iratcii Tn FLORENCE SCOTT, WHOSE AFFECTION AND FRIENDSHIP HAVE BEEN, AND EVER WILL BE, TO ME A VERY SWEET AND PRECIOUS THING. Stiutfopb-on-Avon, 1891. CONTENTS. — o CHAfTER PAGE I. A Family Party 9 II. Across the Threshold ... 20 III. Among Simple Folk 34 IV. On Holy Ground 51 V. Low Cross Village ... ... ... 65 VI. Aunt Libbie Feels Aggrieved 80 VII. Mrs. Sweetapple 93 VIII. Melissa is Altogether Astonishing ... 107 IX. Lady Whimperdale 124 X. By the Brook 136 XI. What Matthew Goldstraw Had to Say 154 XII. The Thread of Fate 172 XIII. Farewell to Low Cross 188 XIV. Her Own Home 205 XV. Miss Libbie Makes Preparations ... 222 XVI. Gathering Shadows CONTENTS.

Chapter I

A family party. /"HILOE had eaten her own dinner and eaten the cat's *J dinner, and now, with the air of a starving mendicant, was soliciting contributions from the afternoon tea-table of the family to which she had the honour to belong. Chloe was a pug of purest breed, with a nose like a button, and a beautiful black line running from her wrinkled fore head to her upcurled tail. She was of a delicate smoky fawn-colour, deep-chested, goggle-eyed, and greedy beyond all power of words to express. She entertained a never-dying hatred of all other animals, apparently labouring under the belief that no other member of the brute creation, save herself, had a right to exist, and was supposed to look upon all the fields and all the meadows as things created solely to supply her with a few succulent blades of grass, when she should feel disposed to take a mild corrective.

On the present occasion Chloe's propensities came near to being her undoing, for, as she was swallowing a bit of bread aud-butter with a crusty angle, in the haste to be ready for the next windfall, it stuck cross-wise iu her throat, and she choked horribly. " Really, Aunt Cynthia," said Willie Pierrepoint, lifting his bright face from his paper, and looking indignantly at Chloe, now recovering from her convulsive efforts, " the greediness of that dog of yours is disgusting." Aunt Cynthia, or, to give her her full title, Miss Cynthia Pierrepoint, looked up calmly from her knitting. Aunt Cynthia did everything calmly ; nothing ruffled her — least of all Chloe's choking over her food, an event that happened so often that anyone who had taken it to heart would have been worn out in less than a week.

" If Chloe's appetites are strong," said Aunt Cynthia, speaking in a low, soft, somewhat drawling voice, " so are her affections. I do not know a more loving dog." Chloe, evidently taking in the drift of the conversation, looked as loving as possible, staggered painfully on her hind legs to the side of an elderly man who lay back in a lounge chair within the arch of the wide bay-window, and shoved her black muzzle up against his arm. Her bulgy eyes, meanwhile, looked reproachfully across at Master Will, as who should say : " Do I look like a dog who has no thought for anything save what she can get to put in her stomach? Aren't you ashamed of yourself to traduce me so ? Did you ever see a more loving animal, or one of a more sensitive disposition ? As to Aunt Cynthia, her knitting still rested on the table, and from underneath the graceful sweep of her bands of snow-white hair her quiet, restful eyes gazed at Cldoe as those of a fond mother might gaze at a cherished child.

" Sweet, little darling ! " she murmured complacently, and then click, click ! the busy pins were off again, and the white wool. passed swiftly through fingers as white as itself. Perhaps it was as well that the good lady's attention was too absorbed in the mysteries of knit two, curry one and so on, to note the comical glance of Master Will's blue eyes, that looked for an answering smile from the worn, weary face of the sick man in the lounging-chair. For sick he was — a stranger would have added, "nigh unto death " ; but those who loved him — and who that knew him loved him not ? — were, it may be mercifully, blinded to the fact that for Anthony Pierrepoint, Major- General in Her Majesty's service, the last roll-call of all was about to sound. The gaunt figure — soldierly still for all its stooping gait — the sunken eyes, the hollow temples, and the hurried breathing, all told the tale that loving eyes refused to read.

When Aunt Cynthia said to people that her brother was going to travel "for his health," to try the gentle air of Madeira " for a time," when she said that the " doctors hoped so much from the climate," and that in the spring there would be a happy home-coming, people hesi tated a moment, almost gasped, and then, having got themselves well in hand, murmured politely how " nice " it was, and how " pleasant," and how cheering it must be to have such an opinion " from one of the first men in London too." Behind the poor lady's back very different comments were uttered. " God bless my soul ! " cried an impatient old warrior, a one-time comrade of the General's ; " can't the woman see the man's dying ? " "No, my dear," replied his common-sense wife, "and a very good thing too. If she saw as we see, she would lose all heart."

What of the sick man himself? Did he see as others saw, or with the gentle eyes of his sister Cynthia ? He saw the truth, and faced the enemy of the nations as he had faced the Sepoy bayonets and the Russian guns in a day that was long past, fearlessly, without heat, and with out tremor. He did not strive to tear off the bandage that love had bound over the eyes of those who loved and tended him ; ne did not grudge them the hope that was but a fair delusion. He knew all the truth and kept silence, rejoicing exceedingly in the love they bore him, thinking of and for each one of them, and smiling a sudden, sweet, far-off smile when they spoke of the time when he should be "quite well and strong again," and all the old home-life should enter upon a new lease of existence. For they were bound upon a long journey, this family circle to whom the reader is but just introduced, going on that saddest quest, the search after health in a distant land.

They were an oddly related family, these Pierrepoints of Ellersleigh ; a " scrappy " family in their relations to each other, as the sharp young lady of the neighbourhood cleverly put it. Brother and sister, the son of a younger brother, the daughter of a younger sister, both by a strange stroke of fate orphaned when too young to know the meaning of the word — these, with Chloe as a fifth, formed the family party at Ellersleigh ; scrappy, if you will, but happy as it is given to few households, however closely linked, to be. In three weeks' time three of the community were to start for the Island of Flowers, and the fair riverside home was to be left to solitude, servants, and — Chloe. This last point had not been carried without some dis putation, for Aunt Cynthia deprived of her pet companion was ever conscious of a blank in life ; but William Dennis Pierrepoint, the bright-eyed young fellow of twenty, who could " coax the heart out of a stone," as Mrs. Dulcimer, the housekeeper, was wont to put it. had succeeded in persuading Chloe's mistress that Chloe should remain behind and guard the house from possible burglars.

" The little animal is so intelligent, you see, Aunt Cynthia," said Will, with the smile of a diplomatist ; " she will understand the situation at once, and sleep with one eye open, and her tail curled ready for battle." Aunt Cynthia looked over her spectacles at Chloe, with wheezy breath and uncurled tail, sleeping off her last heavy meal in preparation for another, and yielded. " Ah, but it's Master William has the tongue of the ser pent and the wisdom of the dove ! " said Mrs. Dulcimer subsequently, meaning to flatter her young master, yet hardly hitting the right nail on the head. So it was settled that Chloe was not to go to Madeira. That left a party of three ; Aunt Cynthia, Will, and — though last, not least, since the journey was to be under taken on his account alone — the General.

Does the beauty of the world appeal with a special power and pathos to those who are conscious that their eyes must soon close upon it for ever ? * One would have thought so, to see the grave sweetness with which Anthony Pierrepoint was watching the gleam of the sunshine on river and tree, and the gentle swaying of branches, that were ruddy or golden just here and there near the tips, as though a painter had touched them with a brush fresh from " putting in " a sunset. There lay the stretch of green sward sloping down to the river Thames, that twinkled through the boles of the trees upon its banks. Their branches, touching the ripples with shadow-fingers as they passed, swayed gently in the sunshine ; and, below, the boat that had been Will's birthday gift, from Aunt Cynthia bobbed lazily up and down like a duck asleep upon the water.

Against the glow of the evening sky swallows floated, dipped, and twirled, shrieking in shrill concert as they fell. The time was come when, gathered in fluttering, restless groups, they would answer to the summons of the sun, and follow him to warmer climes. With spring they would return, chatter beneath the eaves, and fill the air with their shrill and plaintive cries. But might not one traveller follow the sunshine, and re turn no more when the summer came again ? "Where is Kate?" said the General, turning from the window that framed so fair a landscape, and looking to his sister Cynthia for an answer. But Will's ready tongue made reply : " Upstairs, I expect, in her ' den,' poring over Byles and Blackstone, qualifying to be the wife of a Q.C. that is to be." " Striving to fit herself to be her husband's companion in all things ; to enter into his life and work.

A noble ideal— a noble ideal ! " said the General, lifting and dropping the hand that lay upon the arm of his chair to emphasize his words. " All Kate's ideals are noble ones," said Will, with a flash in his eyes. " John Granger is a lucky fellow." "And I'm sure no one can rejoice with him more heartily than I do," said Aunt Cynthia, putting down her knitting, and taking out her pocket-handkerchief. " But still I must say I can't imagine what this place would be like without her — when we come back I mean. You, Anthony, will miss her most of all. She has hardly been an hour away from your side — has she ? — ever since you gave up going to the club, and took to staying at home so much ? And I will say that, for reading aloud, she has the pleasantest voice. While you and she have been going through Mr. Browning's poems, brother, it has often soothed me into quite a doze.

I do assure you it has." " We need no assuring on that point : we are quite con vinced, dear Cynthia ;" said the General, with a gentle irony all unrecognised by the good lady to whom it was addressed. " It sounds so strange, brother," said Miss Cynthia, with an aggrieved air, "to hear you talk of Kate— our own Kate — being married." " Well, my dear, you see " began the General. But the dear lady would not argue. " I know — I know," she said. " You are quite right ; you always are, Anthony ; but yet it seems to set it out all so plainly, as it were, to make it so real, and I'm sure I can not bear to think what will be the blank to all of us, and to you more especially, brother — I mean her being gone when we are settled down at home again after our wanderings. It will be like being without sunshine, and you will miss her most of all.

I must try and take her place as reader to you, dear, but I am not a good reader. I am always ready to acknowledge that. I lose my place in the line, and have to go back two or three words to fin-d it again, and that you know, destroys the flow — especially of poetry. But I can try, dear, and you will be very patient with me, I know." There was a tender light in General Pierrepoint's bright, sunken eyes, and in his smile as he turned to her ; but Will's face was grave as he heard Aunt Cynthia speak of the home coming that to her simple mind seemed so sure a thing. The boy had a clearer intuition than the rest as to how things were with Uncle Anthony. " Dear, dear ! how you are coughing," said Miss Cynthia, as the sick man's gaunt frame was shaken as a blighted tree by the storm ; " that comes of a dullness in the air to-day.

I have been sensible of it myself; indeed, I sneezed twice before lunch. You must have taken a little extra cold, Anthony." Chloe, whose affections were assuredly, as Miss Cynthia said, on a par with her appetite, seeing that something was wrong, stood on end to lick the worn hand that now hung clown in all the helplessness of exhaustion, and on wdiich the knuckles stood out significantly prominent, while Miss Cyn thia looked at Will, as who should say : " I defy anyone to say it is anything more than a little extra cold." Oh, the wilful blindness of love, the tender obstinacy that will not see ! What sight, in all this world of ours, is more piteous or more beautiful ? A reluctance to speak of his own ailments or sufferings was always noticeable in Anthony Pierrepoint. It was as though, seeing his sister's determined blindness to the in evitable, he was set upon helping her to shroud her eyes from the things that frightened her gentle soul to look upon.

He fondled Chloe's ball of a head, as it bobbed up and down at his side with restless persistency, and with a determined effort to recover breath went back to the subject of Kate. " She was always terribly in earnest even from a little lass, was Kate — Bonnie Kate. Do you remember, Cynthia, when she was a wee, toddling thing, how she cried because Mason the gardener had pulled the hats off the eschscholtzia blos soms, and she fancied the gnomes would be sad when they came to look for their little brown-peaked caps and could not find them ? " "That I do," said Aunt Cynthia; "and how she called out that the tall kitchen clock was dead, and couldn't speak any more, and then, when we went to look, you had forgotten to wind it up, brother. I must say," continued Aunt Cyn thia, looking hesitatingly round at Will, " that your dear uncle very seldom forgets anything, but on that one occasion — one very rare occasion — he did forget, and the dear child was the first to discover Dear, dear !

" said Aunt Cynthia, again looking helplessly round, " how strange it seems to think of Kate — our own Kate — being married only five days from now ! " " Beginning life in earnest," put in Will — " really in earnest ! " " Kate has always been in earnest," said the General. " She has become a woman now, and put away childish things ; but the same tune rings on through all the years, the same intensity colours all she says and does. She will always take life hard, will Kate — always suffer more keenly than others. She does not believe now in the gnomes ard their little brown caps, nor look upon the tall clock as a living thing ; but it will be the same with her in the greater as in the lesser things of life ; intensify — intensify — intensify — that is what she will always do. John Granger has under taken a great responsibility, for Kate will be hard to live up to — hard to guard from her own nature."

Aunt Cynthia looked sorely troubled, and not a little puzzled. "I do not know, brother, what has come over you. I don't — I really don't think you can be as well as usual this evening ; perhaps a mist is rising from the river." " There is no mist before my eyes," said the General, a solemn look upon his worn and noble face. " I see clearly enough. I look on into the future, and I see my darling's path begirt with trials and difficulties, yet I am not afraid for her. I know she will never lose sight of the light that shineth from above ; I know in whom she hath believed ; I know that if she hath been dowered with a perilous nature, yet shall God guide and guard her, as He guides and guards us all if we trust Him." Will's face was hidden by his hand ; you could see the beautifully cut mouth, with its golden shade upon the upper lip, tremble like a woman's. As for Aunt Cynthia, she gave up trying to understand anything.

Anthony was rather "low" to-day, and must be humoured. It almost seemed as though he were speaking unkindly of Kate — but that could not be ; that must be just a foolish old woman's fancy. Anthony was so clever ; it was not to be expected that one could always follow his train of thought. Only a very clever man like himself could be expected to do that. The one thing sure was that he must be humoured. He must be roused from his low fit. It was foolish of Will to sit there with his hand over his face as if he were crying. That only made matters worse, and they were bad enough already : indeed, she (Miss Cynthia) would have to mention the strange way in which the General had been talking (she only hoped it was not wandering) to Dr. Adamson the very next morning. b B Meanwhile, she — Cynthia Pierrepoint — felt called upon to make an effort — to rise to the occasion, as it were, and set a good example to Will.

She let Chloe drop from her knee with scant ceremony, to the unbounded amazement of that favourite of fortune, drew her white shawl gracefully about her shoulders, and, crossing the room with the languid grace for which she had been celebrated from a girl, seated herself at the piano, and struck a few harmonised chords. The General's hand began to rise and fall on the arm of his chair, to the rhythm of the music, at which Miss Cynthia nodded, well pleased ; and, proud of the success of her subtle doings, she began to sing in a clear sweet voice, worn as was natural, yet not without a plaintive melodiousness of its own. Her song, like her voice, was of an old fashion, yet had in it the sweetness of dry rose-leaves and lavender. " Knell of departed years, Thy voice is sweet to me, It wakes no sad foreboding fears.

Calls forth no sympathetic tears, Time's restless course to see ; From hallowed ground I hear the sound Diffusing through the air a holy calm around. " Thou art the voice of Love, To chide each doubt away, And as the murmur faintly dies, Visions of past enjoyments rise In long and bright array : I hail the sign That love divine Will o'er my future path in cloudless mercy shine. " Thou art the voice of hope, The music of the spheres, A song of blessings yet to come, A herald from my future home. And then she opened the door and came in amongst them, a bright and beautiful presence, Bonnie Kate — my Kate — the heroine of this my story. "Are you singing good wishes for me, dear Aunt Cyn thia ? " she said, passing her arm about the white-shawled shoulders, and kissing the soft old cheek of the singer.

" How I love all your old songs, even, ' A little cock sparrow he sat on a tree,' that you used to sing to me ' between the lights ' when I was a wee thing ; and how I shall think of them all when I — when you " In a moment, with a soft rush, she had flung herself on her knees beside her uncle, and was clinging about him with fond arms. "Oh," she said, "how good you have all been to me! How good ! How good ! " And the tears fell from her bright eyes like rain. Chloe abased herself in a corner of Miss Cynthia's gown, conscious that some family crisis had arrived, and knowing no better way of displaying her sympathy. Miss Cyn thia's song had been cut in two, and nothing could piece it again, to say nothing of the singer's voice being choked in tears ; while Will bent anxiously over the General, fearful of what the effect of such agitation might be.

But over the sick man seemed a strange calmness ; he folded Kate close in his arms, and kissed the sweet brow with its frame of sunny ripples — kissed it long and tenderly. "My darling," he said, "if all our good wishes for you come true, there will not be a happier woman in England than John Granger's wife — our own Bonnie Kate." And Chloe, seeing a smile here and there, took heart of grace, and clambered up on to the General's knee. " Chloe ! Chloe ! " cried Kate, clasping the little dog close, and kissing the round, black, wrinkled head. " I shall think of you too, never fear, many a time and oft." "It is not likely that any one who had ever known Chloe would forget her," said Miss Cynthia, with calm assurance.

Chapter II. Across The Threshold

AUTUMN had begun to touch the world with light and tender hand, putting in here and there a mellow shade so ripe and beautiful that it seemed rather the sign-manual of richness and completeness than the first herald of death and decay. The country, spreading out like a panorama on this side and on that, held a sunshine of its own, so brightly showed these vivid patches of colour — a sunshine that no cloud could obscure or take away. Here was a branch russet red, there a rose-briar in the hedge a streak of glowing crimson, now a bough just tipped with yellow-ochre, now a whole brake aflame with shades of amber and ruby. Faint lines of pale orange-pink showed across the western horizon, and through these dainty bars the sinking sun looked forth upon the fair bejewelled world. A river lay dark and still in the near foreground, each separate pollard upon its banks, with its clear reflection sleeping at its feet, a perfect duplicate.

Then came a pool, flag-fringed, set in the bosom of a meadow, its quiet water all rosy with the reflected light from above ; upon its margin a slender, solitary tree, that bent lovingly above it as one loving might watch the loved one sleeping. A windmill, with its long arms slowly whirl ing, swept the grass with infinite shadows, its head set in a fire, as the sunset glowed behind it. Then came long, seemingly interminable seas of soft green uplands, rolling on and on like billows of verdure, fold on fold, their rounded crests gleaming emerald-like in the level sun-rays, their wide expanse broken here and there by groups of larch or dark belts of fir ; but yet their continuity unbroken for mile after mile, and stretch upon stretch. All these fair and varied aspects of Nature, all these swiftly-changing landscapes had been watched by sweet, observant eyes as the train for the north sped on its way, for Bonnie Kate was on her travels now, with a plain gold ring on the third finger of her soft white hand, and seated opposite to her was her husband, John Granger, barrister-at law, the man for whom she had groped among the lore of Byles and Blackstone, and for whose dear sake she had even "forsaken all others," and vowed to "keep only to him so long as they both should live."

Kate had a rapt, serious look, and in her eyes was the shining of a new joy, still so new as to hold some troubled sweetness in its depths. It seemed to her as if into the last fortnight of her life had been compressed more than all the experiences that lay in all the years behind — more joy, more longing, more sadness too ; for did not the pain of parting from Uncle Anthony, Aunt Cynthia, and Will hang over the content of that fair marriage-day that had made her John's dear wife for good and all ? The memories of last looks, last words, lingering touches even of Chloe's wriggling herself in among the guests at the wedding-breakfast and curling herself up under the table in the folds of Kate's cream-satin skirts, by no means to the advantage of the same ; the memory of Will's dear, bright face, all blurred with fond, unwilling tears, which he strove to hide by holding hard on to Grippe, the wire-haired terrier, who lived in the yard because he was " unkind " to Chloe — Grippe, a born hunter, and for ever in trouble over chickens, or young ducks, or such small deer, and somehow a guest among the rest on the occasion of the "going away," barking madly at the bridegroom, whom some subtle instinct taught him to recognise as a thief.

Kate always had a kind word for Grippe, choking at the end of his chain in his anxiety to accompany anyone or no one upon a ramble in the woods, or by the river, where sleek water-rats were to be found. And may-be the rough-bearded creature knew he was being defrauded of a friend. How she and John had talked over every detail of that all important day, and yet how fresh it all seemed as her memory dwelt upon it even now ! In looking back upon that dear home life so lately parted with, how vivid was each spot of colouring in the picture fondly dwelt upon ! The bright river, seen through the vista of the trees ; the boat, with its nose among the flags and the buttercups ; the General's tall figure, still held so upright by sheer force of will, and in spite of weakness and pain, pacing up and down the velvet lawn, with Aunt Cynthia chattering by his side ; and Chloe stealing stealthily into the side bushes, with the unsuspecting lady's ball of white knitting-wool held in her distended jaws.

These, and such slight fancies, would come before her mind's eye, seeming so real, and yet so far away as to prove what a shadowy thing is time, after all. Most solemn of all these memories was that of the General's adieu to the girl who had been to him as the very apple of his eye. Had not Kate, clinging to his breast — the breast that had ever been her shelter — looked up through blinding tears to the face that bent above her, and seen the eyes raised to heaven, the pallid lips moving, and caught the words : " Into Thy hands I commend her. Guide her, teach her, comfort her — oh, my God ! " Had not that murmured prayer been to her as a benediction — a solemn commenda tion? When Aunt Cynthia came hurriedly along, out of herself, as it were, with excitement and much weeping, and cried : " Oh, my dear General, they will miss the train — they will, indeed !