St. Martin's Summer

Front matter

VOL. I. BY SHIRLEY SMITH AUTHOR OF "HIS LAST STAKE" &c., &c. 11 There is vigour yet in your autumn time ; you may yet wring a harvest out of the future years." " One knew that the time of mirth, that even the harvest time was gone away, but the light was too fresh, and the sky too bright for sadness." STOPrORD A. BROOKE. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1880. All rights reserved. Sclitcatco BY PERMISSION TU J. E. MILLAIS, R. A , HIS PICTURE OF ST. MARTIN' S SUMMER EXHIBITED IN 1878 SUGGESTED TO THE AUTHOR A NAME FOR THIS STORY.

Chapter I. Morton Rectory

IT was Catherine Courtenay's fifteenth birthday, and there was to be a garden party at Morton Rectory to celebrate the event. Everyone knows the village of Morton ; it is situated on the verge of a picturesque county in the south-west of England ; the fine woods which grow in it, and the sea breezes that blow over it, make a healthful and delicious fragrance in the air, and it must be downright obstinacy and perverseness on the part of VOL. I. B invalids if they do not at once recover health and strength under the mingled influence of resin and ozone. That a large majority of people in the world are, what may be called, profes sional grumblers is a too well known fact, and we admit at once, to save ourselves from being ignominiously overthrown in argument, that in spite of its natural advantages, Morton would not perhaps be universally considered an earthly Para dise by those who had had the privilege of living in more lively localities ; without doubt a grumbler might have declared that in Morton there was little to be seen, and nothing to be done.

But those who were not grumblers re velled in the pure and invigorating air; and if the scenery was neither bold nor strikiug enough to inspire a poet or a painter, it was quite pretty enough to afford excuses for pic-nics and excursions to those less gifted and prosaic mortals who can handle neither pen nor pencil ; and imaginative young people can make love on a sweet day in summer just as happily if the prospect spread out before them is tame and common-place, as in the face ofthe most enchanting landscape ever painted by Poussin or Lorrain. The grounds and garden of Morton Rectory had a fair share of natural beauty ; indeed they owed little to art, for the Rector was a man of taste and culture far above the level of his parishioners even of the better sort, and he had a few whims and fancies upon the subject of landscape and flower gardening which he acted upon in defiance of fashion.

He had a profusion of sweet and now, alas, almost obsolete flowers in his garden, and not even one bed or border filled with a formal blaze of scarlet, yellow, and brown broke the smooth surface of the well kept lawn, shaded by sundry thick-leaved limes and beeches, upon which Catherine and her friends played croquet, for when the Rector's only daughter was fifteen, lawn tennis was unknown as a pastime for young ladies. B Catherine had been a pretty child, some what staid and grave in her demeanour, docile and warm-hearted, but singularly unexacting, accepting demonstrations of affection even from those she loved as a favour, not as a right, but feeling keenly the slightest neglect or discourtesy. At fifteen she was a tall girl, with sweet dark earnest eyes in which even those who ran could read her modest, truthful, and re fined nature ; nine men out of every ten would probably pass her by without special notice, the tenth might be capti vated by the expression of those earnest, honest eyes, and think of them as the sweetest he had ever seen.

Strange, is it not, that modesty and re finement should need to be specially men tioned as traits in the character of a youno1 English girl ? but we must remember that this is an age of progression and culture ; and so it has come to pass that sundry old fashioned graces, virtues let us boldly call them, which used to be the special attri butes of our women are disappearing rapidly. The cynic scoffs at the ever grow ing similarity ofthe sexes, men regard with pity, amusement, and contempt the ludi crous travesties of themselves, while not a few feel genuine sorrow that feminine delicacy, softness, and refinement are so rapidly becoming things of the past. What will be the end ? will not society suffer sooner or latter from the loss of that " sweetness and light" which are to be found perfect both in melody and bright ness within the charmed circle of a pure and noble woman's life ?

I confess it is with a certain amount of nervous trepidation that I introduce Catherine Courtenay to my readers ; at fifteen she was not a precocious hoyden with untidy hair and a flippant tongue ; neither was she an adept in any of the new fangled modes of flirtation, the chief of which is — I write for the benefit of the uninitiated, if there are any still abiding in the world — that the woman kindly takes all the trouble of the courtship off the hands of the man. Neither was Catherine strong-minded, nor mystical, nor æsthetical ; she looked bright, healthy, and happy, not weary, lank, and haggard, and she spoke good plain English, which those curious in such matters can find for themselves in the old fashioned literature which Catherine loved ; indeed it is a question whether she had ever beard of " divine potentialities," " inner dualities," — the newest name I suppose for " elective affinities" — " sweet sensuousness" or " gracious tonality !"

To live in intimate communion with the charming creatures who adorn their conversation with such remarkable flowers of speech is no doubt a great privilege, but it had never been enjoyed by the Rector's daughter ; and it is more than probable that she would have laughed outright at the jargon. She was naturally intelligent, and singularly endowed with that brave patience which would enable her to bear the trials and disappointments from which not even the most carefully guarded life can hope to be exempt. Mrs. Courtenay, a woman who had won all hearts by her charms of manner, died when Catherine was little more than a baby, and the mother's place had been filled by the half-sister of Mr. Courtenay, a Miss Heathcote; this step-brother and sister, the children of the same mother, were tenderly and truly attached to one another, and if the place in the Rector's home left vacant by the death of his wife could ever have been filled by any one. that one would have been Miss Heathcote.

She certainly did her best to make up to him, and to her little nephew and niece, for their untimely loss, and the widower never felt even a passing desire to put a second Mrs. Courtenay at the head of his household. Miss Heathcote was, as a ruler, more passive than active ; she would have seemed energetic and managing only to those who did not know that her mild sway never met with the slightest check, or that her retention of authority in the household when Catherine ceased to be a child, was owing to the fact that the amiable girl never tried to wrest it from her. And it is not altogether unnatural that, from having been for so many years of her life totally uncontradicted, Miss Heathcote should have begun to look upon herself as one of the firmest and most uncompromis ing of mortals, whilst the actual truth was that she could not, for even five minutes, have withstood either argument or opposi tion.

Edmund Courtenay was four years older than his sister Catherine, and from baby hood she had been most passionately and romantically attached to her big brother ; Edmund accepted this devotion with stolid equanimity as his right, and tyrannised over the little girl most unmercifully, bear ing himself upon all occasions towards her like a selfish young autocrat ; but the ad miring eyes of his father, aunt, and sister could see no fault in the handsome, wilful lad who had been unhappily for himself spoiled from his birth; he had been the idol of his poor mother, and, from the moment she was old enough to show preference or partiality, the idol of Catherine also ; Mr. Courtenay, who was by no means weak-minded in general, foolishly joined the mutual admiration society, and so the boy was utterly ruined.

To bave his own way in his own way was the one great object of young Edmund's life, and, until he went to school, it may be said that he was rarely crossed in his wishes or balked in his desires ; when he went amongst other boys however, and found himself a subject in stead of a king it was remarkable how quickly he found his level. A few months of the discipline kept up by schoolboys in their own small world, sent him back to the Rectory somewhat less disposed to lord it over his aunt and sister; but they were still such willing victims to his whims, so anxious to give him opportunities of asserting himself, so determined to make him believe that he was handsomer, and far more clever than any other lad of his age, that it is not to be wondered at if he went back to school each term cock-adoodling loudly, and that his wings had to be clipped over and over again.

When he left school at eighteen be was a good-looking youth with dark eyes like his sister's, but he had a weak thin-lipped mouth, and the sweet candid expression of her face was altogether wanting in his ; he had inherited his mother's extraordinary charm of manner, but while in her the exercise of it seemed involuntary, with him it could, apparently, be used or suppressed at will. He was good-natured, that is, he could do a good-natured action if the doing of it were easy to himself, but it must be admitted in his favour that the idea of gaining praise by the performance of some laudable act outside tbe line of obvious duty never influenced him at any time. He would give a lavish gratuity, far more than he could afford in fact, to an importunate beggar, who was probably an arrant humbug, just to get rid of him, but he would not stir from his comfortable chair by the fire on a wintry day to open the door for his sister's pet dog, which had been by accident left out to shiver in the snow, nor would he offer to go in his aunt's stead upon an urgent errand to the village upon a pouring wet day, or even go with her to carry an umbrella in his strong young hands.

Neither the childish sister, nor the middle-aged aunt, resented many such flagrant instances of neglect and indif ference on the part of their young prince ; he was selfish and lazy, but they simply looked upon him as studious and un observant, and Catherine worked slippers, and braces, and smoking caps for him, and Miss Heathcote largely supple mented his father's allowance of pocket money. That Mr. Courtenay was to blame for not bestowing more time and thought upon his children cannot be denied, but had neglect been imputed to him he would have been genuinely surprised. His daughter was really what she seemed, no amount of severe moral discipline could have improved her, why should he have taken for granted that Edmund had a dark side to his character ? no one in the village would have carried tales ofthe son to the father ; young men would be young men, and Catherine put out of her mind, as she would have put a bad and horrible dream, the fact that Edmund had once, when he was a mere boy, taken half a sovereign out of his aunt's purse, and then talked the easily led woman into the belief that she had lost it. The girl tried to persuade herself that he was in jest, and would give the money back some day, but she could not bear to ask him if he had done so.

Chapter II

A CRUEL LETTER. AT eighteen Edmund Courtenay decided upon his future career; he would not go to College, or in any way qualify himself for a learned profession ; he believed that he had a special aptitude for business, and into business he meant to go. His father, remembering how as a little boy he used to keep what he called a saving's bank — it was conducted upon somewhat eccentric principles, for he would simply lend out to imaginary customers small sums of money, in the form of pebbles, receiving in return a high rate of interest upon each loan — believed in the aptitude, and allowed him to have his own way ; so he was, through the influence of an old friend of Mr. Courtenay's, placed in a good position in a large mercantile house in London. The post was one which many men reach only after years of probation, but Edmund Courtenay was looked upon as an exceptional young fellow and peculiarly deserving of confidence.

He had, who could doubt it ? received careful training at the hands of his father, and he was not, as was too often the case, an unwilling victim to the terrible necessity of bread winning, but a fine clever young man who might have made his mark as a clergy man, a doctor, or a lawyer, but who was eagerly anxious to chain himself to a desk, and to penetrate the dark mysteries of money-making in business. Never had a lad of eighteen started in life under fairer auspices ; he was credited without trial with certain virtues simply because he was his father's son, and when, during the first months of his attendance at the vast establishment in which, in the eyes of the uninitiated, money seemed literally to grow and to be had for the asking, he was found to be somewhat indolent, a little careless in the performance of his duties, and decidedly fond of pleasure, every allowance was made for him by his employers.

He was young, they said, London was new to him, if he were just allowed to have a short fling he would settle down into the routine of work all the more readily, and by the time he was one-and-twenty he would be a most exemplary young fellow, in every way worthy of the confidence reposed in him ; it was his extraordinary charm of manner, inherited, as I have said, from his mother, that literally carried him triumphantly through everything. He had been at home but once during the two years that had passed since he entered business, and Catherine confidently counted upon him for the garden party which was to be given specially in honour of her birthday, she even felt that it would be a dull and poor day to her if her handsome and popular brother were not by her side. She had noticed and slightly com mented upon the fact to her aunt, that for a week or more before her birthday her father was by no means in his usual spirits — he was silent and absent, and he had an anxious, and even care-worn ex pression ; but the girl in no way connected his state with Edmund ; why should she ? she had not heard of any trouble in which he was mixed up, neither had Miss Heathcote.

It could not be on account of Edmund both aunt and niece decided, although it was strange that the young man had not come down on the eve of the birthday. They had so confidently expected to see him that they were doubly disap pointed ; and was it not strange that Mr. Courtenay had not said anything about him ? The conversation between Catherine and her aunt about the non-appearance of Edmund, which was so very puzzling — it would have been also provoking if those two had not been so pre-determined not to find fault with anything done, or left undone, by their idol — took place while Miss Heathcote was dressing ; the party was to begin at three o'clock, which would allow a long afternoon for croquet and archery, and give time for an im promptu dance after the high tea at seven. The month was June; and there had been for some time old-fashioned summer weather, not a hot day now and then, with intervals of bleak wind and heavy rain, but a good, honest, pitiless blaze of sun shine, which made the shade of the grand old beeches and the sweet close-leaved limes upon the Rectory lawn doubly delicious.

Miss Heathcote looked a little flushed and nervous, as if she thought she was rather behind time, as she put on her black grenadine and pale pink ribbons ; Catherine, who was already dressed, helped her to pin on her bows, and found her gloves, which, with that malignity so vol. i. o often found in apparently innocent matter, had fallen behind the dressing-table, and carefully hidden themselves under the drapery. "You need not flurry yourself, Aunt Fanny," she said, " we have still a quarter of an hour, and people are never punctual. I wish the afternoon post would come ; there will surely be a letter from Edmund, and even if he comes now he cannot be here before six o'clock. Can he have forgotten my birthday ? fancy, Aunt Fanny, I am fifteen to-day ! quite grown up, am I not ?" " If being tall enough means grown up, dear."

" Of course it does ; what else can it mean ? what is the use of being two inches taller than you? aunt, and you are not a little woman, if I am not to be grown up ; but I am sorry for one reason," the girl added with laughing eyes, " for I can really look down upon Mr. Byng, and he cannot like it." Mr. Byng was one of Mr. Courtenay's curates, and so short was he in stature, and so small altogether, but so very good, and such an energetic worker amongst the poor, that Miss Heathcote in one of her rare fits of brilliancy had dubbed him the least of all the saints ! It was well known, however, throughout the entire parish of Morton, that the excellent little man was desperately in love with his Rector's sister, albeit she was many years his senior, and had long ceased to look upon herself as a candidate for matri mony.

"Poor dear little man!" said Miss Heathcote, as she twisted and pulled an obstinate end of ribbon ; " I wish you would not laugh at him." " He will be here at three to the moment, I know he will," cried Catherine mercilessly. " I believe he is at the avenue gate this moment waiting for the church clock to strike, and he will patiently look over the albums in the drawing-room for about the fiftieth time, but he never gets beyond the page in my c book in which there are two likenesses of you, both equally bad ; but he is especially delighted with that one in which you are represented clutching the back of a chair, and simpering inanely at the photo grapher, I suppose !" " Dreadful thing ! I wish you would burn it, dear." " It would be far better to give it to Mr. Byng ; I know he has a large album, and there are only three photographs in it as yet — the Queen, the late Bishop of Oxford, and Patti.

Edmund told me about it. Just think, aunt, you would make up the quartette." " I think it would be advisable to wait, dear, until his collection is not quite so select." Miss Heathcote replied seriously. " Where did you put my gloves ? now shall we come down ?" " The clock is striking, and there is Mr. Byng," said Catherine ; she was standing in a window that commanded a view of the avenue. "Yes, and the postman follows ; now I do hope that dear little man will have the sense to stay out on the lawn while we read our letters." Catherine ran down stairs, but came back in a few minutes looking disap pointed. " Nothing from Edmund," she said, " there were three for papa ; he is in the study, and I took them in. Come, aunt, we may as well go out and talk to Mr. Byng ; I am so vexed about Edmund, he cannot have remembered my birth day."

She gave a little sigh as she put on her hat and followed Miss Heathcote down stairs and out upon the sunny lawn. The croquet ground was as smooth as it could be, the afternoon was simply perfect, everyone who had spoken to her that day had said some kindly word of greeting, and yet the girl felt sad. Even the little curate, as he shook hands with her, made a speech about the beauty of the day being typical of the event about to be celebrated (he did not explain how it was so) giving out at the end just in the tone he gave out the hymns in church the well-known line, "Youth on the prow, and pleasure at the helm." " Oh, thank you, Mr. Byng !" cried Catherine, her cheeks glowing. " I do so want to have a happy day, but Edmund has not come." The faithless Byng was not listening ; having made his speech he turned to Miss Heathcote.

" The Rector is well, I trust," he was saying. " I thought he looked fagged on Sunday ; a little change, perhaps, the sea air, we could manage to spare him for a month." " Thank you, I am sure it would do him good, we must persuade Catherine, who gave that scream ? what is the matter ?" She turned pale as death, and for a second her limbs tottered under her ; then she as suddenly recovered, and motion ing to her niece to stay with the guest, she went quickly towards the house. At the door she met a scared servant coming in search of her; Mr. Courtenay had been found lying upon the floor of his study insensible. Without stopping to ask a question she hurried back to Catherine and the Curate. " We must put off our friends, dear," she said, speaking as calmly as she could, " your father is not very well."

Before she could make the request that Mr. Byng would go for the doctor, the little man had hurried off, and poor Catherine was left to tell the coming guests that there would be no party that after noon. The first comers were dismissed, and they, in their turn, stopped others on the way, so the girl's task was an easy one ; she found it less easy to go in and stand outside the closed door of her father's study. What was going on within ? it was terrible not to know, it might be still more terrible to know. At length she opened the door softly, and went into the room a little way ; she saw her aunt and the servants grouped round the sofa, and there was a smell of some strong aromatic perfume in the room, but she could not see her father's face. Miss Heathcote rose quickly and met her. " You can do no good yet, dear," she said, " he has fainted, and we must wait until the doctor has seen him."

She led the girl from the room, and tried to calm her. " He must be very ill," Catherine cried sobbing, " or you would not look so frightened ; if you only knew how white you are, and your poor hands are so cold." " Oh, Catherine, my poor child ! how am I to tell you ? we were so proud of him ! it is a judgment upon us ! a just judgment !" and Miss Heathcote broke down utterly, and threw herself crying bitterly upon a couch. With infinite trouble Catherine induced her to tell all she knew ; something dreadful had happened about Edmund, and it was cruel, the girl urged, to keep her in the dark. Then still crying and sobbing Miss Heathcote told how she had found a letter A CRUEL LETTLR. upon her brother's table, which was evidently one of the three that had come for him by the afternoon post ; the others were still unopened, and in it, without any pre liminary words to soften the blow, the un happy father had read that his son, the lad of whom he was so fond and so proud, had absconded with a sum of money embezzled from his employers ; it was added that the police were on his track, and hoped to have him in custody ere long.

So much the cruel letter told, but there was an addition to the sad story, which only Mr. Courtenay or the unfortunate youth himself could have supplied ; it was this — about a week or ten days before he com mitted the crime, Edmund had written to his father to beg for a considerable sum of money; he was in a scrape, he said, but he did not enter into any particulars, and if he could not obtain fifteen hundred, or even a thousand pounds before a few days from that date he would be ruined. Very briefly and sternly Mr. Courtenay had replied that to supply even the smaller sum he had named at a moment's notice was impossible ; he could raise the money of course, but to do so would require time, and before he consented to involve him self in trouble and expence, he insisted upon knowing the nature ofthe embarrassment he was called upon to relieve.

So wrote the father, fully impressed with the idea that it would read the extravagant young man a wholesome lesson to bave to wait, perhaps a few weeks, for the sum he had demanded so coolly ; but as several days passed and no reply came from Ed mund, tbe affair began to weigh heavily upon Mr. Courtenay's mind, making him look fagged and ill, as the curate had re marked. He tried to make himself believe that it would do " the boy" good to wait, but even as he tried he had made up his mind to " take a run up to town" the day after his daughter's birthday party, just to see for himself how things were going on, and in the middle of his plans the terrible news came. Edmund had A CRUEL LETTER. relieved himself from a difficulty by a crime. The unhappy father sat for some time utterly crushed and stupefied by the mag nitude of the blow ; the blood surged up into his head, and as he was blindly groping his way to the bell to summon a servant to fetch his sister, he fell in an apopletic fit from which he never rallied.

It was natural enough that the loving, ignorant, and impulsive women should be ready to declare that the Edmund whom they admired and believed in, almost as much as they loved, could not be guilty of the odious and disgraceful crime imputed to him ; in a moment of weakness he might have been tempted to make use temporarily of money which did not belong to him, but if all the circumstances of the case were known, the flagrance of his apparent guilt would disappear. He was so young, so handsome, so gentlemanlike, that he could not be guilty in the vulgar sense that other men less gifted than he would have been. So the aunt, who ought to have known better at her age, reasoned (but, alas, the power to reason logically is not always one of the gifts of time to warm-hearted women) as she wept bitter tears over her disgraced nephew, and her brother struck down in the prime of life.

Catherine, whose grief for the time seemed to have drowned her common-sense, dried Miss Heathcote's tears even while her own flowed freely, and declared it was all a plot to ruin her darling brother ; but, in spite of her vehemence, she felt dimly conscious that to be handsome and gentleman-like will not keep a man from crime. She did not try, however, to argue the point with her aunt ; she simply did her best to comfort her with loving words and caresses, and said that every thing would come right if — if only dear papa recovered.

Chapter III

A midnight visit. BUT not even Catherine's brave and hopeful spirit could ward off the full force of the blow that was falling. Before sunset on the day that was to have been so happy, she stood alone by the bed upon which her dead father lay. Without a word, a sign, or even a look for the sister and child he had so tenderly loved, he had passed away, and they had to bear tbe anguish of grief and the sharp stab of reflected disgrace alone. Of Edmund of course nothing was known ; he might have been arrested and committed for trial for what they could tell, for they did not dare to open a newspaper, lest they should find his name in the police reports. Miss Heathcote had written the day after Mr. Courtenay's death a few in coherent lines to the head of the firm in which her nephew had been employed, to implore that he would not be hard upon the lad, and to promise in the name of her dead brother that every penny of the money should be made good.