A Girl Diplomatist

Chapter I. Mentor And Telemachus

' ' Commonsense Questions,' by Blunt. Humph ! They sound rather nonsense, but still . . . Now then, Archie, listen to me. ' Suppose a pedestrian were to find himself alone in a narrow lane with a mad bull rushing straight towards him, what would be the best course for that pedes trian to pursue ? ' " Archie took a strawberry, and considered the question. " I suppose the answer isn't ' clear out,' is it?" he asked, dubiously. "That would be a deal too simple for those confounded examiners." "Archie !" 8 v. " Oh, I beg your pardon, Bab, but they really are. I say, here is a monster straw berry. Take it, Barbara. We'll finish them up, and then tackle old Blunt's questions afterwards." They were rather an unorthodox Mentor and Telemachus, this boy and girl who were sitting over their books in the sunny morn ing room of the Kentish rectory.

Telema chus was a long-legged boy of twenty, whose attention seemed at least as much devoted to the cabbage-leaf of luscious fruit which was lying at his elbow, as to the more serious matter in hand ; and Mentor was a fair-haired girl some two years or more his junior, whose earnestness and whose pretti iiess would have coaxed work from an even more refractory pupil than Archibald Wilmot. "You are a greedy boy," she frowned as she spoke, but she took the tempting strawberry he held towards her all the same, for after all the June weather was hot, and the morning had gone fairly steadily. " You can talk if you like," said Barbara graciouslv. Archie struck out one arm and then the other in a prolonged stretch, and flung him self down upon the well-worn couch with a fervently-ejaculated, " Thank goodness !

It is nothing but work, work, work," he added, "and I'm sick of it." He spoke languidly, and not very much as if he meant his words, being truth to tell so lazy by nature that, with one exception, neither his likes nor his dislikes were ever very pronounced. But his comment was as fire to powder when uttered to Barbara's ears, and perhaps, having much of the schoolboy still in him, and being fully aware of the fact, he was anxious, in his own phraseology, to " draw" her. On the present occasion she sprang to her feet, and stood fronting him, all flash and energy, as he lolled inertly upon the sofa. "Listen to me," she cried. Her voice was clear and inspiriting, and when she talked she used her hands far more than is usual with English girls. " There are two sorts of people in the world, aren't there ?

The very, very few who are somebodies, and the B great mass of the people who are nobodies ? You must belong to one or the other; which would you rather be ? " " You state your case," remarked Archie, " and you put your question with a brevity and a clearness that the Government ex aminers might envy." He shot a glance at her which was an admiring, albeit a sleepy one, for it was the fashion amongst those who made her little world to admire and love the rector's niece, and young Wilmot was no exception to the rule. Barbara majestically ignored the irrelevant interruption. " Of course you want to be one of the few," she went on impetuously. "What does Tennyson say, ' Else wherefore born ? ' I tell you, Archie, that if I were a man I would slave like the proverbial nigger ; I would be content to cut all pleasure from my life for years and years, but I would make myself a name at last.

I would be somebody !" Clasping her hands above her head, Bar bara Thorpe began pacing up and down the room, lost in a day dream of golden possi bilities. She was nothing if not ambitious. Ever since that far-away day when she had been brought, a little friendless orphaned child, to her uncle's house, and the kindly bachelor rector had placed the six years' mite at the head of his long table, to do its honours alike to his pupils and himself, Barbara had had responsibilities and privi leges placed upon her young shoulders which necessarily engendered deeper and more serious views of life than were quite compatible with her age. They gave her, too, a certain self-reliance and a happy con fidence in herself and her surroundings which might have made her akin to that most un pleasant individual a patently " managing " woman, had she not at the same time been endowed with that strange mixture of sudden humilities and tenderness, which vents itself in an almost exaggerated fear of wounding the feelings of one's neighbour.

Rather than pass a grief-stricken house in summer finery, Barbara had been known to turn a mile or more out of her way so as to go round by the fields, and thus avoid the possibility of being noticed by tearful eyes. " It must be so sad for them," she thought, " to see the sunny world is going on as usual, and that I care whether I am wearing white or blue, while their dear ones are dying." She was a girl, too, of strange old fashioned loyalties to the dead — to the past generally, and given to swift, unreasoning anger against those whose memories were shorter, or whose hearts were more callous than her own. "It is no good, Archie," she would say, when young Wilmot was inveighing against some neighbour who had grown disagreeable as to his right of way ; " I am sorrv for vou, but Farmer White was good to me when I was a horrid little girl and trampled down his corn, and so I can't abuse him now, can I ?

" Her mother, poor Barbara had never known ; but through all her romping, happy childhood there had been times when she had stolen away to be quite by herself, whether in the leafy Kentish lanes or the tinv, dimlv-lighted church, and there had spoken out the one word "mother" as she had heard other children do. It seemed to her that if she were listening she might miss the love-word which other women caught so often ; " and that would make me so sorry, if she missed anything through me," little Barbara would tell herself. As she grew older her exuberant health and high spirits prevented this more sensitive side of her character from becoming morbid ; and for the rest her most striking character istics were an intense ambition, which was none the less ardent that it expended itself solely upon the concerns of her many friends, and a great earnestness in whatever purpose might hold her for the time being.

That purpose at present was to pull, drive, or coax her friend through the approaching examination ; and, while she had been pacing the room, her head had been filled with glorious, if remote, possibilities with which the exhausted student upon the sofa was so painfully familiar that he was apt to ward off any castle-building he believed impending. "Don't march about like an Amazon sentry ; you look so horribly un-come-at able," Archie broke the silence at length ; and, sitting up, he fanned himself vigorously with the cabbage-leaf. " Bab, where is Mr. Thorpe ? " he demanded. Barbara gave the softest of soft sighs. " He is in the study. We are not to dis turb him for lunch, and I am to see you do your work properly." " He is a dear, funny old fellow, isn't he ? " asked Archie, irreverently.

" He ought to have been a White of Selborne or a Jeffreys, instead of a country rector. He is never happy except when he is muddling over his leaves or writing some naturalist's paper." Barbara arched her pretty eyebrows in much surprise. " It is something to know those names, isn't it, Mr. Wilmot ? I am proud of my scholar." Then more seriously: "Poor uncle ! I am glad he is so happy, but I wish we and the parish saw more of him. Except for those three hours he coaches you at night, we should hardly get him out of his room." " I don't think we want him — at least, I don't." The young man's tone was as sentimental as he dared make it, but Bar bara was tidying up papers and books, and paid no attention to him. "When did the last pupil go ?" His companion glanced round from the book-case to reply that she supposed it was about two years since Mr. Lucas left them ; and Archie crossed the room with a " Here ! that dictionary is too heavy for you to put up.

I didn't notice what you were doing. Two years ago, is it?" he added, with a transition so rapid as to be almost comicfrom his ordinary matter-of-fact tone to one which he considered languishing ; " and all that long time you and I have been fellow pupils, and for part of it you as well as Mr. Thorpe have been cram I mean teach ing me. I have been so happy all that time, Bab." Barbara laughed. "You have been remarkably lazy, at any rate, for the greater part of it," she said frankly. " I am glad you have enjoyed it.'' "Barbara!" " Mr. Tragic Tones ! Well ? ' "Don't be a fiend, Bab." "And don't you be a goose, Archie.' Evidently the moment was unpropitious for unburdening his soul of what had been weighing it down for at least ten days. Archie gave up the attempt for the present, and proposed a stroll in the garden.

" Lunch won't be ready for twenty minutes, and what is a garden for, if not for the beginning of June ? Do come, Bab, there's a darling," he said persuasively. "And you will — what is the word? — oh ! I know, and you will 'tackle old Blunt' afterwards, if I do come?" " All the afternoon. Honour bright." " And look up those idioms? " " Every man jack of them." " And have fair copies ready for uncle?' Archie threw up his hands in despair. " You Shylock ! And five minutes of the twenty gone alreadv." So the point of the fair copies was con ceded. The rectory garden had been planted when lawn-tennis was still an unknown factor in the land, and so the noble, wide spreading trees reared their majesty direct from the smooth, close-shaven grass without any idea that they were invading the province of more modern net and balls.

Succeeding relays of pupils had grumbled at them occasionally, and had striven to draw tempting pictures of how splendid a court might be obtained if the trees were cut down ; but Barbara always averred she was too old-fashioned to share in their annoyance. The stretches of velvety grass, with sunlight and shadow playing perpetually upon its soft green, was a constant delight to her, while the old-world kitchen garden in its rear, which had been the playground of her younger days, was still so favourite a spot that Archie Wilmot had insisted it ought to be called " My Lady's Bower." " An odd sort of bower," the girl would protest, "where the roses scramble up side by side with the potatoes, and where holly hocks and lad's-love, and other deliriously vulgar flowers grow at their own sweet will — and at mine " Archie had been growing rather foolish lately, Barbara considered, and perhaps on the whole it was as well he was leaving them.

How stupid people were who were fond of change ! For her part she would have been content to have the world stand still for a year or two, and here was Archie, who was always trying to upset their old sister-and-brotherly relations, and trying to assume airs which he believed, but which she doubted, to be those of a full-grown man. She said something of this, of her con tentment with her life and its surroundings, as the two idled under the elms that day ; but her companion dissented stronglv. " Not you," he said, scornfully. "You are the last person on earth to be content with this dead-and-alive sort of existence. You would peg away for some years, and vou'd work the place up into a kind of model village, and then, when everybody came to church, and had a savings bank book, and cultivated flowers, and — and — voted for ' King and Party,' and all that sort of thing, then you'd thirst for fresh fields and pas tures new.

You would never be happy unless you were routing out somebody. Why, bless me, Bab, what on earth is the matter ? " for the girl was looking, not at him, but straight before her, and the large, grey eyes had grown suddenly misty. "Am I like that?" she asked, wistfully. "Like what, Bab?" " An interfering, horrid sort of person. I did not know I ' routed out ' folk against their will." " Bab ! Bab ! Who is the goose now ? " Archie pulled her down on to the bench beside him in a fashion that was comforting and kindly if somewhat schoolboyish in its vehemence. "Aren't you the dearest girl in the British Isles, and doesn't everyone think so ? It is nothing against you that you rout out people. They love you for it." " But I don't, Archie." " But you do, Bab. Did Mark Johnson want to give up drinking, and become a respectable member of society again ?

Of course he didn't ; he would much rather have stayed where he was. But now he is earning thirty shillings a week, and his wife has got a decent gown to her back, and his boy is taken on at the Squire's ; doesn't the entire Johnson family worship the ground you tread on ? Did the governor want to work up the cricket club ? Of course not ; he hated the bother, but all the same he is precious glad now to see the men on the common instead of loafing about the public house. Did I want to sap for the Civil Service ? Catch me ! But I am thankful enough you made me now I am going up." " You are not elegant, but vou are very consoling," Barbara managed to smile. " But I should hate to hector or worrv people. It was very good of you, and uncle, and Mark to do those things. It would have been all the same if I hadn't been here."

" It would not have been the same to some of us," said Archie emphatically, but, as there was no inquiry as to which of the three he meant, a silence followed. Presently he began again. " You are rather an idiot, Bab, aren't you ? " It must be confessed that Archie's attempts at love-making were a trifle young at times. " None of us want to do any thing ; we would rather be lazy and com fortable. And then you stir us up and get your way. Why, what is the pet name Mr. Thorpe gave you? His ' Girl Diplomatist ' ; and then, instead of rejoicing in the fact, you refuse to recognise it. I may be plucked, but chances are I shall pass, and who will my success be due to ? " " Uncle," said Barbara, promptly. " Fiddlesticks," was the rejoinder ; " it will be due to you." A flight of rooks rose cawing over their heads, and a tiny breeze ruffled the soft hair on Barbara's temples.

"To you," said Archie again, edging nearer her along the seat. " What are you thinking about, Barbara ? " The girl shot a sidelong glance at him, and drew a little farther back. " I was thinking," she answered, slowly. "Yes, dar , Yes, Bab?" Archie's courage had failed him. " I was thinking," said Barbara again, and then she broke into a child's mischievous laugh, and began beating a tattoo upon the wooden arm of the bench. "I was thinking that lunch is taking an unconscionable time, and I am desperately hungrv. Why, Archie, what have I said now ? Do you think I have eaten too many strawberries to be hungrv ? I am, re all v." " Nonsense," said the young man, shortlv. He had sidled back to his own end of the bench, and appeared unequivocally cross. " You know you ate more than I did, after all.

You ate them all through the idioms." Finding she was still unanswered, she loosened a rose from the tiny cluster at her throat, and tossed it over to him. It hit him fairly on the cheek, and he turned to her with a laugh, albeit it was a vexed one. It was impossible to be angry with Barbara for long. "That is the worst of you," he protested. " You do take a fellow up so, that he don't know where he is. Look here, Bab, I want to talk seriously. Shall I go ahead now, or shall I wait until to-morrow ? " "Now, please," was the meek answer, for, according to Mr. Thorpe, the girl who ruled the household had at least one quality in common with good Queen Bess, and though she might have been fond of her own will, when she was forced to give wav she did so with the best possible grace. "Well, it is this," began Archie, driving his heel vigorously into an unoffending daisy root which was lying at their feet, and speak ing evidently with a dogged determination to thresh the whole matter out.

" I want to know how you think I am going to get on without vou." J "Oh, is that all?" asked Barbara, un sympathetically ; she knew her questioner perhaps better than he knew himself. " My dear boy, there will not be any difficulty in c doing that. You will pass the exam, with flying colours ; you will get into the Foreign Office ; and then in due time you will be come attache to some embassy or other. Your career is as plain as sunlight, and about as tempting." " Yes, yes," returned the other, im patiently, " I know you arranged this for me ages ago. One of these days you settled I was to become ambassador, didn't you ? — and I am about as likely to become a prince of the blood royal. But what I am asking you is — do you honestly think it likely I shall have the pluck and the go alone which is necessary to climb up even within reason able distance of what you tell me is my ambition ?"

Barbara ceased her tapping, and turned round to look at him more fullv. Archie was a dear boy in his way, and, not having a brother of her own to care for, he had contrived to fill that position very nicely. But still he was weak — that she knew, and not over industrious or clever — that she feared. So " honestlv " — as he had said — honestly she did not believe he would be able to do without the stimulus her own energy and ambition had been to him. She would not tell him that, but " oh, the pity of 't ! " " Oh, Archie, you must," she cried, im pulsively. " We have talked so often of what it means to be a diplomatist — a mover of worlds. And I am only a girl, and can't ; but vou can, and vou shall ! " The rapid, incoherent words caught her breath, and flinging out her hands in the excitement of the thoughts she could not frame, she found them suddenly imprisoned in Archie's strong grasp.

" Ah, Bab, Bab " — his voice had a new ring of determination in its fresh young tones — " if I ever do, it will be all for you, dear. Will you believe that, and will you understand ? " " Believe it ? " Barbara released her hands, and looked straight at him with puzzled, uncomprehending eyes. " I know you will be glad if you please me," she said, gentlv. C " Will you ? May I ? We will divide a sixpence upon it, German fashion," begged Archie. " It shall be our token, Bab. I think I can get through it with a knife." " Yes, a token you are not to forget and be lazy," assented Barbara. " Make haste ; there's the lunch bell." " What a hurry you are in ! Bother the thing ! I can't cut it over straight, but I daresay you won't mind it." " Oh, not a bit," Barbara's mind had reverted to her uncle. " Come along, Archie, we must send his in.

No, I won't lose the sixpence, and I'll race you to the house. Off!" She started away, too much in haste to notice that her companion was following, at a more sober pace. " She is a great darling, but I had no idea that a girl took a proposal, and " — with a smile of self-congratulation — " a poetical proposal, too, in such a very off-hand way. If I weren't a fellow who knew her very well I should almost be foolish enough to imagine that she had not understood me." And for once he had hit the right nail upon the head, for prettv Barbara had no more idea than her own roses, that her old playfellow considered thev were formallv engaged.

Chapter II. Changes

" Dearest uncle, isn't it delightful ? Isn't it utterly delightful? Archie has passed, passed, passed," and happy Barbara danced round the the room waving an open telegram. " Gently, my child, gently, you will flutter these skeleton leaves." Mr. Thorpe put out two thin shrivelled hands to protect his treasures, and then glanced up at the bright face beside him as if he had not quite grasped her meaning. "Hey! what is that you say?" he asked. "Wilmot has managed to scramble through, has he? Well, I am sure that it is more than I expected." Changes. 23 "Oh no," remonstrated Barbara. "He has more than ' scrambled through ' ; we ought to be very proud of him. Listen ! this is what he says: 'Through. Good luck,' and that means a good place, uncle." " Well, well," said the old man good humouredly, "If he has managed it it is due to to .

What was I saying, Barbara?" "You old dear!" The girl knelt down by him, and put her arms gently round his bowed shoulders. " You were going to say that the credit was due to me as deputy tutor, and that would have been a kind, foolish thing to sav, because it is not true ! " She kissed the sunken cheek to emphasise her remark. " I only ' routed him out,' 1j } e. "Yes, dear, yes. And now will you take your work, or sit quietly while I go on with these specimens ? They are wonderfully good ones, Barbara, and I must try and write of them to the Naturalist. Only I get so tired nowadays ! Do you think you could copy my notes for me to-night ? They are not as distinctly penned as I should wish them. I think my sight must be growing dim." "Of course I will copy them, uncle. I am proud of playing secretary to so learned a gentleman."

The tone was merry, but she was looking very grave as she picked up some white work which was lying at hand, and began stitching industriously. Poor Uncle Reu ! how thin and grey haired he had grown lately, and how old ened in his movements and general bearing ! The more he had become immersed in those studies of foliage on which he was so great an authority, the less his niece had naturally had of his societv, and it was not until Archie Wilmot's recent departure that thev had necessarily been thrown more together again. And now, watching him as he bent afresh over his beloved work, the girl was struck by those signs of what is called "breaking up" which are so piteous to loving eyes. Had she been too full of Archie's concerns, and somewhat neglected the silent rector ? No ; Barbara was too Changes. 25 sensitive not to be a successful self-torturer; but her conscience could not accuse her of negligence.

When she next glanced up from stitching it was to find that Mr. Thorpe had stayed his writing and was watching her intently. " Yes, dear uncle ? " " I did not speak, Barbara." " No, dear, but you thought." The girl dropped her work, and went back to her old position, kneeling beside him with her head laid coaxingly upon his shoulder. " You thought, uncle, and not very happily I am afraid ; and I have a right to your thoughts, haven't I, dear ? We have no body except each other — we two." " Yes, only we two ; and when I have gone who will take care of my little girl Barbara ? '' " Whv, Uncle Reu, what do vou mean ? " Barbara raised suddenly-startled eyes in re ply to the half self-communing question. " Nothing, nothing," said the old man, hastily, "nothing at all, my pet." He sat stroking her fair hair for some minutes without speaking, and then he added, " You remember that cold I had last winter, Barbara ?

" Barbara nestled closer to him, but the answer was eloquent enough ; the girl was not one to forget. " I think it pulled me down a good bit, dear, to quote your friend Archie. I think it has left me less strong for the future." " But, uncle, vou are not ill. You are only tired." Barbara spoke with the insist ence with which all young things strive to blind themselves to possible sorrow, and Mr. Thorpe smiled in answer. " No, I am not ill, but I am very tired, very tired indeed." He touched the box of specimens before him in the caressing fashion a mother might touch a little child, and then with an effort he roused himself, kissing Barbara's wet face, and mocking at her gently for a silly, imaginative girl. " You have always been a great comfort to me ; I love you very dearly," he told her, and then with a little laugh, " vou and Changes. 27 my leaves.

I don't fancy I care for much else. Now go away, my pet, and think of your friend Archie's success. You must write him our congratulations. Don't worry about me, my love, I am only tired, only tired." Looking back afterwards in that dreary Christmastide when she was left alone, the girl found her chief consolation in the re membrance of that same talk. She had been " a comfort " to him, thank God for that ! and he had not felt ill, "only tired," so there was no pain, hardly any sadness attendant upon his death. He was of a great age, and to the last his hobby had supplied him with a keen interest in life ; only the tiredness of which he had first complained grew more and more pronounced, until just when the Christmas bells were ringing out their messages of peace and goodwill, the old priest fell into that heavy, dreamless sleep which knows no awaken ing, and the young niece whom he had so petted and sheltered was left alone in the world.

Of course, there were plenty of people to interest themselves in her during her brief stay in the rectory when the funeral was once over, and the sound of their foot steps and their wordy consolations — "vacant chaff well meant for grain " — seemed more saddening to the desolate girl than even the darkened rooms had done during those death-days when the silence of the great roomy house was left unbroken. In a sense she was very grateful to them all — the squire's wife, who insisted upon choosing her suitable mourning, " I was too fond of our dear departed to allow his niece to make a fright of herself, my dear " ; the doctor's mother who made the poor tear stained face the text upon which to preach her a homily on the sinfulness of unrestrained grief; the curate's young sister who tried to rouse her from the apathy into which she had fallen ; but it jarred upon her all the same, and though she was too gentle natured to curtail it, she found their sympathy irk some.

The poor of the parish proved them selves more congenial friends in stripping Changes. 29 the hedges of holly boughs — it was scarce that winter, and hard to come at — with which to cover the unsightlv mould of the O J newly-made grave ; and when Barbara's time of grace in the dearly loved rectory was growing to a close, and she began going a little into the cottages again to wish her poorer neighbours good-bye, it was to be met with such evidences of love and regard both to herself and her dear dead, that after all of human consolation there seemed to be some in the world, and the girl's heart grew a little less heavy, and her thoughts a little less sad. Mr. Grant, her uncle's lawyer and sole executor, had been detained in town by an attack of gout, so the first violence of her grief had spent itself, and she was able to discuss matters calmly with him when he finally arrived upon the scene.