No Ambition

Front matter

BY ADELINE SERGEANT AUTHOR OF "SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN," "THE LUCK OF THE HOUSE," &c., &c. " Covet earnestly thc best gifts." EDINBURGH AND LONDON OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER i395 BY THE AUTHOR OF "NO AMBITION Large Crown Svo, Cloth Extra. Third Edition. Price 6s. THE LUCK OF THE HOUSE. Cheap Edition, 2$. — 'A/VW- Large Crown Svo, Cloth Extra, Fourth Edition. Price 6s. SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN. Cheap Edition. Paper Covers, is. 6d. (Sbinbnrgh anb £Conbon : OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER. TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. CONTENTS.

Part I

Chap. Page I. Forecasts ..... 7 II. The Family ..... 20 III. Kathleen ..... 32 IV. An Offer declined ... 43 V. The Shadow . . . . 55 VI. Mr Denbigh's Disappointment . . 67 VII. An Oxford Man .... 79 VIII. Wynmouth Bay . . . 91 IX. Clarice's Confidences . . .103 X. Mrs Latimer's Guests . . . 114 XI. On the Verandah . . . .126

Part II. XII

Gertrude . . 139 XIII. Kathleen's Revolt . . . . 151 XIV. A Strange Proposal . . 163 XV. Arranged . . . . 175 XVI. Brother and Sister . . . 1S7 XVII. Parting ..... Contents. 6

Part III

Chap. Page XVIII. Kathleen at Home . • 211 XIX. "Adrian" 223 XX. Sisters ..... 234 XXI. No Ambition ..... 246 XXII. Unloved . . ... 257 XXIII. In a Police Court .... 269 XXIV. At the Water's Edge . .280 XXV. Kathleen's Letter .... 290 XXVI. Reconciliation .... 300 XXVII. Summer Days ....

Part I

Chapter I. — Forecasts. " The list won't be out till next week." " Yes ; but Miss Price will know the result before the list comes out, won't she ? " " I daresay. At any rate, we shall hear as soon as she does : she couldn't keep it to herself, I'm sure." " Unless we had all failed. Then I fancy we should have to wait for the news." The last speaker had not opened her lips before, and the group of excited girls, who had been eagerly discussing the probable results of a recent examina tion, turned upon her in a body. " Valentine Denbigh, how can you talk in that way ! Surely you don't expect to have failed." " I'm not at all sure," said Valentine, coolly. " My algebra paper was not as good as it should have been. Mr Hopkins said so, and he ought to know." There was a shout of derision. " Did you ever know old Hopkins satisfied ?

And you his best pupil ! Well, you were a long way ahead of any other girl in the school, I know that." " In this school, perhaps," said Valentine Denbigh, with perfect sangfroid. "But not in all the schools of the kingdom, I suppose. There were hundreds of girls in for the exam — a great many of them better than myself, I've no doubt." The girls looked at her for a moment in silence. They did not believe in this parade of carelessness. Valentine was the cleverest girl in the school, and, like her elder sister and cousin, had hitherto carried all before her : it was felt that she ought not to speak so lightly of possible failure. " You are sure of a second-class, at all events," said one tall girl of seventeen, with rather a spiteful intonation. Then, for the first time, Valentine was moved.

The clear colour swept into her face, and her eye flashed a little, as she replied curtly — " I'd rather fail." " Oh ! so you are ambitious after all," said Miss Latimer, who had never gained a distinction in her life, and enjoyed teasing those who did gain them. " I thought that air of nonchalance was assumed for the occasion." " What is nonchalance ? " said Val. " A French word, isn't it ? I never quote French : it always reminds me of the phrases in some of those third rate novels I have seen lying about the dc ;ks lately." This was a palpable hit. Miss Helen Latimer was given to the reading of novels in school-time ; Forecasts. 9 a weakness to which Val was loftily superior. Helen coloured and turned away, feeling herself worsted. Scarce a day passed without some little passage of arms between Valentine Denbigh and Helen Latimer ; and the latter usually came off badly, for Val's tongue was one of her strongest points.

But in other respects Helen considered herself vastly Val's superior. Her father was richer, for one thing ; and Helen herself was very pretty, while Val was undeniably plain. Plain, that is to say, to the ordinary observer, for she had not a single perfect feature in her face, except a pair of fine dark eyes ; but the face was interesting on account of the brain-power that it expressed, and the variety of its expressions. Val's face could be like sunshine one moment and a thunder-cloud the next ; and in repose, there was a proud calmness and steadiness about it which contrasted oddly with its changefulness in moments of excitement. The pale, irregular, yet delicately-cut features were different indeed from the type of beauty represented by Helen Latimer, who had a bright colour and a mass of flowing auburn hair, with shades of chestnut and gleams of gold : a tawny mane of which she was inordinately proud.

But there were some people who preferred Val's intellectual brow and expressive eyes to all the prettiness that Helen could display. These trivial combats of words, these petty rivalries and heart-burnings, such as all schoolgirls know, unimportant in themselves, are sometimes forecasts of greater difficulties of the same kind in life outside the schoolroom. Perhaps Valentine expressed more of her nature than she knew, when she said that she would rather fail altogether than take a second place ; and Helen's jealousy of her schoolfellow's success displayed a nature that had never found it easy to be generous or kind. The sun sent its afternoon glories through the tall windows into the class-room where the girls were talking, and the light fell upon eight or ten young figures emerging from childhood into womanhood.

Valentine Denbigh was seventeen ; she was intending to leave school at the end of another year. Helen Latimer, slightly her senior, was leaving at Christmas. Of the other girls the youngest was sixteen, and the eldest close upon twenty. They were members of the highest form in a well-known public school for girls in Kensington, and for the most part they reflected high credit on their school and their teachers. Helen was the lowest in the class, but she did not care. Her beauty and her position made it un necessary for her, she considered, to take any trouble about her intellect. But she was not above the littleness of spirit which showed itself in a certain jealousy of cleverer girls, and especially of Valentine Denbigh. They were waiting for their form-mistress, who was unusually late, and the delay had given them time for this snatch of conversation.

" Hush, Miss Stirling is coming," some one said at last, and there was an immediate change of posture on the part of some girls and a certain settling down into attention. Valentine did not move or betray much interest in the entrance of the form-mistress : she Forecasts. 11 had her book open before her and her eyes were fixed on the printed page, but she was thinking deeply and did not at once look up. Val was extremely sincere. The thought that now absorbed her was a doubt as to whether it were right to conceal the true state of her desires and ambitions, even from one so unfriendly as Helen Latimer. The suggestion that she might obtain a second-class certificate instead of a first class had roused her to the knowledge of her own ambition ; and the remark that ' she would sooner fail ' issued from the very depths of her heart.

Yet she had been posing as one who did not care whether she failed or succeeded ! — and Valen tine condemned herself for her want of sincerity. She was recalled to herself by the consciousness of a movement around her : the girls were all rising to their feet, and she looked up to find that Miss Price, the head-mistress of the school had followed Miss Stirling into the room. Val's heart began to beat fast as she also rose. Miss Price never came into the class-rooms during lecture hours unless she had something of importance to communicate. Miss Price was a woman of middle height, with a keen, clever face, and hair that was just turning grey. The wonderful success of her school was chiefly due to her personal influence over her pupils ; she was dreaded and loved in equal pro portions by the younger girls ; but as they grew older, they generally found that love cast out fear.

She had all the qualities of a born administrator, and a genius for discrimination of character. It was said that her girls won more scholarships and distinctions than the pupils at any other school in England ; and that they were also remarkable for their high tone and their good manners — praise which cannot always be awarded to girls' schools in modern days. " I have received this morning," she said, " a notification of the results of the last local examination, although the lists are not yet published." She ran rapidly over a list of names, beginning at the lowest class and ascending to the Honour Division. The girls listened eagerly ; a murmur of pleasure was heard now and then. Valentine listened with rapidly beating pulses and flushing cheek. Where was her name ? Was it possible that — like Helen Latimer — she had not been even placed} Miss Price paused a little.

" I have still one more announcement to make," she said, her clear tones slightly lowered, as if some new emotion were making itself felt in her throat. " I am very happy to tell you that the highest place in the Honour Division of the First Class is taken by Valentine Denbigh, to whom, therefore, will fall the scholar ship offered by Girton College, tenable for three years. I need hardly say what pleasure it gives me to congratulate Valentine Denbigh on the result of this examination. Her success has been fully deserved, for her work is always marked as much by thorough conscientiousness as by intellectual ability, and we shall all rejoice in the credit that she is bringing upon our school." She turned to the girl with a smile, and held out her hand. " I am exceedingly glad, Valentine," she said, with a Forecasts. 13 relaxation of dignity which certainly betokened unusual pleasure.

And Valentine, with colour changing, and eyes dim with actual tears, felt her hand clasped warmly by her teacher's, and knew that the blue ribbon of school-success was hers. The girls clapped vigorously. They would have cheered if they had known how. Their own minor distinctions were forgotten in their pleasure at Val's success, which was a success, as Miss Price had intimated, for the whole school. They were not surprised, therefore, when Miss Price mentioned that she should make the announcement before the whole assembled school after prayers on the following morning, and that for the present she would dismiss the sixth-form girls, as she did not think (she added, with an indulgent smile) that much more work would be done that after noon. One or two who had younger sisters to wait for might go into the library, and she wanted Valentine Denbigh in her own room.

Val went with her, still in a somewhat dazed condition. She said afterwards that she was then experiencing a moment of the keenest and purest pleasure she ever felt, before or afterwards. She had succeeded, by dint of hard and honest work : her companions' congratulations were ringing in her ears, their smiling faces floated before her eyes : the pleased and commending looks and words of her teachers were delightful to her, and praise from the head-mistress of the school was, in the opinion of many persons beside Valentine Denbigh, well worth having. Miss Price was an educational authority : if she said that one of her pupils had clone credit to the school, or possessed ability of any kind, it was as good as a signed and sealed certificate of worth. Then, in the background of Val's mind, there were certain minor reasons for gladness, which she tried to suppress, but could not keep away alto gether.

Her brother Percy, reading for Greats at Oxford, had prognosticated failure for her, after the kindly and encouraging fashion of some elder brothers. Her elder sister had not thought very highly of her chances. She had under-rated her a little, as brothers and sisters are apt to do. Besides, her sister and her cousin had both done so well at school, and had been praised so highly, that Val was almost bewildered by the thought that she had begun better than either of them, although Clarice had gone to Oxford with a scholarship, and Kathleen had matriculated with brilliant success at the London University. But neither of them had been first of her year ! The Denbighs were a scholarly family, and Val knew that every atom of her success would have its full value, just as a failure would have been to them the most terrible thing in the world.

It could not be otherwise, perhaps, considering the stock from which they came ; the generations of learned men on the one side, and the habit of social success upon the other. Mrs Denbigh disliked obscurity almost as much as her husband hated ignorance. Miss Price put her hand affectionately upon Val's arm, and kissed her cheek, as soon as the seclusion of her room was gained. Miss Price's room was a pleasant place, with its tiled hearth and artistic Forecasts. 15 frieze, its photographs of great pictures, beautiful old china, and low book-cases filled with well-bound books — quite the modern schoolmistress's room, remarkable for its absence of anything grim or forbidding, although the big writing-table suggested business, and there was an alarming show of Blue Books and educational pamphlets on a side-table.

Val was used to the room, and liked nothing so well as to be summoned thither, although to some girls in the school Miss Price's room was a kind of torture-chamber. " Well, Valentine," said the schoolmistress, " I do indeed congratulate you, my dear. Your father and mother will be pleased." " Yes, I think they will," said Val, with a smile. " I suppose there is no doubt as to your taking up the scholarship ? ' " Doubt ? Oh, no ! " said Val hastily. " Father always wished me to go to Girton." Miss Price looked relieved. " That is right : I hoped there would be no difficulty. You will go next autumn, then. I almost wish you had been going to Oxford, so as to be near Clarice, for a time at least. It will be her second year at Oxford." " Yes," said Val. Something in Miss Price's manner had puzzled her for a moment, but now it had passed away.

" Clarice did well when she was here, and Kathleen too. But I think you, dear child, have done still better. I shall be very sorry to lose you, and sorry that there is no one of your name to succeed you. I suppose there is no chance of my having Amy by-and-by ? " " I am afraid Amy is too delicate," said Val, speaking of her younger sister. " She has to lie down for several hours every day." " And your father is an invalid too, is he not ? Your mother must have her hands full." Miss Price smiled, then bit her lip, and hurried on, as if she had committed an indiscretion. " They will be delighted to hear of your success. I know it is your father's great wish that his children should distinguish themselves." " Yes, I know," said Val, with shining eyes. " And Percy is just like him. He says that if we cannot be in the first flight, he would rather we did nothing."

" I do not quite agree with him in that. It would be wrong to discourage effort because you could not attain the very highest position." " Yes, I always tell him so," said Valentine eagerly, " but I think I feel the same thing too ; I felt it this afternoon — that I would rather fail completely than get a second or third class." " You belong to an ambitious family, Valentine. I could wish there were a little more ambition in some of our girls," said Miss Price, with whom this was a moment of expansion ; " for some of them seem hardly to care how they are placed." " Helen Latimer says it isn't necessary for her to care ; she hasn't to get her own living," said Val, with an irresistible twinkle. But Miss Price sighed, even while she smiled. " Poor foolish girl ! I have heard her say as much.

We shall miss you when you leave us, Valentine." Forecasts. 17 " I suppose I should have had to leave next summer, even if I had not taken the scholarship." " Yes, but I was selfishly hoping to keep you here in a different capacity. I thought that you might have taken some classes, and made a beginning for yourself as a teacher." " I don't think — I'm afraid I don't want to be a teacher. I would rather go to Girton," said Val. " For the present ; but you will choose a pro fession afterwards, I suppose, like your sisters ? " " Yes," Val answered, with some little hesitation, " but I don't think I shall ever teach." " You have a good deal of ability in that direction," said Miss Price, rather wistfully ; " it seems a pity not to use it. I could always find you plenty of work." But Val smiled and shook her head.

She had not the slightest notion of giving up her own plans for the sake of Miss Price's opinions. And she did not want to argue the matter. She wanted to get home as soon as possible, and hear what the family had to say about her success in the examination. Seeing the suppressed impatience in her eyes, Miss Price speedily released her, and she made her way as quickly as possible to the .waiting-room, where her hat and jacket were hanging on a peg. In this room, she found two or three of the girls, who were preparing to leave the building ; and one of them, a slight, delicate-looking little fairy with a cloud of golden hair ran up to her, put her arms round her neck and gave her an ecstatic kiss. " I am so glad, Val : I always knew you were B the cleverest girl in England, and now I'm quite sure of it !

" " You silly little thing ! " said Val ; but there was affection in her tone. " There are hundreds of girls cleverer than I, Sallie." " I don't believe it," said Sallie, vehemently. She clung to Valentine's arm as if she could not let her go. " Look at me : speak to me," she said. " You are going to be proud and cold, because you are so grand ; I know you are ! It is very unkind of you ! " " If you are so foolish," said Val, with decision, " I will never speak to you again. Do you hear ? " The girl only laughed, and gave her another squeeze with her long lean arms. " You are the nicest person in the world when you talk like that," she said. She was only in the fifth form, and not able, therefore, to see as much of Valentine as she would have liked, but she was nearly Val's own age after all, and not so childish as she looked.

She was small and curiously light and thin, with strange light eyes, only to be described as green in colour, and clouds of wonderful feathery hair. With a better complexion she would have been oddly beautiful ; but her skin was sallow and unhealthy looking, and even her lips were pale. She was subject to fits of intense devotion to various people : at present, Val was the recipient of a violent affection which was more troublesome than flattering, because of its extremely exigent nature. If Sallie Farrant could have had her way, Valentine would never have been allowed to speak to another girl in the school : Sallie grudged every word that was uttered to anyone Forecasts. 19 but herself, every moment that was not spent in her society. Val grew impatient sometimes, but for the most part she laughed and submitted.

" It will wear itself out some day," she said. But as yet Sallie's devotion bore no sign of wearing out, although it was apt to wear out other people's patience quickly enough. For it was a devotion accompanied by frequent fits of anger and sulkiness, and obscured at times by floods of passionate tears. Val was not very fond of introducing her school fellows to her home : she had enough companionship from her sisters, and they were rather critical of her friends. But Sallie had lately forced her way into the Denbighs' house, and was trying hard to establish herself there on a footing of friendship. It was very probable that she would succeed ; for Valentine had no actual reason for refusing the proffered intimacy, and was too unselfish to be bored by Sallie's pertinacious egotism. She rather liked Sallie, she thought, when she stopped to think about it.

Chapter II. The Family

Val got rid of Sallie Farrant and of her other friends as quickly as possible, and started home ward at a brisk pace. If she had been on a country road, I think she would have run, swiftly as Atalanta herself ; but one cannot run in Kensing ton High Street when one is a young lady of seven teen who has just won a scholarship, and expects to proceed shortly to Girton College ; so Val restrained her eagerness, and walked rapidly but demurely to the house in Edmund Square whither she was bound. It was a very quiet little square, just off the main road, and the houses were neither grand nor beautiful ; but they were of fairly good size, and possessed a strip of ground before and behind, besides the inestimable privilege of over looking the grimy enclosure of scanty grass and blackened trees which was known as the Square Garden.

Mr Denbigh's house was rather fresher and brighter-looking than its neighbours, for it had smart yellow curtains at the windows, and flowers in the window-boxes : the brass handle and knocker were scrupulously bright and the steps immaculately clean. A smile, half sad, half humorous, crossed Val's lips, as she looked up and reflected on the cost of all this apparent neatness and smartness — per petual anxiety, nervous excitement, and annoyance to almost every person in the house. Mr Denbigh was one of those men scrupulously alive to every detail, whom their enemies call cross-grained, and their friends extremely sensitive : he would have turned the house upside down if, on returning home any evening, he had seen a blind out of place or a speck upon the door-handle. He was in many ways an excellent man : a good husband, a con scientious father, just and honourable in all his dealings ; but he was fastidious to a fault, and very irritable in temper, so that his family feared rather than loved him.

And to Valentine, who was very clear-headed, it often seemed that the trifles over which he excited himself were not worth the trouble; and therefore she sometimes smiled and sometimes frowned when she recognised the care and pains which everyone took to please him in matters of minor importance ; for she knew quite well that in greater affairs, his wife, his son and his daughters almost invariably took their own way. But he was a fine scholar, and a man of extreme refinement, setting a value upon academical dis tinction such as he placed upon no other thing ; and Val was delighted to think that she could add to his happiness by the account of her success. He held an easy post in connection with the London University, and was absent from home, as a general rule, for part of the day ; but she expected now to find him in the house, for he was in delicate health, and an attack of asthma had kept him a prisoner for the last three days.

Val rang the bell less gingerly than usual, for in spite of her outward calm she was a little off her balance with excitement. As a result of her loud ring, her little sister Amy came to the door, chiefly in order to remonstrate. " I saw you from the window," she said, " so I thought I would come. Why did you ring like that ? Father was lying down, and your ring made him start up and cough dreadfully — mother will be so vexed." " I am very sorry," said Val contritely. " I did not think I should make such a noise. Where are father and mother ? I have some news for them." Amy looked at her curiously. She herself was not unlike Valentine, but she was barely eleven years old, and had the ungraceful carriage of a young girl whose spine is affected. Indeed, the affection amounted almost to a deformity, and Amy's fretful white face told of constant pain and weakness.

She was the spoiled child of the family, and her constitutional weakness had developed into an apparent incapability of amusing or occupying herself, which sometimes tried the patience of her elder sisters. She had a faint, moon-like prettiness, marred, however, by the discontent and weariness of her expression. " They are in the study," she said, " but I don't think you can go in. Here's mother." Mrs Denbigh appeared at that moment in the hall, with her finger uplifted. " Don't make so much noise, dear children," she said entreatingly. " Father is not well this afternoon." Val went up to her side and kissed her. She was a pale, gentle-looking woman, who had not yet lost the traces of former beauty ; but it seemed as though all life and spirit had gone out of her. She looked her character perfectly — submissive, tractable, but hopeless.

The demands of a sickly and irritable husband, and of a family that she had never tried to manage, had thoroughly out worn her strength, and although she never uttered a word of complaint, it was plain that her life was a difficult one. For some reason or other, Valentine thought that she had never seen this fact so clearly as she did just then. For the moment, she was almost reluctant to unfold her news : it seemed out of place, and as if it could not possibly bring a gleam of pleasure to those soft faded eyes. " Mother, let me come into the study : I have something to tell father — something that I am sure will please him." " Is it about your examination ? " " Yes. You know he likes to hear at once, " Come in, then, dear. But move quietly, and speak gently, will you ? His head is very bad to-day."

She did not ask for herself what was the in formation that Valentine had to give. Perhaps she did not very greatly care. She was fond of her children ; but she was entirely wrapped up in her husband and in her anxieties for him — the learned, irritable, exacting man, who resented al most any claim upon him except those of his books. She was quite accustomed to it and did not mind ; but his children were less patient with a state of things which had been a trial to them ever since the days of their babyhood, when he had insisted on translating Sanskrit fairy tales to them instead of letting them play with bricks and dolls. He wanted to make them happy and to provide for their welfare ; but he also invariably wanted to do it in his own way. Mr Denbigh was a tall, spare man, of a uniform greyness of tint which seemed to reach its culminat ing point in a sweeping grey moustache of rather military aspect.

His high, narrow forehead was much wrinkled, and he had harsh lines about his mouth ; there was a dry, ascetic look about him, as of one who lived no longer for the world. He was lying on a sofa, supported by cushions, and strewn about his knees were the sheets of manu scripts on which he had been transcribing some notes upon Pali literature in a peculiarly careful and beautiful hand. He raised his eyebrows as Valentine entered, and waved his long white hand, as if to keep her at a little distance. " Oh, it is you, is it, Valentine ? You are certainly the noisiest of the family. I might have known it was your ring." " Father, I have some news to tell you," said Val, ignoring the injustice of this remark. " I have just heard — Miss Price has told me — that I have passed my examination " " I should hope so.