Full swing

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Dedication

TO

H. M. M.

WHOSE EXCEPTIONAL FACE AND FIGURE I HATE SOMETIMES BORROWED TO DECK A HERO OB ADORN A VIIXAIN, BUT WHOSE FINE IXJTAI/TT AND GENIUS FOR FRIENDSHIP I HAVE ALWAYS ENJOYED WITHOUT ATTEMPTING TO CHRONICLE

Chapter I

Agatha Wanstead -was barely ten years old when the great orchid, secured from the Brazils after infinite tribulation and almost imimaginable expenses, arrived at Maxley. She saw the long-expected treasure unswathed from its packings, wondering at her father's excitement. Big, bulbous and unbeautiful, it showed no promise of ^orescence, appearing dry, unwieldy and ill-shapen.

" At last ! At last ! " cried her father exultingly. " This will astonish them! The Odontoglossum Godeste at last! Absolutely the first to arrive in England ! We shall have it in flower for the Horticultural Show."

Sanders came with it, the young Scotch gardener who was for the future to have charge of all the orchids, to reign, with such supremacy as Squire Wanstead should permit, over the quarter of an acre of glass that furnished prizewinners for all the flower-shows in England. A space in one of the houses had been reserved for the new-comer, and there through the autumn and winter it hung quiescent in its new home.

The attention of the whole household, indoors and out, was concentrated upon the plant, and when spring came Agatha heard Sanders tell her father that it was putting forth signs of growth, that it was " plumping up." But his reports varied and anxiety deepened. Already April had come, when the child, motherless, a little lonely and neglected, but never without knowledge of the high position into which she was born and the desire to be worthy of it, began to doubt whether the plant was properly treated. She heard her father talking about it constantly, questioning this or that. Surely what applied to growing children applied to growing plants. Fresh air was the one thing upon which the new doctor who had just settled in Great Marley insisted. His advice had heen taken. She was no longer cooped up in the school-room for lessons, but all day long was in the garden or the woods. Already she was better, knew she too was " plumping up," and felt the spring in her veins.

Poor plant ! She thought of it by night and by day, of how it was hanging up in the steaming house, stifling, unable to breathe. She herself could hardly breathe in that hot, moist air. How wonderful to be able to help it, to help her father to a great joy in its growth, to help Sanders ! Thus thinking, she at last put thought into action, waking up in the middle of the night, conscience-stricken at her own supineness in the matter. The bed was warm and comfortable, and for a few minutes she lay and wondered whether the morning would not be time enough for action. But it was not her disposition then, or ever, to do the easy thing. She got out of the warm bed hurriedly, dressed as well as she was able in the limited illumination of the night-light, ran downstairs, and fumbled open the locks of the big front door. Then she went swiftly down the steps and across the grass to the hot-house. That, too, was locked, but she knew where the key was kept. She found and fitted it, opened the door; the hot, steamy air rushed out convincingly, and the stifled plant had fresh air at last.

She slept well when she got back to her own room. Less well the next night, when the heinousness of her conduct was brought home to her. All the orchids in the hot-house were dead or dying, the new Odontoglossum amongst them. She slept less well, not that she was conscious of, or admitted, guilt, not because she was scolded or punished, but because she was perplexed that one could do good and evil could come of it, because already she felt dimly that the right path might not always be easy to find.

Agatha's conscience was ever her torment and her undoing. At fifteen years she was almost overpowered by the sense of her responsibilities ; awed by the knowledge that she was Miss Wanstead of Marley, the last descendant of the ancieat hoTisa She tried to talk to her father about it, but he responded lightly. She was already uneasy that her father took his business as a magistrate and a great landowner too carelessly, that he devoted too nauch of his time to horticulture, and especially to orchids. When he became fully aware of her solicitude for him, he sent her to boarding school, , where she was homesick and miserable, realising that her own blundering had brought about her banishment, but not more reconciled to it on that account.

True, his hot-houses, warm-houses, cool-houses, his Dendrobiums and Odontoglossums, Vandas and Cattleyas were more important to Squire Wanstead than Marley or his young daughter. He was the first of the orchidaeeans. What began as a pastime ended as a passion. Far and near he sought for rare specimens. His experiments in hybridisation were the talk of the horticultural world as early as 1863. He had neither time nor inclination to discuss ethics with his young daughter, it was easier to rid himself of her.

One experiment he made of a culture less exiguous. In his sixtieth year, Agatha still at school, he became besotted over a pale English rose, importing it hastily to the terraced garden of the Court, where, like so many of his other importations, it failed to flourish. He and his daughter were alike impulsive, and came into sad conflict over this ill-considered action.

When Agatha returned from school, full of desire to be a companion and help to her father, to take her place as lady of the manor and be a benefactress to all Marley, she found herself confronted by a young stepmother about to bear a Marley heir, and by a father comparatively indifferent to the greatness of his position and completely oblivious of hers. Little Marley interested him very little, and Great Marley not at all.

The young stepmother wanted smart clothes and jewellery, a house in town, new carriages and liveries, more horses. Squire Wanstead's hobby was an expensive one. And at Little Marley cottages were in need of repair, the sanitation was considerably worse than primitive; there was no district

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irse or cottage hospital. Agatha's sense of duly bumed

>t within her; she was young and spoke in season and out

season, "liiey are our people, Marley people; they look

us for help, and we are doing nothing for them. . . ."

'TTou are a bore, Agatha; nothing but a bore," was her ther's final and irritated answer. " Damn the cottages and ittle Marley. Great Marley, too, if you like. Can't you ave things alone?"

"The rain comes through the roofs, the woodwork is 1 rotten; they ought to be rebuilt. No money should be )ent u»til that is done," she persisted.

" I believe she grudges me the very food I eat, the clothes wear," complained her stepmother.

" I grudge you nothing."

Agatha saw right and wrong in unshaded lines of black id white. She was conscientious and utterly honest, without aile.

"But we are not doing our duty, not doing the right ling by our people."

The doctor from Great Marley had convinced her that )mething should be done, and she spoiled the dinner, as she ad spoiled the luncheon, by talking of drains and diphtheria, ater and germs.

" Such talk is so bad for me," pouted young Mrs. /"anstead.

" Can't you see you are upsetting her ? " said the squire Qgrily.

"Dr. Eeid says I am not to be agitated," echoed the Epectant mother, plaintively.

Agatha took life seriously, and wanted to do her duty 1 a properly feudal manner. There was hardly a truce in 18 arguments that ensued between her and her futile, exravagant stepmother, between her and her irritated father. [er desire for justice and sense of responsibility were streaked ith periods of doubt, fears lest she lacked filial piety, ithough she could not help criticising her father, she had a eep-seated respect for him as the head of the house. She ■oidd have cared for him but that her heart had not begun

FUUi SWING 11

to grow; it was so overladen with eonscientiousness. Yet there was undoubtedly a substratum of tenderness in it, and when her feeble stepmother was ill and nervous, she made tentative, a little awkward, and somewhat pathetic, efforts toward reconciliation.

The moment was inopportune for the expected event. The threatened diphtheria at Marley made its appearance in the form of one mild case of endemic typhoid. But instead of new drainage, there was a hasty exodus to London. That it was the season for Messrs. Protheroe and Morris's auction sales of orchids may have influenced Squire Wanstead, but he never admitted this, nor that the season's gaieties, too much dissipation, and many imprudences were responsible for the disastrous result. The baby girl was bom into a motherless world. There was no male heir to unentailed Marley, there was only a little stepsister whose birth cost her mother's life and left Squire Wanstead, his mind staggering a little under the blow, more unreasonable than before, and with a perpetual grievance, a grievance that he nurtured xmtil the end. He was convinced that Agatha had driven them from Marley, and was responsible for her stepmother's death.

Squire Wanstead was never the same man after his second wife died in childbirth. He became querulous and always more exacting and unreasonable, accepting many sacrifices from his elder daughter, but never forgiving her ; dying with a dim idea that it was her fault, too, that the Odontoglossum Cceleste showed leaves but never a spike.

Agatha suffered his reproaches, believing sometimes that they were deserved. For, incidentally, it has to be admitted that no infection spread, the sporadic case of typhoid having no successor. The form her remorse took was the care she gave to the bereaved baby. Her troublesome conscience made it inevitable.

Suitors came to Marley after her father's death. She had as much of good looks as was compatible with complete indifference to them, owing nothing to dress or cosmetics. Her skin was clear and her eyes bright; she was accounted some-

[ling of £ua heiress. Sir Jolm Campden came from Denham rith the lure of adjoining land; Lord Deerhaven, from imherst, with a pedigree as distinguished as her own, and, iirprisingly, Andrew McKay, the family lawyer, familiar to er and valued, but not associated in her miad with courtship.

But she would have none of them, more serious things hian courtship absorbed her. At three-and-twenty she was listress of Marley, her little stepsister Monica, and the welaxe of all the tenantry.

There had been a gathering of orchidaceans at her father's aneral and handsome tributes in the Press, and she deterlined to sustain the reputation of the Marley Court hotouses and her father's culture. She was full of good resoitions, and if she magnified her own importance in the :heme of creation, she was nevertheless, and secretly, somewhat diffident of her capacity to fulfil her obligations. Her ither's attitude toward her had cut away some of her selfsteem and implanted a deep-rooted shyness. Marley, of ourse, was the capital of the universe. She saw Little Marley edrained, schools built, public-houses banished and clubs iibstituted. What she never saw at all was Andrew McKay )oking at her with appreciative eyes.

Three generations of McKays had kept the dusty archives f Marley. Andrew knew everything that was to be known bout the history of the family, could advise about leases and Drfeitures and the powers of local government boards. He ould talk, too, about orchids, and had, indeed, a taste for orticulture.

He came to her a month aiter her father's funeral, a strong, eHable man, with a slight Scotch accent and a Scotch intenity of purpose, a few years older than herself, and with no lea that she looked upon him as anything but her equal. And rhy not? The small landed gentry, and it was amongst these bat the heiress of Marley was placed, held no undue impora,nce in his mind. He had ample means, a fine county busiess, and a high reputation. It was time he took a wife, and Lgatha was the wife he wanted.

For a month he had been coming and going, making his

FTJLL SWING 13

meaning clear. So he thought. But Agatha had seen only in his attentions the little business matters that he had used as excuses; the proving of her father's will and satisfaction of the claims of the Inland Eevenue, the transfer of farms and resettlement of tenures. She was always glad when he came. He was sympathetic with all her views, clear-minded, sound on sanitation and the better housing of the agricultural labourer. Unlike her father and the majority of her acquaintances, he did not say it was no concern of hers, nor show by disapproval that he thought her interest in such things imwomanly.

But, nevertheless, on the day when he pushed the papers on one side, and abruptly, without any preamble, asked her if she would marry him, she was dumbfoimded. At first she thought she could have been no more astonished if Sanders himself had asked her. But she quickly recognised the absurdity of the parallel. When she remembered that Andrew McKay was her equal in everything but blood she grew hot, for she was not really a snob, only somewhat overburdened by her lineage.

She answered hastily that it was impossible, then, quite seriously, that she never intended to marry. Her flush emboldened him.

"It will take me years to put the estate in order," she said breathlessly, and to gain time.

" I could help you."

" I don't want any help."

He pressed his suit, and she took refuge in phrases that even to her own ears began to soxmd empty and meaniagless. Although she was seeing him in a new aspect, she could not deny that she had always liked him, and sometimes listened to him. Sir John' Campden was red-haired, with white eyelashes, and coarse, freckled hands. It had cost her nothing to refuse him, although their lands lay in a ring fence. Lord Deerhaven was a delicate decadent, talking culture, but needing money to patch up his broken fortunes. She had sent him away without a qualm. Neither of them had spoken as

I FULL SWING

ndrew McKay was speaking now, nor looked at her in the \,me way.

He got up from the table and came over to her.

" I thought you knew I cared for you."

"I told your father of my wish before he died, and he as quite content."

"My father!"

" That surprises you. I don't know why."

" Only because — ^because " But she could not tell him

by. He would have taken her hand, but she put it behind her.

"I ... I don't like that sort of thing," she said, he blood was hot in her cheeks.

"What sort of thing?"

"Love making."

He was sorry for her flush and awkwardness; thinking virginal, not unseemly, part of her unique charm.

"Then I won't make love to you." He added quietly. Not yet." At which she reddened more and thought it as from indignation. "I have to persuade you first to arry me. Will you talk it out with me? "

It was difficult for her to refuse when he stood so close I her, clear-eyed and strong, rugged yet purposeful, quite 3W in this aspect.

"You can say what you like;" and then added quickly: but my mind is quite made up."

" Against matrimony, or against me ? " he asked.

"Matrimony — ^you — ^both." She found it diffieidt to icover her self-possession.

"Because of your responsibilities and duties here?"

"Yes, partly. And Monica." She was hard pressed for [cuses ; she had not guessed she liked him so well.

"A husband and children are the best responsibilities for woman."

" I don't think so ; not for a woman in my position. The ea is old-fashioned." She was standing up, speaking a ttle more quickly than was usual with her.

"Perhaps it is old-fashioned to want you for my wife. But I do."

What was in her eyes and voice made her fearful of herself.

" If you will take me for a husband you will take a man who cares for you more than he can tell."

" I don't want a husband/' she answered abruptly, reddening again, as any girl who was not a Miss Wanstead of Marley might have done.

"You don't know what you want. How should you?" he said tenderly. His arms would have gone about her, but she was holding herself too upright. " Let me teach you. I understand you better than anyone else has ever understood you, or ever wiU; the hard surface and difficult softness beneath ; how dogmatic you are, and yet impulsive ; how easily moved and quickly ashamed of it."

"I hate being analysed. I am not at all easily moved."

But he could see her uneasiness, and was encouraged by it.

" You will not admit it, but you are moved now. Perhaps you like me better than you know." He went closer to her.

But he was employing the wrong methods. Agatha was not really like other girls and women. She had a sense rudimentary or lacking, stumbling through life, therefore, as a lame man walks. She resented Andrew McKay's advance. Finding herself breathless, as if she had been ruimiag, she was angry with him, with herself, and with the circumetances; she was sure it was only anger she felt.

"You can't mean to send me away, to say 'no' to me. There is nothing you want to do in which I could not be of use to you. No woman is fit to stand alone, you least of all."

Her instinctive sex-antagonism took quick refuge in exclamation, denial.

" I ! Z am not fit to stand alone ! I want no help from anyone."

"It is not true, dear, it is not true."

And when he called her " dear " her heart shook, although outwardly she was still rigid and unconvinced. He went on, although perhaps with less confidence, for he had hoped bj now to find her in his arms.

" For all you are so strong, you are weak ; your heart is soft under that surface hardness. Your father imposed upon you; the baby does so already; other people will. You don't know yourself."

" Nobody can impose upon me ; it is not true."

"You need someone to care for you, to see you make no bad mistakes, help your folly to wisdom, your dear conscientious follies. I love you." He may not have been a good wooer, but he was an earnest one.

When Andrew McKay said he loved her, notwithstanding her missing sense, right in the soft core of that small, hard heart of hers Agatha was conscious of a vibration, something that in an ordinary girl might have brought them together. But the vibration inspired Agatha with fear, and she defended herself from him hurriedly, impetuously, and so well that he retreated from her, chilled, disappointed.

"You will think differently some day," was the last thing he said. " I can wait."

Having brought him to this she may have repented, but she succeeded so well in disguising it, resuming their business talk as if nothing had interrupted it, that he became reluctantly convinced she meant what she said, that she would not marry, that under the clear skin and bright eyes she was not a woman at all, but only a syllogist. He asked her the same question again, nevertheless, on several occasions. But, true to her want of temperament, the more she inclined to him the greater seemed the necessity of retreat. And in the end, his heart not caught in the rebound, but feeliug the necessity of a home, he found a more amenable, if less rare, woman, proposed to her, and was gladly accepted.

Andrew McKay married. And that was the end of Agatha's girlhood. He had come to mean so much more to her than either of them knew or guessed. She had said "no," and "no" again to him, but never thought of him marrying elsewhere. Perhaps he realised it when he made the announcement and saw the sudden pallor of her cheeks. But he may well have thought, even then, that he had been mistaken. For she congratulated him with apparent sincerity, and said, with all her young dignity vibrant, that she hoped his marriage ■would make no difference in their business relationships.

"I have come to rely upon you," she went on, and smiled condescendingly, or, at least, he read that small forced smile as condescending.

He replied soberly that he was glad of it.

"You will not abandon Marley — or me?" she added, more naturally.

" Marley and you will always be my first interest."

It was true. Andrew McKay married, making his wife a good and affectionate husband. But Agatha Wanstead was his first and only love. No one ever saw her with the same eyes as he did. After his marriage, and notwithstanding his loyalty to his wife, they grew in intimacy and understanding. He was lawyer to the estate, and spent much time in repairing her mistakes.

Chapter II

Theeb axe Great Marley, and Little Marley, and Marl'ey of the Woods. In the first, strikingly incongmons with the new shops and houses, the bank and the brewery, the red brick town hall and adjacent police station, there stands, together with an ivy-grown parsonage of questionable date, the famous old church that attracts tourists and sightseers from all parts of the world. The church, with its frescoes and stained-glass windows, its monuments and brasses, the chancel dated 1519, the screen and christening font, was "restored" in the year 1794. Time has hallowed these restorations. A monument by NoUekens to the memory of " Hannah Wanstead and her nine children," and a medallion by Plaxman, compete now in interest with the sixteenth century brasses.

From the old church, leaving the new town behind, is the beautiful walk to little Marley, through the natural avenue of wych elms, their huge trunks spreading from a single stem, umbrageous and cool in the summer, weird and wonderful in the winter. Little Marley is hardly more than a hamlet, a single street of thatched, half-timbered cottages^ with a stream running along one side of it, a stream that eventually winds its way back to the Thames.

Beyond the gorse-clad hills lies Marley Chase, three separate woods, where high amid the encompassing pines the old house shows, E-shaped and grey, as when James I. was king.

Here, as piously as modem conditions allow, Agatha Wanstead prepared to sustain the feudal traditions for the sake of which she had rejected Andrew McKay.

In Great Marley she had some small property, besides the family brasses in the old church. Little Marley and " Marley of the Woods " were her own, together with a few outlying farms and the Chase.

In the management of this estate during the years that followed her rejection of Andrew she made every mistake that is possible to feminine ignorance and inexperience. She bunt elaborate model cottages that no workman ;w^ould occupy, established a system of drainage at Little Marley for which there was no outlet, was sympathetic and indulgent to bad tenants, and bent on forcing the good ones to new and costly agricultural experiments. She was at first unpopular with her neighbours, but when they understood the motives that actuated her, the most intelligent amongst them forgave her methods. She made good and even enthusiastic friends. Colonel and Mrs. Metherby, for instance, who lamented her independence; the vicar and his wife, who realised her generosity; Sir John Campden's wife, who was perhaps grateful to her for having refused him, and I>r. Eeid.

Outwardly, at least, as the years progressed she appeared satisfied with the conditions under which she lived. There was nothing too great or too small for her restless energies. To all the household of the Court, outside and inside, she was an exacting but considerate mistress. In Little Marley she was Lady Paramount, dispensing beef tea, blankets, bibles, advice. She told herself often that she had been right in refusing to marry, that she needed no husband; her life was full. And she learned her work, repairing her mistakes when they were brought home to her, always self-conscious but never self-satisfied.

With the land it was comparatively easy, although expensive. Sanders was a canny Scotsman. When he thought she might be right he followed her instructions ; at other times he followed his own. The orchids, therefore, continued to flourish after Squire Wanstead's death, winning prizes stiU in London and at all the local shows. Agatha pursued her father's hobby at first from a sense of duty, but presently she fell under the fascination of the exotic blooms. That was the most dangerous time, but Sanders won through, making only permissible experiments.

She learned to manage Marley and the orchids, but Monica, her little wayward stepsister Monica, who was her only relative and greatest responsibility, she never learned to manage.

Agatha, -vehen she was little more than thirty, dressed as if she were fifty, and had few apparent feminine weaknesses or tendernesses. Yet, for all her certainty that the Wanstead tradition and reinstatement of the ancient glories of Marley were enough to fill any yonng woman's life. Nature taught her differently.

Monica, for instance, found a dozen chinks in her armour, and was always creeping through.

The real truth was that this shy and enigmatic young woman, who had thrown away her chances of happiness through reserve and supersensitiveness, pride and indefinite feminine unreasonableness, felt her heart growing when the time for other growth had passed. Conscience and conscientiousness were there, water-logging and clogging it. But there was also this inconsistent weakness.

Before Andrew's marriage the child and her duty towards her had been one of the excuses she made to herself for having rejected him. And after Andrew's marriage she came to believe it true. Monica was coaxing, a little sly, not straightforward and truthful like herself. She was often troubled by her, but her love grew as she felt the child's need. Nurse and the household watched and said, "Miss Monica has the length of her sister's foot — can wheedle her." But Agatha felt in the wheedling and little crooked ways a continual appeal.

The child was idle and averse to lessons; when she was nine years old she could neither read nor write.

"I wonder you are not ashamed," Agatha said to her, when the governess came to her in despair, complaining of persistent idleness.

" I am ashamed, sister."

Monica came nearer, caught hold of her hand. "Don't be angry with me. I only want to be with you."

" Will you try and learn if I give you your lessons ? "

" I am sure I could learn if you taught me."

And they began the very next day. This was in the seventies, and the higher education of women only in its infancy. The first thing Agatha tried to teach her little sister was to count.

"You will have to help me with the accounts of the estate when you grow up."

" I shall like that."

" Well, we will begin with the tables. Eepeat the figures after me. Twice one are two."

Monica repeated them obediently, and up to twice five are ten.

Agatha was proud of her success, praising her.

" You will soon be quite a scholar. Twice six ? "

" May I sit on your lap? "

" Not now. This is lesson time."

"If it was my own mother teaching me, she would let me rest on her lap," Monica said plaintively.

" Not in lesson time," Agatha repeated.

" My head aches so."

" It would ache no less if you were sitting on my lap."

" I believe it would. I love sitting on your lap."

" Not now."

"When I had the measles you took me on your lap."

" When you have the measles I will again. Go on. Twice six are twelve."

Monica began to cry.

" I wish I had a mother all my own, like other little girls. Janey Jleid's mother nurses her all day."

The tables went on. So did the tears. And when twice six had been acquired it appeared that twice two had been forgotten. Agatha, so conscientious and strict when superintending the village school, could not bear to hear this child cry. Monica knew it; also that her stepsister winced when she spoke of other little girls with mothers of their own. Agatha was never without the remorseful remembrance that her father thought it was she who was responsible for her little sister being without a mother. She wavered and said :

" If you really think you would do better "

Monica climbed quickly to her knee. A woman as any other, although reluctant to her womanhood, Agatha liked the little form upon her knee and the curly, satisfied head against her hreast.

" You really are a very naughty girl."

" But you'll always love me, whatever I do ? "

"Nobody can love an ignoramus."

Monica's tears broke out again.

" What are you crying for now ? " But her arms tightened involuntarily.