A Flash of Summer. The story of a simple woman's life

Preface

— ♦ — SINCE this story appeared in the Illustrated London News last year it has been re-written and enlarged. The plot, which I have not altered, occurred to me eight years ago, before marriage problems and questions had attained their present importance in fiction. I mention this to show that the story is a story, and nothing else, and does not in any way belong to recent controversial discussion. L. C. London, October 1895. — ♦ —

Chapter I Everyone

on Shooters' Hill had known Katherine Kerr by sight since she was six years old. She seemed to be always walking up or down the great Dover Road — that wonderful road that stretches from London, through New Cross and Lewisham, across Blackheath, over Shooters' Hill to Welling and Bexley, and away to the coast far beyond. Every morning she left the White House, that was hidden among the trees, at the corner of the little road leading to Severn droog, walked down the garden pathway with the beeches overhead, opened the iron gate, and came out on to the high-road. Close to the gate was a well to which the inhabitants went with their pails in days of drought before the Water Company came to help them. Just below was the grey little church, and opposite was the post office, established for many a long year at an unobtrusive general shop ; next to the post office was The Red Lion, with its wide quadrangle and tea-gardens that were almost rural.

To the tea-gardens, on Sunday nights, the soldiers from Woolwich and the Government servants from the Royal Military Academy brought their sweethearts, and sat drinking beer with them at little wooden tables in trellis-made summer-houses. They grew jovial as the evening went on. Katherine listened to their snatches of song and the din of voices till darkness fell, and perhaps faint in the distance the bugle-call was heard ; then gradually the merri ment ceased and two and two, always a he and she, the Sunday crowds went down the hill and turned to the right towards the barracks. The little road they took was known as The Lane, and led to Woolwich ; at one corner of it was a stuffed-bird shop, and on one side of the shop window were toys and story-books for children. Katherine looked in at them now and then, and hesitated before she spent a stray penny on " Jack and the Beanstalk " or " Cinderella."

At the opposite corner'of The Lane were four houses called Ordnance Terrace. In the garden of the first house there was a peach tree trained up against the stable ; she used to see the flushed fruit among the long narrow leaves in the late summer, and think how good it would be to touch it with her fingers. Lower down was a plantation, to which the artillerymen came in the morning to exercise their horses : the clatter of hoofs, the shrill bugle, and the rushing among the trees made her wonder if it were like a battlefield. Opposite, on the other side of the main road, was a wide expanse of gorse and blackberry bushes, the great trees of Severndroog and its ruined tower showing above them on the left. On the right, beyond the Scrubs, as the tangle of bushes was called, a narrow road that led to Eltham went across the landscape, and beyond again stretched the open country, showing the Crystal Palace in the distance.

In the morning, when she came out of the gate, — every morning of her life from six to seventeen, save on Sundays and during the brief holiday periods, — Katherine turned to her left and went down the hill, past the church on the one side and the inn on the other, past the stuffed-bird shop and The Lane that led to Woolwich, and Ordnance Terrace, and the plantation and the Scrubs. Then she came to where four roads met, or rather, two branched off, right and left, the one on the left to Eltham and the one on the right — a woman kept an apple-stall at the corner — to Woolwich ; for the road behind her going upwards, and in front of her going downwards, was but the same great one. She used to stop for a moment, quite punctually, at a quarter-past nine, and look down the road that led to Woolwich, wondering if by chance the soldiers were coming with their band.

If she saw and heard no sign of them, she would look to the left towards Eltham. At Eltham there was an old palace that had a moat, and on the edge of the moat a crane stood on one leg. When she went to Eltham, she always lingered on the bridge leading to the palace, to look at the moat and wonder what the crane thought about. She felt certain that it had lived for hundreds of years, and remembered Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn dancing in the great hall that was now a ruin : she often wondered why the other dancers had not knelt to the king and entreated him not to cut off Anne's head. But she never had time to stay long at the cross-roads ; the fear of Uncle Robert was before her eyes, still more did she fear the tale-telling of Susan Barnes, who had looked after the house since Aunt Evelina's death.

She walked quickly when she remembered Susan Barnes, and, just as she came in sight of the milestone in the dis tance, entered a long low house on the right. The house had a narrow garden in front, and green Venetian blinds to its windows, that winter and summer were always open. This was Mrs. Barrett's school. Katherine went as a morning pupil, from half-past nine to one, and carried a mighty list of lessons back with her to learn in the drawing-room of the White House by Severndroog. She hardly knew her schoolfellows, for Mr. Morris (her uncle) did not wish her to make friends, and allowed no visitors. But the school-hours were happy enough, for Mrs. Barrett looked at Katherine in a somewhat kindlier fashion than she did at the rest of her pupils ; and once — this was when she was twelve years old — she gave her a little black satin work-bag embroidered with forget-me-nots.

Katherine kept it hidden away in a drawer, and thought it too precious a thing even to look at very often. At one o'clock she sallied forth from her school, along the road again, never forgetting to turn her head when she came to the turnings to the right and left up the hill, and back to the White House. Susan Barnes was generally waiting with a sharp eye to see if she had dust or mud on her shoes, and with a quick injunction to get ready for dinner. After dinner — she ate it alone four days a week — she worked at her lessons till tea-time : then Uncle Robert came home. " Well, what have you been doing ? " he would ask. She would stand awkwardly, answering nothing, for she was always in awe of him. " Behaved yourself, eh ? " On Susan's answer would depend the rest of the day. " Oh, she's been tiresome as usual," the woman would say sometimes, " started five minutes late for school, and no one knows what she did coming back — it was five-and-twenty minutes past one by the clock before she entered the gate, and then, instead of having her gloves on, she carried them all of a screw."

" Oh, that was it ! I suppose you were thinking of the soldiers or watching for the band : well, that's to make you do it again ! " and he would give her a cuff on the ears. Then she hid herself away to cry, but did not hate him in the least, for she remembered that just as he scolded her now, so he used to scold Aunt Evelina. It was only a matter of course. If Susan gave a good report, he would sometimes take her for a walk in the evening. They generally went up the hill ; he and she and Martyr, the big black dog. The road, as it ascended, had been cut far back in the old coaching days, so as to make it less steep for the horses. On either side was the high footway, protected by a hand-rail, and behind it on the left she could see the top windows of old-fashioned houses standing a little way back behind fences and garden gates.

On the right there were hedges and thick trees, bordering the grounds belonging to more important dwellings. Katherine used to think of the stage-coaches as she walked silently beside her uncle, and of the highwaymen and the legends of Robin Hood and Maid Marian. On the top of the hill there was an old inn called The Bull, and a little way from the door, against a tree under which the coaches used to draw up, some white stone steps remained by which the travellers had mounted to their places. When she had looked at the inn, she turned her head quickly in order to catch sight of a narrow pathway opposite. It led through some woods, and round by the back of Severndroog tower, and over some fields to Eltham. There were many delights in the woods, for amid the bracken and briar the blackberries and wild raspberries trailed, and in the autumn the nuts hung thick and brown.

Sometimes, if Uncle Robert were in a good humour, Katherine would push her hand into his — it was not till she was ten or twelve years old that she ventured on this little coaxing — and say, " Let's go through the wood." Perhaps he would say curtly, in a manner that made her feel how absolute was his power — " No ; I want to go another way." Then they trudged on towards Welling and over Shoulder-of- Mutton Green, and home by Plumstead Lane — a long walk for a little girl : but there were compensations, especially in September, when a flock of geese waddled over the Green, or in June, when they went down Plumstead Lane and past the strawberry-garden. Once or twice in the summer, after Mr. Belcher first came from town and went back again when he had had some tea and seen the view from the White House windows, Uncle Robert, in high good humour, took her into the strawberry-garden.

Then she sat in a little summer - house and ate the reddest straw berries that ever ripened in the sun, watching the while some beehives in a far corner. She was afraid of the bees ; but it was a wonderful thing to think of the inside of the hives, and of the honey stored in each little cell. In the middle of the garden was a scarecrow made of two sticks put crossways and a coat and an old hat, with a mask for a face, and each armless sleeve had a strawberry pottle sewn to the end of it. It was worth being footsore and weary to go to the strawberry-garden, or even to pass it by, and to remember that she had seen the geese on the Green, and the scarecrow, which was visible enough from the road, and the still beehives, all in one evening. Or perhaps Uncle Robert would give in about the woods.

Then they had a lovely walk : adown the narrow pathway under the trees till they came to the stile, — a difficult, awkward stile that Katharine delighted in climbing, — through green fields, and over a cornfield, in which the poppies grew so thick she could have gathered an armful in two minutes but that she knew Uncle Robert would stride on without waiting for her, and through the churchyard, against which there were some cottages, as though the dead and the living dwelt in silent companionship. Thus they went to Eltham, and from Eltham, when they had seen the palace and the crane, they walked along the road Katharine passed on the way to school, and so up the hill again to the White House. But these walks were only in the summer. In the winter-time her daily exercise was confined to going to and fro from Mrs. Barrett's, and some times in the afternoon to the post office and back with Martyr the dog ; or, but still less often, to Woolwich with Susan Barnes to shop.

When they went to Woolwich, they did not go down between the stuffed-bird shop and Ordnance Terrace ; there was a short cut higher up, a little steep way called Constitution Hill, that led into The Lane lower down than where it started from the main road. It came out opposite a public house-called The Eagle, that also had tea-gardens belonging to it. A man with a fair beard was generally standing at the door. He was called Harding, and as she went by, he used to say, " Morning, miss. Is the master quite well ? " She always answered, " Yes, thank you, Mr. Harding," and walked on demurely beside Susan Barnes, who never condescended even to look at him ; for though Susan seldom went to church she had very strong opinions, and considered that Mr. Harding was a publican and a sinner. The walk to Woolwich was an event in her quiet life — under the trees on the common and through the white gate towards the Artillery barracks, with the wide field in front, and the Rotunda in the distance : sometimes the band was playing, or the soldiers being drilled on the parade as she and Susan went on towards the narrow streets of the town.

If Susan's manner relaxed in the bustle of shopping, she would take Katherine into the confectioner's at Green's End, and say in her hard, respectful voice — " Better sit down and eat a cheesecake or two, Miss Katherine ; it's a long way back." Katherine used to wonder, as they went up the hill in the cold grey twilight of the winter, why so many people came to live in the world. They did not seem to be wanted any more than she herself was wanted, nor very happy, nor to have much to do. It was odd, too ; that many of them seemed to be standing still, waiting for something to come by ; and others looked as if they were going in search of it. She could not guess what it was they waited for, nor what might be the goal towards which they turned their faces. She only felt in sensibly that there were mysteries and barriers everywhere — in the sunset sky, and across the misty field, and far away in the blue distance beyond Shooters' Hill : most of all in the people for ever coming and going, passing and repassing, each one separate and alive and intent on some thing that was a closed and wonderful book to her.

But one day, she felt, the doors would be opened wide, and the voices speak, and the mysteries be made plain : womanhood, that state she described to herself as "when I am grown up," might hold the key to all the secrets. Meanwhile, if life were occasionally a dull thing to her, and some days had their blows or bitter nesses, there was the expectancy of youth in her heart, and the waiting for the unknown that made all actual things but as passing clouds. The winter evenings were perhaps the most difficult to get through. She sat in the drawing room alone, and was supposed to sew till eight o'clock ; but she used to get up now and then to play at battledore and shuttlecock : for the drawing-room was not crowded with furniture like those of modern days, and there was a wide space between the round table and the grand piano.

At eight o'clock she went downstairs to say good night to Uncle Robert, and stayed in the dining room to drink a glass of milk and eat three picnic biscuits before going to bed. This was her life till she was nearly fourteen. Then one morning, just as Uncle Robert was getting ready to go to town, a letter came with many foreign stamps upon it : when he had read it, he turned to Katherine with a face so drawn and strange that she was frightened. " Go and fetch Susan," he said, and the two were together for some time, and the dining-room door was shut. Katherine did not dare enter in upon them ; besides, it was time to get ready for school. When she came downstairs five minutes later, she could hear that Susan was sobbing, and her heart warmed to the stern old woman who had taken care of her since she was a little girl.

She opened the dining-room door a little way and said softly, " May I come in ? " And Susan answered in a kinder voice than usual, " Yes, come in, miss ; and you must not go to school to-day." Katherine went up and put her arms round Susan and looked at Uncle Robert, who stood quite still and almost rigid by the table, on which the open letter was lying. " Mr. Richard is dead," Susan said. " I knew him since he was a baby." "When did he die?" Katherine whispered, awe struck. " We don't know," Susan answered, wiping away her tears ; " but you must have a black frock before you can be seen about again. You won't go to town, sir, to-day, I suppose?" she asked Mr. Morris. " Yes, I shall go ; I want to see Belcher." And slowly buttoning his coat, Mr. Morris went out and down the pathway with hesitating steps, as though he had been half-stunned, to the garden gate.

"Ah," said Susan, as she looked after him, shaking her head. " He's had a blow from which he'll find it hard to rise. He thought he knew the worst, but he was mistaken." "Who was Mr. Richard?" Katherine asked. " He was your Uncle Robert's only son. " And where has he been ? " There was some hesitation in Susan's manner before she answered — " He has been in Australia and other parts. He went away," she added, with still more hesitation, " before you were born. We knew we should never see him again, but we never thought to hear that he was dead : it was bad enough without that. Well, it killed his mother years ago." "What killed her?" " Mr. Richard — he did what was wrong and had to go away — they sent him away," she said in a low voice. " We knew he'd never come back, but we thought perhaps some day he'd be all right out there.

He was no real relation of yours," Susan added, as if to reassure her ; " you belong to the mistress's side of the family ; so you needn't think there's bad in your blood — not that there was in his either. What he did he was led to do." " Susan," Katherine asked, " have I any relations besides Uncle Robert ? I didn't know there was Mr. Richard." " Not a soul that I know of. You were the daughter of the mistress's sister, — half-sister she was, and years and years younger, — and there were no more of them, but just those two. Mistress married master, and your mother married a clergy man, who died and left her with nothing. It was lucky for you that your Aunt Evelina took you. But for her, you hadn't a relation in the world, nor stock nor stone belonging to you." Then Katherine asked a question that had often puzzled her.

" Did Uncle Robert like Aunt Evelina ? " " Oh yes, he liked her well enough ; but he was always a hard man, and had his way wherever he went, and sometimes she'd sit down and cry about it instead of getting up and doing what he wanted. If he'd been a bit softer with Mr. Richard, things wouldn't have been so hard for himself now." " Are they hard for him ? " she asked wonderingly. " Yes, and they have been, and if they hadn't it would have been different for you. He wouldn't have cuffed you so often — I believe he's fond of you in his way ; but men are always hard on women : they've got the upper hand, and they know it — and the only thing we can do is to make the best of it. After all, they earn the money, and they've the right to be master." Then Susan went to the window and pulled down the blind.

" What is that for ? " Katherine asked, for she knew nothing of death. " It's for Mr. Richard— I wouldn't like to think we didn't make the house dark a single day for him. It may be months since he died, but it's only this morning we heard of it, and we'll keep the blinds down till it seems like time for the funeral to be over. You are all your Uncle Robert's got left in the world now, Miss Katherine. There's Mr. Belcher ; he thinks a lot of him, but of course he's no relation." " Why does he think a lot of him ? " Katherine had always been a little afraid of Mr. Belcher, and kept out of sight when he was in the house. She wondered sometimes why he came at all. " Old Mr. Belcher was the master's lawyer years and years ago. He had been out in Australia ; he was born there, or something, and when the trouble came with Mr. Richard, he wrote out about him, and did some good, I never heard what, but it was everything to your uncle and aunt.

She saw him when she was dying — he died soon after himself." " And then ? " — For Susan stopped, and seemed to be living over again to herself some scene that she remembered. Katherine waited breathlessly for a strange ending to the story of which she had not even heard the beginning ; but Susan roused herself, and went on contemptuously — " He was very different from this one, was the old gentleman, but he's dead and gone long ago, and it's this one that's got the hold on master. He seems to lean on him and take his advice in everything. I know I would not trust him, but obstinate men, that think they know so much themselves, are just those that gets caught hold of — but it won't do for me to be wasting all my morning like this ! " Susan exclaimed, with a sudden change of tone and a sigh that seemed to be given to a past rather than to any present trouble.

She turned away abruptly and went upstairs to pull down the bed room blinds. Katherine felt as if she had looked out a little farther into the world, and had drawn back disheartened, for she had only learned that Mr. Richard had gone wrong and died, and that Aunt Evelina had broken her heart. But Susan's revelations made her see Uncle Robert in a different light altogether. She knew that any harshness he had shown had not been unkindness towards her so much as an expression of many things he had suffered himself. She felt a little half-frightened tenderness towards him, and wondered if she could do anything that would please him. Then she remembered there were some wall flowers growing in the garden, at the far end behind the bank of laurel : she was certain he did not know they were there.

She had stood over them every morning before he was down, and softly touched their petals ; they felt like velvet, and she liked, too, the little close bunches of dark buds. Perhaps he would be pleased if she gathered some into one of the blue and white bowls, to put on the square table in the middle of his bedroom. Once or twice her pupils had taken Mrs. Barrett a bouquet of her favourite flowers ; on her birthday one of them gave her a little brass vase filled with violets, and she had put it on the drawing-room table, and looked happy all day because of it. Perhaps Uncle Robert would be pleased too. So in the afternoon Katherine took down the bowl and went softly to the garden. She did not want Susan to see her. She wanted to give him a surprise in which no one else at all had had a share.

She filled the bowl with water, from the pump that was just outside the house — so full that it brimmed over. Then she went along the pathway, under the beech and larch trees, and dis appeared behind the laurel bank to gather the flowers. When they were arranged in the bowl, she rose, and was going back to the house. As she passed the back door — it was painted grey, and had a little heap of stones beside it — that led out on to the main road, a key turned in the lock. Mr. Morris and a tall dark man of about two-and-thirty entered the garden so quickly, that Katherine started and dropped the bowl, which scattered itself with the water and flowers at her feet. " What does this mean ? " Mr. Morris asked. "What were you doing?" She answered quickly, with a white face and two blue eyes full of fright — " I was going to put some flowers in your room — because you were unhappy.

I thought you would be pleased." The tall man looked at her mockingly, and almost laughed. She saw it, and turned away helplessly, for Susan's talk that morning had made her feel that Mr. Belcher was a power against whom it was useless to struggle. He knew the family history, and Uncle Robert wanted him, and told him secrets, and listened to the things he said, and nothing would prevent his coming to the house. All she could do was to be silent. She let her hands drop to her sides and waited. Mr. Morris stared at her for a moment, as if he dimly recognised that she was old enough to suffer pain. But it did not soften him towards her. She was merely Evelina's niece, a girl who was half a stranger and yet claimed relationship. She lived in his house, and counted it her home, while Richard lay in his grave thousands of miles off.

" She is very sorry," Mr. Belcher said mockingly, as if anxious for the scene to go on. " You are very sorry, aren't you, Katherine?" But she made no sign, though she winced inwardly at his interference. " Well, never mind," Mr. Morris said in a hard voice ; " have that mess swept up : and don't pick flowers again without asking leave. I don't want to see you any more to-day." He walked towards the house without another word, and Mr. Belcher followed him. She gathered up the flowers and bits of broken bowl into a heap, and, standing on the heap of stones, threw them over the garden fence into the ditch behind. Every morning for a week afterwards she used to see them on her way to school, till, unable to bear the sight any longer, she surreptitiously buried them. Then she hid herself behind the laurels, and gave way to bitter disappointment, till, hiding her face in her arms on the little grassy bank, she broke down altogether, and sobbed.

Presently she heard the sound of a footstep and started. Mr. Belcher was coming towards her with the amused expres sion still on his face. " In disgrace, eh ? " he asked, insultingly it seemed to Katherine. She rose to her feet and stood looking at him, while a strange dismay took possession of her. He was a tall man and dark, with brown eyes, cold and large, and his brown hair was carefully brushed and parted on one side. He was only two-and-thirty, but he looked much older, and as if he were a good deal taken up with the affairs of life : keen, and with an eye to main chances. There was something methodical in his manner and almost cruel in his expression : Katherine quailed a little before it, but did not know that she was afraid of him. " I thought he would be pleased," she said sullenly.

" People are seldom pleased when you break their crockery," he answered with grim amusement. " You should be more careful." She did not speak a word. He measured her with his eyes. " Why, you are growing quite tall, Katherine ; how old are you — fifteen ? " " I am fourteen." He looked at her again. " Come and walk round the garden." She hesitated and did not move. " Come," he repeated, with a hard little smile, " it will do you good." Reluctantly she went forward, step by step, and walked beside him round the untidy garden, under the beech and larch trees, beside the marigold bed which did not yet show a sign of life, and towards the little clump of primroses that she only knew to be breaking into bloom. She would not even look towards it while she was with Mr. Belcher, it might betray them to him, and that would be so cruel : and luckily he did not see them.