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Chapter I. About Us All

|HERE is no doubt about it ! The soft sighing western wind that comes slowly along the valley, bending the flowers' heads, and freshening them into brighter beauty ; the golden, gracious atmosphere of this gorgeous July day ; the general air of satisfaction which hangs over indolent everything — each and all of these fail in producing a better effect upon me.

The verdict has been delivered to me to-day, and no criminal ever cringed lower than I did when I heard it. It issued forth from the lips of partial affection too, not from those of stern justice. " Tim is very unattractive — pitifully so," my large, handsome, moon-faced, ox-eyed Juno of an aunt was saying to my father when I came into the breakfast-room this morning. And though I tried to back and falter away, I seemed to be chained to the spot, and condemned to listen to the words of doom.

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" Little Tim wil. do very well to stay at home and take care of me when the others are all gone," my father said, pitying my abject state; and it did seem such a tame little fate to look forward to at the time. But now I have determined to accustom myself to the prospect. But it will be very dull for me in this big oid house when all the other git Is are gone.

It is luncheon time now, and I must go in and face them all with the feeling upon me that they all know that I have heard to-day how very unattractive I am, and that I have been crying my face into the semblance of mottled soap about it. My eyelids are tight and red, my nose and lips are swollen, my hair is horribly touzled — for I have been stretched out on the grass — I am sunburnt, and the cambric dress that was as fresh as my sisters' in the morning has suffered considerably from contact with the affectionate paws of a brace of setters. Altogether I am at my very worst, and my worst must be something very deplorable, considering how unattractive I am at my best.

"Late and out of breath, as usual, Tim," Aunt Helen says, as I come in through the open window and find them seated at luncheon — Aunt Helen at the head of the table, feeding away steadily in that calm, unhungry way of hers, papa opposite to her, my two pretty sisters facing the window, and Claire, my beautiful sister, with her back to me, by the side of a stranger.

I take in the group at a glance, and am ashamed of myself. They are all cool and unruffled ; they are all eating mayonnaise, and sipping iced claret cup (I feel as if a pint of the latter would not assuage the raging thirst which is born of crying and exposure to the hot sun) ; they all present such an appalling contrast to touzled, overheated, miserable me, that I turn and incontinently flee away through the window again. I hear a light peal of amused laughter, and I positively bound along in my eagerness to get beyond earshot of it. As I reach a side door and pause, meaning to turn in through it, a fleeter foot than mine presses the gravel at my side, and

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1 leap round startled, at bay, to find myself face to face with the stranger.

Humbled, enraged, mortified, furious, untidy as I am, this is the last straw, and it breaks me down.

" How dared you do it ? " I cry ; and then I gulp, and the blinding tears rush out in a torrent, and I know I must look more hideous than ever.

" Don't ! " he says, in accents of such entreaty that I forget myself for a moment. " It's natural to run after anything that runs away ; your sister thought you didn't like finding me in your place, so I came to tell you I'd resign it to you."

He speaks so seriously that I look up at him to see if he is in earnest or not.

" Claire would never try to make you believe I was such a fool," I say with emphasis. For Claire is the one of my sisters who always comes between me and misunderstanding and mortification. Odd as appears to every one, Aunt Helen included, Claire likes me.

" Miss Vincent rather gave me the impression of thinking me a fool for being in your way for a moment. Do come back, that I may make my peace."

The plea is of avail. I think of Claire, and reflect that it must be an awful thing for any man to be at odds with her. So I walk slowly back by my late pursuer's side, and arrive to find that they have all finished luncheon ; that they are getting themselves out of the room, and preparing to leave me to the dismal glories of a solitary meal.

I am young, healthy, hungry, but I am also heartsore, and so, when I take my seat in a limp and flurried way, a certain wistfulness creeps into my face, as I watch the others sailing out serene and satisfied. And Claire catches this expression, I suppose, for she comes back and sits beside me, and helps me carefully, and seems to be interested in what may please my appetite — much more interested than I am myself.

In gratitude to her — and in obedience to the laws of nature — I eat heartily, and feel less dejected ; she moving about me the whole time, caring for me so palpably that I forget that I am mottled-faced from crying, and rough-headed, and generally unattractive and unworthy of attention.

" Who is he ? " I ask, when I have finished, rising and taking my place by Claire, who, from the vantage post of a high window-sill, is watching the family taking its air elegantly on the lawn.

Claire turns her gleaming, winsome face to me, and an expression of utter surprise reigns on it.

"Didn't Aunt Helen tell you he was coming this morning ? " she asks. " Why, Tim, he's her nephew, Theo Bligh ! "

" I'm glad he isn't like her," I say heartily.

Aunt Helen is the widow of a cousin to whom my father was greatly attached. But we young ones all wish that the sentiment had been buried in Arthur Vincent's grave, instead of being carried on and expended upon his widow. For Aunt Helen has entirely failed to secure our suffrages, and she is omnipotent with papa.

" ' For ways that are dark, and for tricks that are mean,' commend me to Aunt Helen," Claire goes on discontentedly. " She throws you off your guard too, by being big and fair and placid ; but I feel sure that she has been scheming for this boy to come here, and all the time papa is thinking that he is entertaining an angel unawares, and that it's pure accident which brought him into his esteemed aunt's neighbourhood."

" He must be a schemer too," I say sagaciously, and I remember how he scuttled after me in the garden, and hate him.

Claire laughs tolerantly. " One couldn't be very hard on him, even if he had taken a turning or two away from the straight road to come here — we Vincents are worth knowing, Tim, dear; even Aunt Helen's poor powers of description must have taught him that."

I look at her as she speaks, and from the bottom of the heart that loves her so I feel that Claire is worth knowinor that any man may be forgiven for having taken

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any number of tortuous turnings in getting to her, and that she is a great deal too precious to be thrown away on any one appertaining to Aunt Helen.

Every bit of her short oval face, every lock of her wavy golden hair, every expression of her clear violet eyes, every curve of the freely smiling mouth, are well known and desperately dear to me. But I cannot describe her, I cannot catalogue her charms, I cannot attempt to put her before you on paper as she seemed to me this morning when she soothed me so, as only Claire can.

We walk out presently and join the others on the lawn, her brilliant blue cambric crisply fluttering in the wind, mine hanging limp and dull, — her strong, supple, slender figure carrying itself unfalteringly under the fire of the battery of the five pairs of eyes that are levelled at us ; my slimmer and less well-balanced frame tottering under the conviction that I shall stumble presently, and bring still more obloquy upon my unhappy and most unattractive person. So we advance into the midst of the family group, and so Theo Bligh sees us together for the first time.

I have called my other sisters pretty, and I am quite ready and able to set forth their claims to the title. They are twins; they have nice, well opened, soft grey eyes, and masses of flaxen hair, which looks like tow when they wash it, before they anoint it with brilliantine; they have pleasant, womanly, comfortable figures and faces and manners; they are devoted to one another, and deadly uninteresting to me.

Unquestionably, though, they are household successes, these two fair, pleasant sisters of mine. Far-sighted papas and mammas who have noted them well, have spoken words of promise concerning their sons when the twins have been to the fore. More than one son of some neighbouring house, indeed, has sought to lop them from the family tree ; but, as they truly say, they " are in no hurry to separate," and the law of the land will not admit of their both marrying the same man.

They were always much easier to manage in their childhood, Aunt Helen avers, than either Claire or myself; and now, in their good-looking, graceful young womanhood, they are much more comfortable companions than are we, the Beauty and the Beast of the establishment. Aunt Helen is a woman who believes in every axiom that has ever been uttered by every wise man and every fool, from the beginning of time until the present day. She was wont to hurl that special one, as to the advisability of our letting our first years be passed in "books or work or healthful play," at our young heads from the moment she reigned over us. The advice rebounded from Claire's head lightly and easily, as did every other evil thing. It fell with a dull, depressing weight on mine, keeping me down, as did the majority of Aunt Helen's good gifts. But the twins always bent gracefully before the instructive blast, and upreared themselves after it as if nothing had happened — and had their reward in her perfect appreciation of them, let it be hoped!

They are sitting here now, on a rug at her feet, tatting, there is nothing wrong in tatting in the abstract, but how evil it makes me feel, when I am altogether awry with the world, to see our twins tatting at Aunt Helen. We all know that every round and square abomination which their hooks and ingenuity shape will be sent off to the Bligh family, for the furtherance of their bodily comfort. Aunt Helen is always making affectionate mention of some cousin to us unknown, who is in sore need of a sofa rug, or a counterpane, or a cloud. And forthwith the twins tat, and knit, and net in her service, until Berlin wool, and everything else that can be turned to account with a hook and needles, has become an abomination in my eyes.

Aunt Helen is always sleepy after luncheon. If I dare to yawn or look bored, if I venture to be flushed or pale, if I lounge about and steep myself in golden silence, she declares that my digestion must be seriously impaired, and offers me a pill, or a long walk to some goal which I

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have not the slightest desire to gain. But she is very lenient to herself in the matter of after-luncheon lassitude. " Her system is so perfect," she assures us, " that it must not be disturbed by either annoyance or exercise." Even to-day, though her nephew Theo has but just appeared before her for the first time for seven or eight years, her eyes are closed, and her head is jerking gracefully forwards on to her broad matronly bosom.

For one wild moment I hope that I shall escape observation and reprimand, and I try to slip round behind the large cushioned chair which lives on the lawn for her sole use during the summer— a fat, sleepy hollow of a chair, that has somehow or other a ridiculous family likeness to its occupant ; but she opens her light blue eyes and lows at me.

" Tim," she says, " if you sit down on the grass in the open air in your present heated condition, I will not answer for the consequences ; a friend of mine did so once, and repented it to the day of her death, for it was the cause of a most unsightly eruption in her face."

" I can't keep on walking up and down, or round the circle like a wild beast, and I can't stand on. one leg like a stork, Aunt Helen," I say peevishly; I must sit down."

And I sink down on the grass as I speak, crumpling my skirts carelessly, and hate Aunt Helen as I never hated her before, for having remarked on that boiling of the blood which is making my cheeks feel as if they were scorched, and causing my eyes to smart and ache and droop in sheer shame at their owner's unprepossessing appearance.

" Tim doesn't waste much time in sacrificing to the Graces," papa says, languidly removing his cigar from his lips.

Papa, be it known at starting, is most thoroughly satisfied with each one of his daughters. Claire amuses him, for she talks well and spiritedly, and treats him more as she would an indulgent elder brother than a father. Moreover, he is proud of her great beauty, and of her strong resemblance to himself. The twins would pall upon him speedily if they were left with him alone ; but they seem to belong more to Aunt Helen than to us, and make a practice of avoiding papa's favourite household haunts whenever they think that the onus of entertaining him may devolve upon them alone. As for me, I am useful to him. I write his business letters, I make extracts which he needs from books of reference, I copy his MSS. in a clear hand which never puzzles his printers, and lastly, I read his books with a delight which the others neither feel nor feign.

He has address id his remark as to my not wasting much time in sacrificing to the Graces to Mr. Theo Bligh, and now, at the expiration of a few seconds, he puts his newspaper down to see why the person to whom he has deigned to make a remark does not answer it. And Theo Bligh is not there : Claire has taken the place he had occupied on the knoll at the foot of the big copper beech, and the twins have dropped their tatting into their laps, and are looking rather sulkily at the hall door.

" Didn't know the young fellow was gone," papa says indifferently, and Claire answers quietly —

" He has gone to get a rug for Tim, papa."

I am not much in the habit of receiving even trivial attentions from mankind. That this is the case is clearly evidenced by the manner of my family as soon as Claire speaks.

" I think Tim might have fetched a rug for herself," Aunt Helen says from the fat depths of her chair; and the twins murmr —

" Oh, Tim, how could you trouble Mr. Bligh ; it would have been nothing for you to run and fetch it for yourself."

Once again papa drops his newspaper, but this time it is to favour his daughters with a comprehensive and quietly investigating stare. But before he can speak, Claire has lashed out in a fury.

" You have been trained to forget that Tim is a lady ; but I wonder, considering whose nephew he is, that you

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haven't been taught to believe that Mr. Bligh is a gentleman," she cries ; and as I, melted to tears by my beautiful sister's championship, crouch down lower in a vain attempt to conceal myself, papa says —

" He won't be the only man who will be ready to fetch and carry in little Tim's service, my dears ; you had better make up your considerate young minds not to be too 'much concerned about the trouble she may give them," and just as he ends his speech Theo Bligh comes back to us with Aunt Helen's special, highly prized fur rug in his arms.

He flings it down as if it had been anybody's rug, he calls me to take possession of its sacred centre, and stretches himself at full length on its border before any one can arrest his movements. I, being innocent of any active part in the great offence, am looking forward to the row that will assuredly follow, with delight — delight which is quickly extinguished when Aunt Helen does speak.

" Claire, my child," she says, and her voice has never sounded so fat and odious before — "sit on the rug that Theo has so kindly fetched for you. — Mr. Vincent, have you forgotten that Tim has at least twenty pages to copy before post-time? she idled away the whole of the morning, and I am afraid will suffer for it now."

I spring to my feet in spite of my father's " Never mind it to-day, child ; " I turn and hasten across the lawn with an indignant fluttering feeling at my heart, with depressed head, and stumbling footsteps. "Oh, Aunt Helen, Aunt Helen ! What have I done to rouse your sluggish animus against me, so that you cut short my most dubious enjoyment in this way ? It was sunny out there, and the birds were singing, and Claire was there, and a stranger who was kind. Even if I am ugly and unattractive, I am young, and I want the sunshine and kindness just as much as the others do."

My fretful, impatient soliloquy has reached this point, my trembling hands have just arranged the papers which are to be copied, when Claire comes dancing in and sweeps everything away.

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" Tim," she says passionately, as I resignedly proceed to pick them up again, "you're not to touch pen and ink to-day. I come armed with authority; papa sent me after you "

" Of his own free will ? " I question eagerly ; and Claire hesitates a little as she answers —

" Well, he told you you needn't do it — now, didn't he ? — and he seemed quite glad when Theo Bligh said he should come and help you in your task, for Aunt Helen instantly suggested that you should be let off for to-day."

" Claire," I say solemnly, pausing in my occupation of putting papa's copy in order for him the following morning, " why is all this ? Am I so very ungainly that she fears I shall shock him with the whole family ? "

" It isn't that," she says thoughtfully; " I think sometimes, Tim, that you, more than any of us, come between papa and Aunt Helen, and she knows it."

" She isn't our real aunt," I say in extenuation of my unconscious interposition.

" No," Claire says drily ; " if she were, very likely she wo ildn't mind about your little growing power so much. As it is "

She pauses, and I ask —

" As it is, what ? "

" She is only papa's cousin's widow " — Claire laughs — "and there is no law, human or divine, to prevent her marrying him. How we have hated the name of Bligh all our lives, haven't we, Tim?"

"Ye-es," I say slowly, unwillingly almost, for I remember how one of that name has fetched a rug for me this very day, and shown me the first manly kindness and attention of which I have ever been the recipient.

Claire goes on without noticing my tone.

" And now we have another Bligh brought down upon us, as if one of the family were not enough. We won't get intimate with him, Tim, however long he stays, and Aunt Helen is planning festivities in his honour weeks ahead — we'll leave him to the twins, won't we ? "

" Yes ; we'll leave him to the twins," I echo heartily.

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" But we won't let papa get infatuated with him too, Claire : one Bligh in the establishment is quite enough. Papa's mind shall be kept pure and undefiled on the subject of this interloper."

We have sauntered out of papa's study by this time, and are crossing the lawn, away from the group who still occupy the seats under the copper beech, and in the direction of a slip of wilderness which borders the garden and runs down to the glorious pasture lands from the rental of which a goodly portion of my father's income comes. A turnstile admits us into the wild little wood, which is thickly carpeted with wild flowers and strawberries. Regardless of Aunt Helen's unpleasant prophecies as to unsightly eruptions being the result of sitting on the crisp, dry grass in the dry, fresh air, Claire and I both cast ourselves down on the ground, and pick and eat the dainty little fruit at our idle leisure. I am soothed by her presence, by the murmuring breeze, by the hum of insects, into forgetfulness of the mortification and burden and heat of the morning ; and presently, with my head resting on Claire's lap, I fall fast asleep.

Mine is no dreamless sleep. In a vision I see Claire and myself travelling along a bright, happy road, enjoying everything together, helping each other to gather fruits and flowers, when suddenly the road narrows, darkens, and at the end of it we see a figure standing with outstretched arms. Am I to go into them, or is she ? Do we either of us wish to go into them ? All is confusion : after the beautiful manner of dreams, I cannot grasp a single fact or feeling. It gets darker ; we grope about ; and in the dim light, though I cannot see, I feel that Caire and I are separated, and I wake with a cry of sorrow and of pain.

My head is on my sister's lap still ; her pretty white fingers are turning about the long locks of my hair, which have fallen loose over my shoulders ; her sweet, light, flexib'e voice is ringing in my ears.

"Tim could make any one she liked worship her, but she hates Aunt Helen," I hear her say, and I rai e my head and find that she is saying it to Mr. Theo High.

I am so relieved that it is all a dream about Claire and I being separated, that I sit up, fling myself into the conversation with fervour, and make the best of myself according to my lights. Now that I am freed from the observation of Aunt Helen and the twins, I am no longer crushed by the consciousness of the shortcomings of my unattractive person. Sleep has refreshed me, the sense of scorch has passed off my face, and it is pleasant to hold intercourse with one who brings fresh ideas and experiences into our circle sometimes. Before I know well what I am doing, I have taken this stranger into my confidence sufficiently to discuss the plot of papa's forthcoming novel with him. Before I remember that Claire and I have agreed to leave him entirely to the twins, I find myself thinking that I hope he won't let Aunt Helen set him against me. Before we go in to dinner on this first day of his arrival, I have almost forgotten that he is one of the obnoxious Blighs.

CHAPTER II. our compact!

T is rery pleasant having Theo here, although he is Aunt Helen's nephew. But he knows so little about the Blighs that he hardly appears like one of them. He is the only son of Aunt Helen's youngest brother — the " scamp of the family " she says he was, but she must have been fond of him, for I really believe her torpid blood warms with love at the sight of this Theo. As for Theo himself, he never saw either his father or mother. Aunt Helen took care of him until she married papa's cousin Arthur, for his parents both died when he was a baby.

He has been here a week now, and both Claire and I pity him greatly. Other people might think he was not at all a fit and proper object for pity, but Claire and I know better than other people : we know that nothing will ever do away in our eyes with the painful fact of his being Aunt Helen's nephew. We can't forgive that, and it is sad for him.

Fourteen years ago, when Aunt Helen first came to live with us, I was a little puny thing of four. But, puny as I was, I was papa's pet in those days, and she never liked me. She was a very, very handsome young woman then, and, baby as I was, I knew that she had two manners. One manner was for our friends and acquaintances, when she used to purr to them abou* the sacrifices

B she made in order to carry out our dead mother's injunction, that she, Helen Vincent, and she only, should look after us poor little motherless ones. The other manner was shown to papa, and bore no manner of reference to our dead mother ; and this manner Claire and I had detected (though we could not define it) from our earliest youth, and so we have never loved Aunt Helen.

Once when I was a restless child of ten, I prowled at an untimely hour, when I ought to have been in bed, into papa's study. He was sitting at his writing table, his arms were folded on the table and his head bent down on them, and by his side Aunt Helen knelt, crying bitterly. I don't know what possessed me, but I rushed across the room, and flung my arms round papa's neck and howled out — " She shan't, she shan't ! " and he rose up quiet in a moment, and smiled at me and said —

" Little Tim, tell me exactly how long you have been listening, and what you have heard ? " and I told him, truthfully enough, that I had heard nothing but Her sobs.

Then she got up from her knees and said all she had proposed was for our good, and he held his hand out to her and asked her to pardon him, and I asked if she had wanted him to send me to school ; and she said, " Yes, yes ; that was all." And so the scene ended, but she has hated me ever since.

I have been thinking about this half-forgotten sensational mystery of my early life a good deal this morning, for Theo J31igh's presence here seems to throw a new light upon Aunt Helen. How well she loves him evidently, and how strange it is that, loving him as she does, she should have spoken so little about him to us, and never have told us he was coming. She has not even taken the twins into her confidence. Is it possible that his advent was as great a surprise to her as it was to us?

I am sitting in papa's study copying for him this morning, but my thoughts go wandering here and there — back to that scene which I interrupted here so long ago,

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on to picnics and other parties which are coming in the immediate future. Even as I am thinking of him rather tolerantly as the cause of these pleasant effects, he comes into the room.

" Oh, you mustn't come here ! " I exclaim hurriedly, for papa's study is not open to invasion ; and he irritates me by answering —

"Aunt Helen gave me leave."

I forget his relationship to her, I forget common politeness, I forget that excellent axiom as to the inadvisability of crying family jars aloud, and I blurt out —

"She has no more business here than you have — she can't give you leave."

" You little tempest," he says coolly, coming up and lounging close to me on the end of the table, " don't flame and rage in that way about nothing. I only want you to tell me just as you would tell Claire why it is you hate Aunt Helen ? "