Miss Uraca

Front matter

EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN Author of " The Wilful Willoughiys," " The Doctors Dozen. " Falconer of Falconhurst," "Flats," etc., etc. Edinburgh and London Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier BOOKS BY EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN. ~//****i+G**.v— Dorothy's Vocation. Crown 8vo. Illustrated. 2s. Oliver Langton's Ward. Crown 8vo. Illustrated. 2s. The Stronger Will. Crown 8vo. Illustrated. 2s. 6d. Syd's New Pony. Ex. Fcap. 8vo. Cloth. 6d. The Witch of the Quarry Hut. Ex. Fcap. 8vo. Cloth. 6d. Daring Dot. Fcap. 8vo. Cloth. 4d. Clive's Conquest. Fcap. 8vo. Cloth. 4d. Mrs Romaine's Household. Ex. Crown 8vo. With Frontispiece by Sidney Paget. 3s. 6d. Falconer of Falconhurst. Crown 8vo. Cloth extra. With Illustrations by Percy T arra NT. Price 2S. 6d. A Pair of Pickles. Crown 8vo. Cloth extra. Illustrated. Price is. 6d. The Doctor's Dozen.

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Chapter I. The Proposed Experiment

" V7"OU look rather down in the mouth, old ■*- fellow. What 's the matter ? " " Oh, is that you, Mannesty ? Come in, old chap. I 'm very glad to see you. Well, I am just a little bit bothered." Mannesty came into the room, shutting the door behind him, and thinking to himself, as he looked round, that if he had half the good things of this life that fell to his friend's lot, he should take pretty good care that no bothers came his way. He should rather like, as he expressed it to himself, to find the thing that could bother him under such pleasant outward circumstances. Certainly nothing could be more luxuriously comfortable than those bachelor chambers over looking Piccadilly and the Green Park. The rooms were lofty, and the decoration was rich and sumptuous, as were also the furniture and hangings.

If the room was to be taken as an index of its owner's taste, that would certainly have to be pronounced excellent, and some thing rather out of the way for a young man of the present century. For gracing the walls there were none of the sporting prints and theatrical photographs which are so often found in the sanctums of young fellows of his age and standing. Pictures there were, but they were real works of art by the leading men of the day ; and though spurs and riding-whips hung over the mantel-shelf, telling that the master of the place had masculine tastes, he did not apparently care about living in a litter, and save for a number of books and papers strewing about upon a large carved writing-table in a deep recess, the room was in excellent order, and would not have disgraced a lady occupier.

The long windows were thrown wide open to the summer air, and the broad balcony upon which they led was filled with flowering plants and shrubs. There were cut flowers in the room, too — roses, lilies, and heavy-scented stove plants. No wonder that Mannesty looked round him with admiring eyes, though the place was familiar enough to him, and thought that the owner of such an abode (to say nothing of the best turned out dog-cart and a pair of the smartest saddle-horses to be seen in the Park that season) ought to count himself a happy man, and to feel the pressure of trouble but lightly. " Bothered, are you, Rat ? Well, I should like to know what you can have to bother you ? Seems to me you 've everything in the world a fellow can want in the present, and golden prospects for the future. Don't they say you will be the richest commoner in the kingdom one of these days ?

I don't think if that were my case I should feel much bothered by anything else." The man familiarly addressed as " Rat " bent a searching glance upon his friend, an odd smile playing round the corners of his mouth. " Sit down, old fellow, and have a cigar. I know you smoke at all hours of the day and night. I should like a chat with you as well as anything. Perhaps you will hit on a bright idea. Such a thing has been known before now." Ratcliff Fountaine's " weeds " were not to be despised — though, to tell the truth, his friends smoked far more of them than did their owner. Mannesty deposited his six feet and odd inches in a luxurious lounging-chair, and looked across at his friend, whose hands were clasped behind his head, and whose face had put on a look of meditative gravity — the look which had struck the young officer when he first entered the room.

The two young men, sitting opposite each other in the strong light of that summer's morning, presented a marked contrast to one another. Mannesty was a splendidly handsome fellow, long-limbed, broad-shouldered, well-set up in every way, with all the precision and alertness given by military training, combined with much natural grace of a robust and manly character. One could tell at a glance that such a man would be an excellent shot, a first-rate rider, a fine player at all games of strength and skill. Then his handsome face, bronzed with exposure to foreign suns, was as open as the day, frank, merry, and bubbling over with fun upon the smallest provocation. His eyes were brown, and so was his hair, and the long drooping moustache which shaded his laughing lips. He had been for three years on foreign service in India and Egypt, and was now home on leave, after which he would go back to finish his time.

He and his present host had been at Eton together, and they had never entirely lost sight of each other ; so, when Mannesty on his arrival home had chanced to knock up against his former friend, he had been very glad of the cordial invitation to drop in at these pleasant rooms whenever he liked, and the two had seen much of each other during the past weeks. Nature had been far less generous in her dealings with Ratcliff Fountaine. Perhaps she felt that the good things he possessed by right of inheritance rendered him independent of her good offices ; perhaps she felt that it would not be fair to lavish her rich gifts upon one who could make his way in life easily enough without them ; however that may have been, young Fountaine, though heir to a baronetcy, a fine old property, and a wonderfully large fortune, had little of personal beauty to recommend him, and his appearance was generally summed up by the painful definition of " hopelessly insignificant."

In height the young man was barely up to the average, and being exceedingly slight, and also very well-proportioned, he did not look so tall as he really was. His features were clearly cut, but followed no regular pattern, and possessed no real beauty of outline. Then the face was altogether too small and colour less to attract notice, and the dead fairness of the hair, without a touch of gold to lighten it up, made but a very poor setting. A very faint moustache, of the palest yellow, did noth ing to break the dead monotony of the pale face ; whilst the eyes, which were really dark blue in colour, and by no means lacking in beauty and depth, were generally hidden by the large and heavy lids. A very keen observer, or an unusually acute physiognomist, might detect traces of marked individuality in the set of the curiously arched lips, in the clean square outline of the jaw, and in the quick, keen glances shot from time to time from beneath the shadow of the over hanging brows ; but the majority of those we meet in our daily life are not keen observers, and this young man was so peculiarly quiet and retiring that few took the trouble to notice him when he was in their company.

Had it not been for his brilliant worldly prospects, he would have gone through life most likely without attracting the smallest notice. As it was, people frequently shrugged their shoulders, and remarked what a misfortune it was for Sir Hugh and Lady Fountaine to have such a "creature" as that for their only child. At Eton he had been dubbed " Rat" for his small stature, lonely ways, and quiet persistence, and the name had stuck to him more or less since. He never appeared to resent being so addressed by old cronies, and Mannesty seldom called him anything else. " Dick " had been another sobriquet — won for him, perhaps, from its asso ciation with the name Ratcliff; the more so, that he had been a great collector of flowers and bulbs and seeds, which he frequently obtained from a seedsman of that name.

By these two names he had been known to all his old school-fellows, and was known to them still whenever they chanced to knock up against him in after days. " Well, Rat, and what's the bother ? " asked Mannesty, when he had smoked in silence for a while. "I expect you'll laugh if I tell you," said Ratcliff, with a shadowy smile hovering round the corner of his lips; "but it's no laughing matter to me, all the same. My father and mother have just set their hearts upon seeing me married, and that pretty soon." " Well, that 's serious, at any rate," answered Mannesty ; " I don't call matrimony at all a laughing matter. But surely there are any number of nice girls that you might pick and choose from in the world this season ? You see you are such a lucky beggar, you have only to throw the handkerchief, you know.

Any girl in her senses " — An odd flash crossed Ratcliff's face as these words were spoken. For once in a way, he lifted his eyelids and looked full at Mannesty. The effect of that look was to cause the young officer to stop short in the middle of his sentence. " Exactly," said Ratcliff, in his peculiarly low and negligent tones. "You have stated, or were about to state the matter with your usual force and clearness. I am, or shall be, a very rich man one of these days. I am an only child, and both my parents are exceedingly wealthy, and they are good enough to adore me, and to long to see a child of mine upon their knees before they die. They would welcome as a daughter almost any woman I brought to them as my affianced wife. The course of true love would be made to run most marvellously smooth.

All this is pretty well known in the world of fashion, where everybody's business and private affairs are publicly canvassed in fashionable drawing rooms, and the agreeable consequence is that I am sought out and made much of by every mamma in London who has daughters to marry and can get an introduction ; whilst, as for the daughters themselves " — "Why, they would say 'Yes' the moment you asked them — any one of them, pretty creatures," said Mannesty, laughing. " You are a lucky dog, Rat ; you have only got to pick and choose, as I said before, and you will get a wife for the asking who " — " Who will be very glad to marry my money, my prospects, my title that is to be, but who will only put up with myself as a necessary evil — the pill so liberally gilded," concluded Ratcliff very quietly.

" I have been through that once before, Mannesty, and the sensation was not an agreeable one. I have no particular wish to repeat it, thank you." Mannesty was about to treat the first half of the sentence as a joke, but the last words arrested his attention, and he turned a face of lively interest towards the speaker. " Been through it once, have you, old fellow ? I 'd no idea of that. I didn 't look upon you as the sort that falls easily in love." " I don 't know that I was exactly in love," answered Ratcliff, in his slow, leisurely way, looking straight out of the sunny window as he spoke. " It was about two-and-a-half years ago, when I was just three-and-twenty, when I had come back from three years of foreign travel, and my parents were as eager as they are now for me to marry and settle down near them, and have a home of my own.

I think they were half afraid the roving fit would get hold of me, and that I should never settle down again, and I was willing enough to gratify them if I could, and thought, with you, B that I should have no trouble in finding a nice wife amongst all the good - looking girls I met when I began to go more into society." " I should think not, indeed," breathed Mannesty softly, though Ratcliff did not heed the interruption. " I need not mention names. The mother appeared to be a very sweet woman, and her daughters were lovely girls. I hesitated a good while between them, and finally asked the elder one — a dark beauty, with a lot of what you would perhaps call ' go ' in her — to marry me. I admired her very much. She interested me, and I thought that she liked me for my own sake. She was my own age, and we appeared to have many tastes and sympathies in common.

As I had never been in love, I did not exactly know if what I felt was the great passion, but she certainly filled the major part of my thoughts. I liked being with her ; I preferred talking to her to anybody else, unless perhaps her mother, and I did not think she even knew, still less cared, that I was a wealthy man." "Girls in these days aren't such fools as not to know or care," muttered Mannesty under his breath. " I know that now," answered Ratcliff calmly. " I will tell you in a few words how it ended. I had been called away from town on business for a few days. I was not expected back till the following week, but being something of a fool then, I thought I must just run up for the Sunday to see — her for a few hours, and assure her that I was well, and see for myself that she was not pining in my absence."

A faint curve of the lips that was hardly a smile betrayed some of the fine scorn the young man was feeling, though the scorn was more at his own credulity than the falseness of the lady. " I arrived late at the house. They were receiving company, it seemed. The hall door was open, and I walked straight in. I knew the ways of the house, and its ins and outs. I saw that the garden behind was illuminated, and I thought that she would very likely be there. The glare and heat of the house, would, no doubt, try her. She would go out there to be quiet— and to think of me." Mannesty shot a keen glance at him. " I think I know what is coming, old fellow. Don't say any more if it hurts you. You found her with another fellow ? " " Yes, the fellow she really loved, the man she ought to have been engaged to then — the man, I am glad to say, she did eventually marry.

I came upon them accidentally. I came up from behind. I had heard words spoken before I could show myself. He was upbraiding her. She was defending herself, as women always will. She was doing what her mother wished ; she loved pleasure, luxury, all the soft things of this life ; and, after all, the man who offered them ' was not so bad.' She could just tolerate him, she was gracious enough to say. ' I know he is a miserable little nonentity ; in company I hate him, I feel quite ashamed of him by the side of other men,' she was saying, as I went round and stood before her ; ' but when one gets him quite alone he is really rather better. Of course he can never be anything much to me. It's awfully hard to have to choose between you, George, and '— There she saw me, and knew that I had heard.

Well, we need not go into the whole story. What followed was not a very edifying ex perience, but it taught me a lesson I shall not forget in a hurry. It pretty well comes to this, you see, Mannesty, I don't intend to be married for my money, and I see very little chance of being taken for my own insignificant merits. It is just possible that there might be a woman in the world whom, if I loved her, might love me for my own sake, but then how shall I ever know when she is found? I am a little less green than I was when I was fooled that first time, but I do not profess to understand women, and my very strong impression is that they cannot tolerate me in their inmost hearts, but simply put up with me as the needless, yet practically necessary, encumbrance to the social advantages a union with me would offer.

That's not altogether the kind of bargain that I care about striking. I could make up my mind to go through life very contentedly alone, but if I am to take to myself a wife (and I don't like setting myself against the wishes of my parents, who are so extraor dinarily wrapped up in me), I have a possibly unreasonable prejudice for letting it be a match of love on both sides. I know that that sort of thing is fast going by. People tell you in solemn earnest that it is the marriages of convenience that are best in the long run, and for all I know they may be right. One certainly knows how badly some of the over head-and ears love matches have turned out. But, all the same, I stick to my old-fashioned prejudice for an old-fashioned wooing, and I don't call it that when, as you gracefully put it, I have only to throw the handkerchief, and the selected damsel will come with all docility to the sacrificial altar, because her parents wish it, and she likes to marry the ' catch ' of the season."

Mannesty was looking roused now ; his eyes were fixed full on his companion's face. " I'm hanged if I don't see why a woman should not care for you for your own sake, Rat. You 're a thundering good fellow at heart, you know, and as manly a man as it's ever been my lot to meet. ' Faint heart never won fair lady.' I don't know that that's much to the point, all the same, for the difficulty isn't winning the hand, but the heart, and no fellow can see through a girl — they 're twice too 'cute for the likes of us. I tell you what you might do, though, Rat. You might let the public believe you had gone off on your travels again in your yacht, and then take a new name, and lay aside your grandeur, and go through the world knight-errant fashion, looking for a dis tressed damsel who would love you for your doughty deeds and personal charms.

There must be some such to be found in the world, and if you were to go where you are not known, why, you would simply be judged on your own personal merits." " Sort of ' Lord of Burleigh ' arrangement, eh, Mannesty?" said the other reflectively. " Well, there might be something in it, to be sure. Do you seriously think it could be done? The world is such an uncommonly small place when one comes to think of it, and I want an English wife ; I have all the national prejudice against foreign madams ruling in English homes." " To be sure. Oh, I 'd not go out of England ; but really, Rat, you seem to me to know your own country far less well than the backwoods of America and the trackless deserts of Africa. You just go down into some rather quiet and outlandish place, far away from your own home ; call yourself Dick Ratcliff, or any thing else you like, and put up as a travelling artist, or anything else you choose to select, at some little wayside inn.

People in outlandish places are pretty hospitable, and if you don't find the right sort in one you can move on to another. You have done plenty of roughing it in your time, and will not mind leaving your luxuries behind for a while." A faint smile curved Ratcliff's lips. He did not say anything, but Mannesty felt per fectly certain that there was hardly a man in the kingdom who cared so little for outward luxury as this old comrade of his, despite the harmonious beauty with which he had sur rounded himself. He had begun to discover a latent power about Ratcliff — a power he had felt in boyhood without being able to analyse it, which had drawn him towards the insignificant lad, he knew not why. The old attraction had manifested itself upon their recent encounter in London, and Mannesty had come to feel a certain kind of admiration and respect for his friend, which would have surprised Ratcliff not a little had he been aware of it.

" I could fancy that fellow marching up to a cannon's mouth as cool as a cucumber in the face of the deadliest peril," the young officer had thought more than once, as he had watched the other talk, and drawn from him the story of some of his adventures in far-off lands, where he had been placed in moments of peculiar danger. Ratcliff never by any chance uttered the smallest boast ; he never appeared to be aware that there was anything intrepid in the way in which he had faced situations of peril. When Mannesty had once congratulated him upon his steadiness of nerve, he merely said, with a slight smile, that when one's life depended on keeping cool, no fellow but a fool would go and lose his head, and so had passed the matter off without a notion that his companion was secretly admiring his quiet daring and dauntless pluck.

He was sitting pondering still in the same attitude, and suddenly turned upon his com panion, and said, — " I '11 do it, if you '11 go with me." "With all my heart," answered Mannesty, who, being practically without family ties, was rather wondering how to occupy the time from the close of the London season till the com mencement of the shootings. He had some reading to do for his next examination, and was willing enough to go into some quiet place. For a companion he certainly felt he might do much worse than Ratcliff Fountaine. "Very good, then," said the latter, after hearing what his friend had to say. "That will make it all easy. You are the rich young army man, whose name and good looks and general attractions will give us the entrde into the houses of the places we go into, and I am the humble Oxford graduate who has under taken to coach you for your next exam.

I will be as good as my word, Mannesty, for I will get all the books you want, and we will read seriously together ; for, as you know, one of my inferior idiosyncrasies is a love for books and study. I will play my part to perfection, you shall see. It will be ten times better and more natural than doing the super annuated artist dodge, which has been run threadbare since the- Lord of Burleigh's days. You will, of course, be just yourself — Reginald Mannesty I can be, as you say, Dick Rat cliff — Mr Ratcliff, I suppose you will have to dub me, unless we go in for being friends as well as master and pupil. We can get some fishing for the present, and later on there will be shooting, and even hunting, if I cannot succeed in my quest. It won't be a bad way of passing the time, and as you have the purse we need not rough it any more than is agree able to you.

Indeed, it would be better for you to have an air of easy affluence, as we want to get into the best society the places have to offer. As I say, I believe my parents would be almost ready to welcome the beggar maid as my bride if I took to play King Cophetua, but I have a decided feeling that the happiest marriages are made where there is equality in birth. Money has but very little to do with it, and I would rather look for my fair lady in the homes of the gentry of the old fashioned country sort than in any other place in the world." " I 'm with you there, old man," answered Mannesty heartily, "and I wish you all the luck in the world in your quest."

Chapter II. The Underwoods Of Staunton

" TTRACA!" " Here. Do you want me ? " " Mother wants one of us to run down to the village. You might as well go. It 's too hot for us." " I want some stamps at the post-office, Uraca." " I want a message left at the vicarage." " And I wish you would just see Mrs G reeves, and tell her that I must have my white embroidered muslin home by Friday. She will attend so much better to you than a servant." All these sentences were uttered by invisible speakers, and reached the ears of a little group beneath a spreading lime tree through the open windows of the house close by. The group comprised three little children, a dog or two, and a dark-eyed girl, slight of figure, and of 2g immature and youthful aspect, who was busily engaged in disentangling the tail of a kite, which proceeding was being intently watched by the two sturdy urchins to whom the airy monster plainly belonged.

The three children immediately set up an indignant protest. "Oh, Cara, don't go — why should you? Make one of the others go this time. They are such lazy things ! They never do anything, and we are always busy. And it is just as hot for you as for anybody else. Don't listen to them. We want you." " Oh, but we mustn't be selfish, we little folks," answered, with a bright smile, the girl whom the children addressed as Cara, and those in the house as Uraca. " We will finish the kite's tail first, and then we will go down to the village together. It won't be very hot if we take the winding path along the river bank. And we can leave the jug of soup at poor old Mrs Clark's ; and you can buy the red paper you wanted to make the kite's tail longer." Tommy brightened up a little as he heard the last words ; and the girl, raising her voice, called back to those within doors, — " I '11 go in a few minutes.

I 'm just finishing a job out here for the boys." " Well, be quick," answered a sweet but slightly peevish and imperious voice. " I particularly want Mrs Greeves to have the message about my dress quickly. I could not go to the Grange on Friday in all this heat without my muslin. Mind you tell her to be very careful how she gets it up. Sometimes she is so abominably careless." " Is there a party at the Grange on Friday ? " asked Uraca, with a look of interest. The Grange was a fine old historical house, and the girl enjoyed a visit to it greatly. The master of the house had a fine collection of old pictures in his gallery, and the bright-eyed little Uraca was rather a favourite of his, from the intelligent interest she always took in everything he showed her. " A garden party," answered the voice from within the house; "but you're not going, Uraca."

" Didn't they ask us all ? " with a little inflection of disappointment in the clear tones. " Yes ; but now that Edith is here we really cannot take such a party. People will call us a 'caution,' or some pretty name like that. One of us must stop at home." That appeared to be final. No further ex planation was made. Indeed it went without saying that if one of the party from this house remained at home, Uraca was to be that one. Was she not the youngest ? Was she not the only plain member of a handsome family ? The thing was patent to all. Even the girl herself refrained from further comment, and the brightening eyes of the children brought some consolation for the slight stab of dis appointment. " Oh, Cara," whispered little Edie, the youngest of the small trio around her, " if all the rest go to a big party and we are left at home, we can have the gipsy tea in the wood you promised us long ago.