Ravenstone

Front matter

RAVENSTONE Ravenstone. BY CHRISTABEL R. COLERIDGE AND HELEN SHIPTON " Love had he found in huts where poor men lie ; His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills." LONDON : A. D. INNES & CO., BEDFORD STREET. 1896. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE Prologue ... ... ... ... ... i I. At the Back of the High Street ... 5 II. On the Edge of the Moor ... ... iS III. Rood Knovvle ... ... ... ... 34 IV. Well Meant ... ... ... ... 52 V. Day-dreams ... ... ... ... 58 VI. "Acting Honourably" ... ... ... 77 VII. An Approving Conscience ... ... 90 VIII. The Moth and the Star ... ... ... 100 IX. Across the Sea ... ... ... 123 X. The Despatch-box ... ... ... ... 131 XI. Dreams come True ... ... ... 150 XII. Lady Theodora ... ... ... ... 16S XIII.

New Honours ... ... ... ... 182 XIV. The " San Francisco " ... ... ... 193 XV. Social Problems ... ... ... 213 XVI. Sometimes Coy ... ... ... ... 230 XVII. Bridging Gulfs ... ... ... 251 XVIII. The Lord of Ravenstone ... ... ... 264 XIX. Clandestine Correspondence ... ... 273 XX. CarletoiN Sinclair ... ... ... 280 XXI. To the Rescue ... ... ... 294 XXII. Rood Knowle again ... ... ... 312 XXIII. Love and Honour ... ... ... RAVENSTON E.

Prologue

. The misty, colourless sunlight of a hot summer afternoon in London found its way through the blinds of a sick-room in a handsome house in Park Lane, and showed a tall, delicately featured, correctly attired youth sitting in an attitude of dutiful attention near the armchair of a yellow faced, eagle-nosed old man, who was talking fast and confidentially, and had been so talking for the best part of an hour. The talker was very old and very ill, and it would not have become the boy to have interrupted him, or to have betrayed how little he cared whether the indistinct accents and incoherent stories conveyed any ideas to him or not. He suppressed his yawns, and said, "Yes, sir," and " Really, Sir Rupert ? " as often as a break B RA VENSTONE. 2 came, and wished the old man would get tired of talking to him, and that he could escape from the hot room into the open air, and from the unsavoury stories, which were too old-fashioned to be even amusing, to ideas which suited him better.

He was a thoughtful youth, and it struck him that if any old labourer on his estate had talked to him in such a fashion, he would have felt it his duty to remind him of " his latter end," and speedily to check the flow of reminiscences. His sense of duty was not, however, strong enough to lead him to interfere with an old gentleman who had been elderly in his father's youth, and who would, moreover, have thought his interference exceedingly funny. This splendid, coarse, gallant, mean old fellow was repellent to him ; his grand military record belonged to the dark ages, his callous private vices to the dark places of the earth. How could it be that he had once been an inspiring example, an irresistible tempter to young men ? " My father " — thought the youth — and then suddenly that father's name caught his ear, and his speculations changed into sharp at tention. Three names occurred in the story which the old man now began to tell, with renewed clearness of utterance, and what seemed much greater

PROLOGUE.

. 3 coherency — his own, that now borne by his young auditor, and a third, well known to both, and interesting to the youth, for reasons. If he never forgot that story, he never told it again. It struck the last blow at the faith in which he had been reared — the faith that his dead father had been what his mother longed to make of himself. It filled him with shame, disgust, and anger, as the narrator chuckled over its details and boasted of its results. How had those three " friends " found opportunity for such varieties of villainy in so short a space of time as appeared ? This awful old satyr was boasting of his past misdeeds ; they had grown to heroic size, they had passed into the region of the supernatural. Each one came out clear, and big, and disgusting, but the connection of them — the causes — were blurred and confused.

But who cared to know the whys and the wherefores of the matter ? What ? Then there had been some saving grace, some sense of shame in the actors in this low comedy. They had tried to hide their deeds. Well, since they had kept their reputations, he supposed they must have done so, but how ? What were the last words of this ghastly parody of a dying shrift ? RAVENSTONE. 4 " So we got the brat out of the way, and saved the succession to the peerage ; your succession, you know, my boy. Saved all chance of a contest. I owed your father a good turn, and I did it ! Kept the papers, though ; here they are, in my despatch-box. Documentary evidence, eh ? — always valuable in the right hands. And the child was safely disposed of. I've left the box to you, so don't let your mother get hold of it, eh, my lad ? — it don't do to tell the ladies everything !

Thank'ee, my boy, for a pleasant hour ; you're good company. It's all here, in my despatch-box, don't forget that." The young man looked at the shabby, ex pensive, Russia-leather despatch-box, and he never did forget it, though the next moment he had started up, and was calling and ringing the bell in terror, as the old man's face changed, and he fell back in his chair. Complete or incomplete, that strange shrift was ended — its last word spoken.

Chapter I. At The Back Of The High Street

In Ecclesford High Street the shop fronts on the south side, and the front doors of the private residences opposite to them, presented a modern and prosperous aspect. The shops had large plate-glass windows ; the old red brick of the houses was picked out with clean white paint and covered with stucco. The town evidently thought itself in every way up to date, and preferred an air of business-like prosperity to regard to the picturesque. But, in behind the shop fronts and the front doors, the red-tiled, irregular roofs and incon venient but original windows had remained un altered for at least two hundred years. Old trees cast over-much shade on old damp gardens, and beyond the walls of these, across the flat green RAVENSTONE. meadows, the old church tower, rising above a line of odd peaked roofs, took the thoughts back to an older world still.

In one of the smaller High Street houses, Mrs. Shirley sat just inside the window of the family sitting-room one hot summer afternoon, looking out on her shady green garden, anddarning the family stockings. She was a handsome, fair-skinned woman, com fortable looking, in spite of the grievances on which she was expatiating to her eldest daughter, a pretty, neatly made girl, with dark eyes and hair, who sat just outside the window, trimming a very fashionable hat with wild flowers. " If I only had a little money to spare, Carrie," said the mother, " I'd clear out these rubbishy looking old day-lilies and snapdragons, and have a neat ribbon border of geraniums round the walls. But there — money to spare I never had, nor shall have. If I had, in spite of her age, I do think I'd send Dora to school.

I don't know what to do with her." "That's just what dear Percy said in his last letter," said the daughter, in a thin little voice, pretty, in spite of her provincial accent. "He said Dora should get a situation as governess or companion. It's so bad for a girl to idle about in a place with no advantages." " No lady would stand the way Dora speaks up to your face," said Mrs. Shirley, sighing. " She doesn't make herself nice to the gentlemen either," said Carrie, with a little giggle. " There was young Mr. Maple asked her if the fur in her hat was a fox's tail, and she laughed out loud and said foxes hadn't got tails. She's so bold-faced, and Rafe encourages her." " Oh, well, Carrie, a fox's tail does sound ridiculous, when one comes of sporting folk, and Rafe and Dora pick up that sort of talk out with uncle and aunt at Rood Knowle."

" Ma," said Carrie, " I wouldn't let Rafe stop out there. He gets so rough I'm quite ashamed of him, I've seen him there digging in a manure heap, and he says he likes it ! — and on Sunday afternoons he'll get down to the river in an old coat. It looks so bad. I wish Percy would speak to him." " He doesn't think as much of Percy as he ought," said Mrs. Shirley. " He was different ; look how he worked till he got to the Theological College ; and now Rafe — and when one considers everything But I never let my thoughts take that turn ; and after all, they're both very like their dear papa — so warm-hearted ; and so are you, Carrie, and Percy, like my dear first. I often think so." "We're not much like the others," said Carrie, dryly. " Perhaps it isn't likely we should be." It was not. Mrs. Shirley's " dear first," William Lupton, a most respectable ironmonger in Eccles ford, had been considered, spite of his middle age and his plain person, a match above the claims of Caroline Drabble, the daughter of a moorland farmer, with hard work to make two ends meet.

Young Mrs. Lupton had had something to do to live up to the claims of Ecclesford society ; but she had risen to the occasion, and when she was left a widow, with two children, a fair portion, and the little house in the High Street, she was thoaght to have done well by herself in every way, and to have been left comfortable for life. Who would have thought she would meet the romance of her life in the person of James Shirley, the tallest and handsomest man in Ecclesford ? He was only a collector of rates and taxes, but he had served in the army — had half-a-dozen medals, and nearly as many scars ; could relate, or not relate, adventures of thrilling interest ; sing " barrack-room ballads " in a fine bass voice, and looked, Mrs. Lupton said, like a prince, and her friends, like an adventurer.

But he did not turn out a villain ; and though he was a very bad match for the widow, in the estimation both of her own and her late husband's kith and kin, he did not spend her money, nor ill-use her, nor disgrace himself in any of the ways expected by her Ecclesford friends. He only died, after fewer years than might have been expected of so splendid a man, and left his widow to weep more tears for him than she had found to shed for her first husband. But it was not surprising, "all things considered," that the three Shirleys should be " rough diamonds," at best perplexing and un accountable. Whereas, Percival and Caroline Lupton were always nicely behaved and popular. " 'Tisn't likely we should be alike," said Carrie ; " but, there, I'm sure we're all just like own brothers and sisters in feeling — and, ma, I do think — I wouldn't say — but if Rafe would only behave himself, I think I know where I might speak a word that might get him a berth."

" Ah, Carrie," said Mrs. Shirley, noticing her daughter's blush, "you always were the girl to twist the gentlemen round your little finger, which shows how much better it is to be quiet and lady like than Mercy on us, what's that ? " A door in the wall at the bottom of the garden suddenly burst open, letting in, first, a burst of ringing laughter, loud, clear, and utterly regardless of listening ears, then a tall girl in a grey tweed frock, with a great bundle of wet river plants in her arms. " All right, Mr. Appleby, I'll race you up the river any Thursday evening you like, on one con dition — that you get all our sisters, and our cousins, and our aunts to see me beat you hollow." Another figure in the doorway, and another voice murmured an answer, echoed in loud, fearless tones. " Another condition ?

Give you one ? There ! " and with another peal of laughter, the girl flung half her bundle of wet reeds and flags right at her companion, then banged the door in his face, then, still laughing, ran up the path towards the house. " Dora," exclaimed her mother, " I'm ashamed of you ! Is that the way to behave ? What will Mr. Appleby think of you ? " "I don't care one little bit what he thinks," said Theodora Shirley. She was a tall girl, with a white skin, a clear cut n nose, with a delicate curve in it, grey eyes, steady and straight-looking, and a mass of rough brown hair under a boyish hat. Her dress, though of cheap material and imperfect cut, had a false air of tailor-made correctness, just as her manner and voice, unformed and provincial, had a certain cool " don't carishness " and indifference to effect, un usual in circles where manners are acquired by careful consideration.

Perhaps the effect of the dress was partly owing to the long lines and fine curves of a figure which might have carried either milk pails or a court train, but the like of which was rarely seen beneath the handiwork of an Ecclesford dressmaker. "You should care about being lady-like," said her mother, reproachfully. " It's not at all more unlady-like to throw plants at a man, than to let him kiss you on the sly every time you go through a turnstile with him, as Maud Williams let Phil Hornby do, when we were coming home from church on Sunday evening," said Theodora, coolly. " Well, I never ! " said Carrie ; " Maud is a sly one. I should not have thought he'd look at her." " She looked first — through her eyelashes. She's ladylike ! " said Dora, with another burst of laughter. Mrs. Shirley had been a rustic beauty, and she was not at all sure that a kiss at a turnstile, snatched — really snatched, be it observed — offended her ideas of propriety as much as it did Dora's. She remarked, however, with much truth — "There's a medium, Dora, between kissing and rudeness.

And, now, do go and put yourself tidy, my dear; your aunt Williams and cousin Charlotte are coming to tea to hear dear Percy's last letter ; and I should not be surprised if Mrs. Appleby and Mrs. Thomas looked in also." " Bother ! " said Dora, cheerfully ; " let's have tea on the terrace." " Well, mamma, the Applebys did last week," said Carrie, "and little tables have such a nice effect." " My dear," said Mrs. Shirley, " I like a comfortable tea table. It reminds me of how dear Mr. Lupton used to come in from the shop. It was the only meal we had free from the apprentices, and we always enjoyed it. Run and put on your blue dress, Dora, my dear. See how nice Carrie looks in her pink." "All right," said Dora, singing " My mother bids me bind my hair " in a great strong voice that wanted training.

" She sings like her papa," said Mrs. Shirley, as she went to superintend the comfortable tea table. Theodora ran up to her little attic — an untidy nook, with plants, and a dormouse, and a canary, and dresses hung on pegs in a blaze of sunshine. She frowned and sang alternately, as she donned the blue frock, and then whistled a tune for practice against the return of her eldest brother from his curacy. He thought whistling unlady like, and she meant to offer to do it for his next penny reading. Lady Ernestine Allerton, the great lady of the neighbourhood, had done so not long since at a parish entertainment, a fact with which Dora, as she put it, "would squash Percy flat." She ran downstairs to find the company as sembled, and " dear Percy's " last letter being read aloud by Carrie while the tea was drawing.

It contained an account of his recent Whitsun tide services, and of a dinner party at his squire's house ; after which pages Dora jumped on her sister. " I say, stop there ; the rest isn't for the public." "Dora, my dear, how rudely you interrupt ! " said Aunt Williams, a stout and severe lady, who spoke as if the culprit was about ten years old. When Dora disliked her company, she stared at them and drawled ; she did not mean it so, but it had an aggravating effect. "The rest of the letter's private," she said. " Have some tea ? " Mrs. Shirley judged it best to second this invitation, and Carrie handed preserves and hot tea-cakes, while the ladies began to discuss a local Wesleyan bazaar, in which Mrs. Thomas was interested, and in which it would have been natural to Mrs. Shirley to take a neighbourly, if detached interest.

But this time Carrie pursed up her lips and was silent, as dear Percy would disapprove of their having anything to do with it, while Theodora, knowing also that Mrs. Appleby was a staunch Churchwoman, was impelled to offer to help. At this critical moment, as Carrie stood with her back to the window, holding a glass of apricot jam, a sudden squirt in the back of her neck made her start and scream, upsetting far too many pre serves on Mrs. Williams's plate. " Rupert, you bad boy ! " she cried, as a slender, aquiline-nosed boy slid monkey-like off the bough of the old apple tree near and bounced in at the window, laughing. " Sir— sir ! " said Aunt Williams, " I should report you to your master, if you belonged to me." " He don't attend to Carrie's frocks ! " said Rupert. " Mother, I want some tea ; I'd such a lot of lessons to do — I couldn't come any sooner."

He winked wickedly at Dora as he spoke ; but he was his mother's darling, and the tea was provided, though every one present knew perfectly well that he had been " kept in." "Those unfortunate Shirleys," said Mrs. Williams, on her return home. (N.B.— She was Mr. Lupton's sister.) " Rafe is like a mere labourer, Dora is a hoyden, and Rupert wants a thorough flogging ! Eh ! things always bring their penalty. Shirley himself was presentable, when he chose, but such barrack-room manners as he showed at times, and such low tastes ! — poor Caroline must have had a deal to put up with." Meanwhile, Carrie having walked home with cousin Charlotte, another member of the Lupton clan, and Rupert not counting as audience, Mrs. Shirley said — " Dora, I want really to speak to you. Carrie might have stopped reading before, but, then, dear Aunt Williams might have advised you for your good."

" I won't be advised as long as she says ' Eh,' " said Dora, heaving a deep, heavy sigh; while Rupert echoed " Eh— h— h ! " from his very stockings. " But, my dear, Percy is right, and it's on my mind to speak. You ought to try to do something useful. Remember, I haven't got any money to leave you, and though Percy and Carrie are very good, if you don't marry, and if — well ! there's no use in ifs — you'll be dependent when I'm gone." Dora was silent, and Rupert nearly throttled his mother by way of showing his affection and his horror at her last allusion. " It's true, my dear, and you're old enough to consider the point." " Yes, mother," said Dora. " I do see the point. But, now, look here. Nobody could live on what Carrie earns as governess. I've never been taught enough to be a teacher — I hate teaching and learning.

And as for a shop or a business, you know I can't do accounts, or handle fine dresses. But I'll tell you what I could do." "Well— what?" " Well, in some cheesemaking counties — and, perhaps, where they make much butter for market too — at the great farms, there's a head dairy-maid who manages it all. She's not a servant ; she's well paid, and lives with the family like a governess. I heard Uncle Towndrow's cousin talking of it. Now, I know something of dairy work, and I could go somewhere for six months and learn it thoroughly. That's quite suitable, I'm sure, and as good as being in business. I'll do that, and I'll not do anything different." With which ultimatum, Theodora snatched up Rupert's cap, set it upon the top of her head, and, whistling like a blackbird, flew down the garden and out of the gate, without waiting for another word. C

Chapter II. On The Edge Of The Moor

In a place like Ecclesford one's acquaintances are apt to seem not merely numerous, but ubiquitous, and Carrie Lupton, being a sociable little person, did not find it at all a drawback to her evening walk, that she must nod and bow almost as frequently as Her Majesty upon a royal progress, not to mention frequent pauses to speak to friends who happened to be not merely looking out of their windows, but leaning from them, or else walking in the road. But all this " moving in ' society " entailed extreme propriety of dress and demeanour in one's walks abroad, and, at the very least, a pair of gloves and one's second-best hat. Carrie took occasion to point this out in other words to Theodora, as she met her swinging along the High Street, gloveless.and still wearing Rupert's old cap. The little lecture, given and received with equal good temper, came to an abrupt con clusion, as a tall lad came up behind them with big, silent strides, and suddenly threw an arm round each.

Both started, Carrie with a pretty little scream. " Oh, Rafe, how you made me jump ! " she cried ; while Theodora freed herself by a vigorous push, demanding "What brings you here at this time of night ? " while her eyes danced and shone. " Why ! I thought you'd all be at me if I didn't come near you some time. And we shall be in the hay to-morrow. I've been down to Nettle wood this afternoon to fetch up the machine ; that's why I couldn't get off sooner." " Oh, have you persuaded uncle to have the machine this year? And you'll ride it? What fun ! " cried Theodora, enviously. " Don't talk so loud, Dora," 'put in her elder sister ; " you and Rafe aren't in a hayfield now." " Worse luck ! " answered Theodora, and they turned in at their mother's door with a noise and confused riot that caused Mrs. Shirley to cry out from an inner room that she knew Rafe was come.

Indeed, it would have been impossible to ignore the big fellow's arrival for two minutes in that little house, which his voice, loud, clear, and boyishly unmodulated, seemed to shake to its foundations. He kissed his mother, affectionately doubled up his little brother in the corner of the couch and affected to sit upon him, and finally stood with his broad shoulders against the high, old-fashioned mantel-shelf that was one of the minor troubles of his mother's existence, smiling good-temperedly upon them all. If poor Mrs. Shirley had been quite a free woman, she would have taken huge pride and delight in her second son. Even as it was, she could not resist a little secret pride and a con viction that a very little polishing would have made him the handsomest lad in Ecclesford or anywhere round.

But she did not see how the polish was to be applied, and while she loved Rafe the better for growing so like the dead husband who had been her one love, she could not but see that he "favoured" his father in the very things that had always tried her patience most in their brief married life. Besides, she was in bondage to the opinion of her own and her first husband's relations, and especially to her eldest son and daughter, and there were no Shirleys to cast their weight into the opposite scale — a circumstance which every one around her regarded as singularly fortunate. It could not be denied that Rafe was rough and noisy, that his appetite was alarming, and that he wore out, and had not yet ceased to outgrow, his clothes in a way that was a heavy tax on his mother's slender purse. Moreover, he had quarrelled with the desk that had been found for him in a lawyer's office, on the ground that he hated sitting still, and his own ideas as to his future were a trouble to his mother, who had reason to fear that he had inherited a roving disposition, and possibly something else, from the father whom he so resembled.

Nevertheless, to the eyes of motherly partiality he looked a bonny and a promising lad, as he stood there, towering nearly to the ceiling of the low-roofed little parlour. In face he was a sun browned likeness of Theodora, with more marked features, which had not settled into such har monious relations to each other as future years might give them. In figure and carriage he alternated between the grace of fine proportions and the awkwardness of rapid growth not yet complete. His broad forehead, aquiline nose and clear green-grey eyes gave promise of more intellectual capacity than he had shown at school or in the office, and he looked older than his age —too old, his elder brother and sister agreed, to be such a noisy, random, harum-scarum boy. His thick dark-brown hair was reduced to the regulation prison length when his sisters could get hold of him to drive him to the barber's, and when he had been some time at Rood Knowle it looked, as Carrie said, " quite uncivilised."

It was at the lion's mane stage now, and the little dark-blue cloth cap he wore was quite inadequate as a covering, but was worn " ony gate it would hing," like the bonnet of Miss Grisel Baillie's disconsolate hero. The fact that he could not possibly feel it must be his excuse, but there it certainly was, well on the back of his head, as he stood talking to his mother and sisters, till Carrie spied it out. " Rafe ! " she exclaimed in shocked tones, " don't you know how ungentlemanly it is to keep your hat on in the house, and before ladies too ? I'm sure you never saw Percy do such a thing ! " " Percy's a molley ! " answered Rafe, folding up the offending article and putting it in his pocket. " Uncle always has his dinner in his hat up at Rood Knowle ! " Carrie opened her lips to say something dis paraging as to the manners in vogue at Rood Knowle, but closed them again without speaking.

She was a kind-hearted, peace-loving soul, and knew by experience what kind of remarks usually resulted in family jars ; and she and her mother had agreed that it was no good talking against Rafe's present mode of life, but that they must try and get him away from it. So the young man was suffered to describe his doings on the mowing machine, and no one said anything worse than that it was all very well as long as he had nothing better to do. Then " dear Percy's" last letter was brought out once more, and read by his younger brother with undisguised ennui. " Old Per is in a precious hurry, both with Dora and me," he remarked, as he dropped it on the table. " I wish he'd let his grandees alone about our business." " Dear fellow ! he is so much interested in you all," said the mother, taking it up.

" I dare say ; but he needn't think his great folks will be, unless " He paused, looking at Mrs. Shirley with a teasing, significant smile, and she evidently understood what he left unsaid. " Oh, my dear ! we agreed that that was neither to be talked about nor thought about." " I know, but if anything's ever to come of it, it won't be by sticking myself down in an office at a pound a week, but by going abroad for a few years and coming back with a fortune. And that's what I mean to do." Mrs. Shirley sighed, and shook her head and murmured something about " a hard life," to which her son paid no manner of heed. " Well, it's time I was getting back home," he said, with a mighty stretch and a yawn. " I was up at five this morning, and I must be earlier than that to-morrow. Good night, mother.