The world and Winstow

Front matter

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Chapter I

“ It is too difficult, it really is ! ” and despair rang in the childish voice as she threw down her dictionary and grammar.

“Do not make such a noise, Ursula; it disturbs me,” replied her father reprovingly.

“Oh, I wish I was clever,” sighed the child, “ so that things might be easier. I don’t believe any of the girls take as long over their lessons as I do. And yet they learn them quite as well, though I don’t believe they want to half as much.”

She rested her tired little face on one of her hands, and her eyes wandered to the picture of the garden as it glowed with sunset colour through the open window. How fresh and bright it seemed out there, and how Ursula longed to be drinking in the sweet air that the evening wind was bringing down from the moors ! School hours almost filled the day, and left little vigour for out-of-door life, and yet the child was always longing for it. She was so weak and delicate, and the world was such a busy place for the motherless little girl, who had the responsibility of the house, as well as of the head of it, on her tiny shoulders. And so playtime was almost forgotten by the time that Ursula was eleven. An eager spirit dwelt in the frail body, and a burning ambition to succeed in all the departments of life to which she was called. To please her father, and have things nice at home ; to do her lessons well, and rise in her class at school ; above all, to win the grudging approbation of a certain schoolboy friend, — these were Ursula’s great ideals, and for these she struggled to spend more strength than in fact she possessed.

The dreamy look faded from her eyes, and she came back to her books with a start.

“I must do it,” she said to herself, and her little mouth tightened with firmness, “or else Beatrice Holt will get above me to-morrow, and I shall lose marks for the prize.” And the small close-cropped head was bent once more determinedly over the dictionary, by the help of which Ursula was trying to construe the piece

AS CHILDKEN of Cassar that was designed for the morrow’s lesson.

Ursula Grey and her father lived in a small house on the outskirts of a quaint old country town, which nestled by the side of a river, just where its course is nearly run, and the Channel rushes up to welcome it home to the sea. The hurried murmur of its waters can be heard up on the moors, down from which the woodlands slope, till the hush of the swelling tide proclaims a silence far away up inland amid the stillness of unbroken meadow country. Big hills clasp hands to keep the town well-nigh encircled by their protecting presence, and forests of trees and tangled undergrowth clothe their steep sides. In spring the freshness of the young larches paints the whole countryside with the feathery beauty of their living green, and in the autumn the rich russet of the landscape claims the greater beauty of colour for its own. A very old-world town was Winstow, with winding streets and small dark shops opening into sunny gardens at their rear. It could not boast of any improvements — no enterprising Corporation, no tramways, or water works, or electric light. Its pride rather lay in the things of its past — in the ruined castle, that held old stories of the feasting of

THE WORLD AKD WINSTOW nobles and the visits of kings ; in the splendid Abbey, a few miles up the river, which through many centuries has stood as a witness of the devoted skill of long-forgotten workers, and in spite of crumbling walls and broken roof and grass-grown pavements yet by its wondrous dignity and beauty proclaims itself to be the Temple of the Lord. There was no art gallery in Winstow, but from every street corner could be seen a view so fair and far-reaching that the most careless passer-by would pause and look, and thereby learn perhaps more than a painted picture could possibly teach. The Grammar School, dating from very early times, stood at the summit of the main street, and within its old grey walls the sons of many former generations had learned their classics and their manhood without the interruption of any modern side. At the foot of the same street a grey house frowned on the outside world, and cast a stern glance from its uncurtained windows on the follies and faults of the “young ladies” for whom it announced itself to be the “Seminary.” And here it was that Ursula Grey, together with all the other girls of the town, went to school.

Mr. Grey’s profession was the law, and his recreation an invalid’s role. His pastime had been the study of medical books, from which he demonstrated that he was already the victim of several mortal diseases, but as they failed to prove his mortality he became more and more aggrieved, blaming mankind in general, and providence in particular, for the inefficiency of the said diseases to perform the task he had allotted to them. Ursula was his only child, and he hoped to train her to become his nurse. Always far from strong herself, she was quick to sympathise with the suffering her father continually talked of, and anxious to bring the difficult gleams of enjoyment into his life. She had a faint memory of times when her mother was with them, and her father used to laugh and even play, and then there came a blurred recollection of a day when people all cried, though she was made quite happy with as many apples to eat as she wanted, a piece of good fortune which had never happened to her before. And after that her mother did not come back, and she went to Miss Paterson’s day school, and life began in earnest.

“I am going out for a little walk,” said her father suddenly ; “ I think it will do me good.”

“ I wish I could come too,” replied the child wistfully.

“ What ! And neglect your lessons ! I am surprised at you, Ursula ! And besides, are you not working for a prize ? ”

“ Oh, yes, father ! I want that prize more than anything else in the world. I do hope I shall get it.”

“Perseverance is everything, my dear,” answered Mr. Grey. “ Good-night, in case you are in bed by the time of my return. I feel more able to take a walk now than earlier in the day when the sun was so hot.”

It was a very pale and pinched little face that Ursula lifted to be kissed, but her big grey eyes glowed with enthusiasm at the thought of the possible prize, and her lips smiled slightly.

“ Good-night, daddy ! Take care of yourself.”

He had not been gone for more than a quarter of an hour before a noisy step was heard in the hall.

“ Where are you, Ursula ? ” called a cheerful voice. “ I saw your father on the way.”

“ Oh, Merton ! ” cried the little girl delightedly, “ is it really you ? I am so glad you have come.”

“What are you doing?” continued the boy, glancing towards the books. “You don’t mean to say your lessons aren’t done yet ? It is nearly eight o’clock ! ”

“ I know. But, Merton, this is so difficult. I can’t make it out.”

“Well, you are a silly ! ” he replied candidly. “ And an easy little paragraph like that ! Look here, Ursula : this is your nominative, and there is the verb, and that is an accusative and infinitive, you know. For goodness’ sake don’t begin bothering looking out words. I know them all. Don’t you see the sense now ? ”

“ Oh, Merton ! ” she exclaimed in awe-struck ecstasy, “ how frightfully clever you are ! Of course I see it now. I wonder what made me so stupid ? ”

“Well, come out, and risk the parsing. I should think you knew all the principal parts of these verbs.” And the boy picked up his motarboard, which he had thrown on the table.

“ How lovely it is out of doors ! ” exclaimed the little girl, lifting her hot face to the fanning breeze. “ I have been so busy all day.”

“We played cricket this afternoon. I made thirty. It is jolly to do things well, isn’t it? I mean to be in the first eleven next year. Mr. Carpenter stopped to-day and said how well I played.” And the boy’s handsome dark face flushed with pleasure at the remembrance.

“You are so clever at everything, Merton,” re-

THE WOKLD ANT) WINSTOW plied his friend admiringly. “I do think it is splendid for you. I wish I was too.”

“ Oh, girls don’t matter,” he remarked loftily, “ and you are pretty high in the school for your age, you know.”

“ If only I could get the Latin prize I should get into the first class. I am trying so frightfully hard for it.”

“ Then you’ll get it sure enough. I say, I will come to the prize-giving if you do, and give you a fine old cheer.”

“ Will you really, Merton ? How good of you ! I am looking forward awfully to the prize-giving at the Grammar School. It is my favourite thing in all the year.”

“ Why ? ” asked Merton, with some surprise.

“ I don’t know,” and Ursula looked thoughtful ; “ only it makes me so excited and wanting to cry with gladness when the boys clap, and especially when you come up for your prizes, Merton.”

“ Bosh ! ” interrupted her companion. “ But I shall have a lot of prizes this time, I expect. None of the other fellows can beat me when I really try.” And he threw his head up proudly.

Merton Wain wright was a wonderfully clever boy. His father, the successful draper of Winstow, hoped that his only son would one day enter into the old-established business, and find a comfortable fortune there ; but the masters at the Grammar School knew otherwise. They saw the growing power of the boy’s brain, and felt sure that Merton would never be content with the quiet country life which had satisfied his fathers for several generations before him. They saw that the one school scholarship was easily within his reach, and that with it he would go to Oxford and outgrow the paternal traditions — and they were all proud of the young scholar who would bring honour to the school, and thereby repay the long hours of teaching which the average boys of Winstow turned to such poor account. Mr. Wain wright had not much sympathy with the classics, but be had enormous admiration for success, and so there was rejoicing in the big comfortable house behind the shop when Merton brought home richly-bound prizes with which his mother was accustomed to adorn the round, bare, polished table in the centre of the unlived-in drawing-room. Ursula and Merton had always been friends. Possibly the reason was in those early days, just as it is in so many later ones, that she was so utterly different from his sisters. For the Wain wright girls, one a great deal older than himself, and one a year younger, were both robust and commonplace, with few aspirations beyond the trimming of their hats, or what, in their different ways, they designated as a “ bit of fun.” They had not any respect for their brother’s brilliant talents, but they had much for their father’s gold-lined till ; and they regarded poor little Ursula Grey with that patronising pity which, even as a child, she shrank from, though she could not understand why.

To Ursula, Merton and his successes were the absorbing interest of her life. She possessed an enormous power of hero-worship, and to win a word of praise from him made her blissfully happy for a week. That he should consider her good to look at she was too young to have imagined, but that he should think her clever was her untiring hope. So she toiled over the difficult lessons, and in a measure succeeded, never knowing that more power lurked in the large, sad, grey eyes, and the pathetic lines of her wistful face, than in all the Latin she would be able to compress into her aching head. And in those days Merton did not know this either.

On the following day the girls of Miss Paterson’s school were awaiting their Latin lesson. It was given by one of the Grammar School masters, who lived with his sister on the way up from Winstow to the Chase. A quiet, rather dull personage in the opinion of the Winstow world, but the boys called him “a good sort,” and it is just possible that their opinion was the more worth having of the two.

“Young ladies, young ladies! no tittering, if you please ! ” rang out Miss Paterson’s orthodox schoolmistress voice, as some one had evidently knocked down an umbrella in the hall. And then David Carpenter walked in, more shy and embarrassed by the small feminine class, than he would have been by the whole two hundred Grammar School boys. Perhaps there is no point in the whole of life where humour sinks to so low a level as at a girls’ school ; a broken pencil or the dropping of a book being enough to reduce a class to inextinguishable mirth ; while a girl who walked with a mincing gait and pursed up her lips with assumed propriety proved herself the admired wit and humourist of the whole community.

“ Ursula Grey, top marks ! ” said the master at the close of the lesson. “You construed very well indeed,” he added kindly, as the child’s face flushed with excited pleasure.

“ I don’t care, I believe you were helped,” said one of the girls crossly as they started on their homeward way. The gladness on Ursula’s face faded. She had never thought about that when Mr. Carpenter was speaking, but it robbed her little triumph of all its joy. And she had worked so hard over that lesson, even apart from Merton’s help.

“ It is downright wicked,” continued Beatrice Holt, who was Ursula’s rival for the prize, “and acting a lie and being mean and horrid. I’d be ashamed to get marks by stolen work,” she added in righteous indignation as she slammed the gate which guarded the Holts’ front drive.

Big tears filled Ursula’s eyes, and her small soul was full of sorrow. She spent a most unhappy evening, and with the night came a darker, deeper sense of sin.

“ I am really wicked,” she murmured under her breath just to give the feeling form, and the big brown wardrobe seemed to frown at the iniquity of little girls. All the familiar objects of the room looked unfamiliar and unfriendly in the strange dim light that crept from the moon through the closed blinds ; and Ursula lay with burning cheeks and trembling hands alone with her remorse all through one of the long hours

AS CHILDKEN that lie between the summer sunset and the early dawn. Weird noises of a whispering breeze outside or a creaking clothes-basket within, filled her with terror, and kept reminding her how wicked she was.

Wickedness had always seemed such a dreadful, far-off thing to Ursula, linking in a way the big oak pulpit of the church with a God who dwelt somewhere above it, and was terribly strict even with grown-up people. But she herself had always hoped to escape. And now, in the loneliness of the night, she felt a fresh thrill of terror in remembering that God never went to sleep ; and her poor little hands were stretched out in pleading misery for protection. And protection came, though the child knew not that it was from the God she dreaded. The soothing touch of sleep closed her tired eyes, and hushed her into a dreamless rest ; and when she awoke the sun was shining and the birds were singing, and a comforting thought crept in to heal the wound. She would go herself and tell Mr. Carpenter all about it, and he would be able to wipe all the wickedness away. She felt sure he would, for did not he wear a cap and gown in school, and that showed how clever and powerful he was ?

Miss Georgina Carpenter was a very important member of Winstow society. A tall, handsome, hard-faced woman of over forty, who had it on her conscience to improve the world in general and her brother David in particular, for whom she kept house, and who was her junior by several years. Among the duties of women she held to be the proper preparing of the household meals, but the idea that pleasant companionship and sympathetic interest might be as important to the tired and hungry man at the head of the house as well-cooked vegetables and a variety of puddings, never once entered her head. She prided herself on her candour and brusqueness, and David grew daily more silent and reserved.

It was rather a long, uphill walk to Thornwood Cottage, where the Carpenters lived, but directly afternoon school was over Ursula started in great haste. She was so anxious to get the cloud cleared away — and living so much in a grown-up world with her father prevented her from being as shy as small schoolgirls generally are.

“ Please is Mr. Carpenter at home ? ” she asked the servant, and immediately Georgina came out into the hall.

“ What do you want ? Let me see what child it is ? Oh ! Ursula Grey. What do you want up here ? A message from your father, perhaps ? ”

“ I want to see Mr. Carpenter, please,” Ursula explained during the first pause.

“ Mr. Carpenter is busy,” replied his sister, who always took upon herself to answer for David, quite irrespective of his wishes. “ Tell me your business, instead.”

“ But I must see him,” pleaded the child ; “ it is only a very short thing I have to say.”

“ Say it to me,” persisted Georgina. “ I cannot allow him to be disturbed just as he has come in from school.”

Ursula’s mouth tightened. She was not the only person who felt inclined to fight with Georgina, though she was one of the smallest.

“ Please ask him if he is too busy to see me,” she continued.

“Upon my word,” exclaimed Georgina, “how many more times must I speak ? ”

But her sentence was cut short by the opening of the study door, and the appearance of David in the hall.

“ Oh, Mr. Carpenter ! ” cried Ursula, “ please let me come into your room and speak to you. It is so very important.”

“ What is the matter ? ” asked David, perceiving his sister’s ruffled countenance.

“ I was only trying to save you trouble,” said Georgina sharply, “ and as usual I get no thanks for it. That is always the way with men,” and she bounced back into the sitting-room.

“ Can I do anything for you ? ” began David, leading the child into his study.

Ursula looked up at him fearlessly.

“Oh, please, Mr. Carpenter, it was Merton helping me that made my Caesar so good, and the girls said it was wicked to get top marks for it — only I never thought. Will you please take the wickedness away ? ” and she laid a small pleading hand on his coat sleeve.

David Carpenter looked down at her in wonder. He had no experience of the tender consciences of little girls, and he felt clumsy and afraid of breaking something which was too frail for him to handle.

“ It — it is all right,” he said lamely, though wishing he knew better how to talk to her.

“ And I did not mean to be wicked,” she continued, with a confiding little gesture, “ only I was so tired and it was too difficult till Merton came in and showed me how to do it. I am so sorry.”

“Don’t be that.” And David looked distressed. “ It was not really wicked at all.”

“ Not wicked,” exclaimed Ursula, and a glad light spread over her wistful face. “And are you sure that God isn’t angry with me ? ”

David was more and more embarrassed. He did not know how to answer such questions, being far too reserved ever to mention even the name of God in ordinary conversation, or indeed any of the things he held most dear.

“ I thought He was in the night,” continued the child, “ and it frightened me so.”

“ No, no,” replied David gravely, “ you — you must never think that, because — because it would not be true.” And his face flushed with the effort of speaking of such things.

“ I didn’t know God was as kind as you,” said Ursula softly. “ You see, you’ve taken all the wickedness away, and I am quite happy again.”

The man stood silent, with a new feeling creeping into his heart — the feeling of chivalry and power of protection and tenderness such as lurks in most manly souls if only those who need it will claim such help. But it had never struck David before that any one could really want his. His sister, by her aggressive independence and scorn of weakness, was hardening his reserve into an iron wall concerning his fellows, and he had never known any other woman intimately enough to learn his mistake. He looked down on the child beside him with a kind light in his eyes, and he felt that it was good to be able to wipe away even one of the smallest of earth’s sorrows. He never knew before that he could.

Just then the door opened and Georgina bustled in.

“ What is all this about ? It is time you went home, Ursula, or you will be late for your father’s tea.”

“Give her a drink of milk first,” suggested David.

Georgina looked indignant.

“ Surely, David, I can manage my department in this house without your interference. Drinking milk between meals is an extremely bad habit, and spoils a child’s appetite. But I should have offered Ursula a glass of barley water without your suggestion.”

Her brother turned away with a sigh ; the jar grated and tired him strangely.

“ Good-night,” he said, as Ursula held out her hand. “ And you did the rest of your lessons, very well apart from the construing.”

“ I cannot have you bothered about school

AS CHILDKEN work when you are at home,” chimed in Georgina again j “ I want you to rest then. But I get no thanks for my consideration,” she added in an injured voice.

But the whole atmosphere was changed for Ursula. She ran down the hill as if on air, and was so bright at tea that her father expressed astonishment. It was so long since Ursula had found any one to take up a burden for her, longer than she could remember. She had carried so many all by herself, for even her happiness in Merton’s friendship meant much wear and tear to keep up with his interests and exploits. So it was a new and restful sensation to the tired spirit to find somebody who could and would help her.

After she had said her conventional, stiff little prayers that night, the child knelt on for a few moments in silence, and then she whispered softly, “ And please God, thank you for being as kind as Mr. Carpenter,” which was her first real prayer, and so the first faint flicker of a higher Light.

Chapter II Prize Days

The last week in July brought some great events to Winstow. Speech day at the Grammar School was the most important ; and there was also a prize-giving at Miss Paterson’s, and an evening party afterwards, at which the pupils provided miscellaneous entertainment. To Ursula it was a week of thrilling excitement as well as sickening anxiety. She gloried in the prizes Merton was sure to win, and she made herself quite ill with nervousness over her efforts to succeed also.

“Can I help you, David?” asked Georgina Carpenter, going into the study where her brother sat at a table piled with examination papers. “ Let me look over the girls’ answers. You have surely enough to do with the Grammar School work ? ”

“Ho, thank you,” he answered absently; “I must do them all myself because I have to award the prizes.”

“That is nonsense, David. As if I did not

know how to do that quite as well as you — in 20 fact, much better, seeing that I have more knowledge of girls’ work. And you might surely know that without my telling you. I should have been a splendid governess myself, only I had so much more important work to do ; and besides, you needed some one to keep house for you. If I were not here, it is my opinion you would never sit properly through a single meal, and fall into no end of bad habits.”

David looked up resignedly. His elder sister’s vigour and management crushed him into acquiescence.

“You are quite right, Georgina; but I have nearly finished now. There are only these Latin papers from Miss Paterson’s.”

Georgina took them out of his hands.

“ I know as much Latin as you do. Indeed, if only I had been a man, and not fettered by the ridiculous limits of sex, which, thank heaven, are being yearly swept away, I should have taken a far better degree than you did; and not been content to settle down at such a school as Winstow, teaching little girls and such-like on my half-holidays. But you never had any go in you, David. I remember what a disappointment it was to our poor parents that you never won a prize all the time you were at school.”

David winced. The prizes of life had never been within his reach, and yet he had always done his best. A big, square man, with none of the athlete’s grace, only clumsy with an illdirected strength. A silent man, with none of the attractions of thoughtfulness or the influence of hidden wisdom. An earnest man, yet with no power of expressing anything which he really thought or felt. So the world had been always hard on David, and though it was not his fault that it had, perhaps it was not the world’s either, seeing that the world has little time and less opportunity for diving into the secret chambers of the soul and finding out the hidden treasure there. There is only one shaft sunk into such natures as these, and the head of it God holds in heaven, and others never go down it unless their name is Love, and God sends them as His special messenger.

“ Here, David,” continued his sister, “ I will weed them out, and you need only look at the best — and there is no doubt which that is,” she added after a quick perusal of the heap. “ It is signed by Beatrice Holt.”

“ Yes, it is wonderfully correct,” said David ; “ but let me look ”

“ Now, do be quiet,” snapped Georgina, “ and

PRIZE DAYS not worry yourself about any of the others. I tell you that this is undoubtedly the first, and instead of taking my word for it you must needs want to go over the work yourself, too. A nice compliment that is to me. As if my judgment were not to be relied upon ! ”

“ Indeed, I have great confidence in your judgment, Georgina.”

“ And well you need have. I should like to see what would have become of you without it. For when we lost our parents there was no one but me to look after you.”

“You have indeed looked after me,” replied David, and a faint smile lurked round his mouth.

“ And little thanks I get for it. But that is the way of the world. Women have most of the work and none of the thanks ; and men are spoiled from the cradle upwards.”

“ It is very late,” remarked David ; “ time for you to be going to bed.”

“I shall not go before you,” and Georgina’s voice was very determined. “ How should I know that the lights were properly put out, and the house safe from fire ? ”

David picked up the examination papers without a word. He was a thorough man, and had been one ever since he found that he was not a popular boy. In his teens he had taken life seriously, and seemed quite as old as Georgina directly he was of age. It was because of this innate manliness that his sister devoted herself to his discipline. Georgina would never have troubled to reform any one whom she felt was not worthy of her enormous reforming powers. She admired David in her secret heart, but she deemed approbation a pernicious diet for mankind, and she felt it her mission in life to rub off all the scanty gilt with which his gingerbread might have been adorned, had she devoted herself to making his home pleasant rather than punitive.