Chapter XII: The New Home

THE next morning she and Brian held a serious consultation together. Brian had been bitterly disappointed that all Mrs. Daubeney's money would pass to her husband's nephew. Looking at his sister's sweet unruffled face, he felt a sudden impatience against her rise within him.

"She has no conception of what it will mean to us," he thought; "she does not know the value of money, for she has always had more than enough for her needs. I hate her complacent composure!"

"I suppose you realise," he said a little roughly, "that this illness of father's is draining our resources to the utmost. If I can't leave him, how are we to live? Your allowance will be stopped; we shall be worse off than ever!"

Hope winced, and Brian, meeting the pained look in her eyes, was ashamed of himself.

"I know," she said; "I lay awake last night thinking of it; but I will not be a burden to you, Brian; I am sure I shall be able to earn something!"

"As if I could let you, a girl, be the breadwinner!" he said scornfully.

"Brian, don't let us meet this trouble bitterly and angrily. The loss of dear Aunt Gertrude is far more to me than the loss of her money; but I know she could not be the same to you as she was to me, and I understand your side. I asked the lawyer if we ought to move out of this house at once. I believe it would be best for us to do so, though he said there was no immediate hurry; and I will tell you what I did. I took my pearls to Aunt Gertrude's jeweller, and he has promised to take them from me; he thought he would be able to give me three hundred pounds for them. He is absolutely trustworthy, and after having them tested, he will let me know definitely.

"Now I have been thinking that this will cover the sum Miss Rill asked for her little cottage. Don't you think we could venture on taking it? I promise you I will do my very best to help you there; and if we can have the help of a woman once or twice a week, I think I could manage to do without a servant. The place is so tiny that it will not be nearly so much trouble as a house of this size. What do you think?"

Brian was walking up and down the dining-room with his hands in his pockets, and his brows knit in thought. He looked up when Hope finished speaking, and with a little shake of his shoulders, tried to smile.

"You make me feel a brute!" he said frankly. "But I own we all seemed in a fair way of going under. I hate the idea of taking your legacy, but if you are determined to stick to us, it's the only thing to be done. I believe I could make that place pay, and look after father into the bargain. Now I must go back to him. It's no good to fight with fate. Yours is the best plan, to accept it calmly, and make the best of it."

But Brian little knew what a conflict had been going on in his sister's soul, and how it was only through the words of her favourite hymn that she had remembered and tested the source of her present peace and quietness of mind.

They were not long in making their plans. Hope received the cheque from the jeweller within the next few days; Brian went out and transacted the necessary business with Miss Rill, and before the end of the month they were packing up.

One afternoon Hope was in her bedroom turning out the contents of her wardrobe. As her pretty evening-dresses came to light, the white satin slippers, fans, lace-handkerchiefs, soiled white kid gloves, and all the many requisites of a young girl in society, she felt as if her youth had entirely slipped away, and a dull, sordid middle age commenced.

"I shall never want them again. I shall never be in a position to require them. That bit of life has gone for ever, and I ought to feel glad that it is so. It never really satisfied me."

Then the light came into her tired eyes.

"Life is worth living, though it be in a cottage. I am still young and strong and able to help others. Perhaps, after all, I am only just beginning my true real life, the one that God meant me to live when He made me?"

This thought cheered her, and stayed with her; and she folded her silks and satins away with a light heart, wondering as she did so how she could turn them to the best account. In the midst of it, Anne came up to her to say that Mrs. Dane had called to see her.

Hope ran downstairs. When she entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Dane drew her towards her, and gave her a kiss.

"I am so sorry, dear, that I have not been able to come before. I have only just come home from town, where I have been staying with a sister of mine for the last month. I could only write and offer my sympathy, and now I find we are going to lose you. Where are you going?"

"Only as far as King's Dell. Isn't it a pretty name? It's right in the country, I'm glad to say, about five miles from the Chesneys. It was Hester who showed the place to me; she wanted it for herself, but she is delighted that we have got it."

"And are you pleased?"

"Yes, I truly am. And father likes the idea of it. Oh, Mrs. Dane, it is so pitiful to see him! He lies quite helpless; Brian waits upon him hand and foot, and of course I do what I can to share the nursing."

"You have no nurse?"

"We can't afford one, and nobody will understand that. I don't mind telling you, for you seem such an old friend already, but the death of our aunt leaves us much poorer, and Brian is not able to go to Canada."

"You are having a lot of trouble."

Mrs. Dane regarded the young girl very tenderly. She looked too dainty and frail for the stress of life, and though her cheeks were flushed and eyes bright, it was hardly a healthy animation. She noted the tired lines round her eyes, and the delicacy of her skin.

"Yes, it seems nothing but trouble, and yet now we see daylight. I am thankful we are going to leave this house; it is too big for us."

"You take your maid with you?"

"No, she wants to come, but just at present we can't manage it. We have discovered a woman at a neighbouring cottage. She says she will be able to come in for a couple of hours every morning, and I shall manage quite well. I am looking forward to it. I feel I can do anything with Brian at hand to help me. You don't know how useful he is in a house."

"My dear child, it will be too much for you. What sized house is it?"

Hope gave her particulars, and Mrs. Dane listened for the most part in silence. Then she asked about her aunt's illness, and Hope broke down a little when talking about her.

"It is my first real loss. I can't tell you how I loved her, though we were beginning to get different interests. And I always hoped I should go back to her one day."

"Well," said Mrs. Dane, after some further talk, "I must not pity you too much, but try to cheer you. And I think with you that life will be much easier and simpler in a labourer's cottage. Such an opportunity is not given to every one as it is given to you, of proving yourself superior to your circumstances. You will find, dear, that you will have all needed strength and wisdom supplied. God's children never lack, if they look up."

But as she walked home, Mrs. Dane felt Hope's bright and undaunted courage was almost beyond her own attainment.

"I am filled with astonishment," she confided to Lancelot that evening. "She is the last girl I should have given credit for such grit. Not one murmur, not a foreboding! I believe if she were cast homeless and penniless into the streets, she would set cheerfully to work to sell matches or flowers, and take it all as a matter of course. She fulfils her name."

"Less strength than spirit," remarked Lancelot. "That old aunt of hers who brought her up must have been very thoughtless and selfish. It is hard lines on a girl."

"I wish we could do something to soften her lot, but it is very difficult."

Lancelot did not respond.

But the day Hope and her family moved to King's Dell, he appeared, and took entire charge of the sick man, sending an invalid carriage for him, and accompanying him to the little cottage.

It was fortunately a bright warm day. Brian had arranged that the downstairs sitting-room should be made into his father's bedroom, and one of the four upstair rooms was given to Hope as her sitting-room. The kitchen was to be the general living-room.

Hope delighted in it all; the sweet surroundings of her new home seemed to fall as balm upon her sorrowing spirit. When Mr. St. Clair was safely settled in a comfortable bed, Hope's last anxiety disappeared. Very white and tired she looked as she spoke her thanks to Lancelot for his ready help, but her eyes were shining with content.

"Don't thank me," he said. "It is in our covenant of friendship that we should help each other. Do you know what I am longing to do now?"

"No."

"To compel you to sit in that easy chair, and let me get you a cup of tea. I say tea, for I believe it is a panacea for women's weariness. My stay in India has unfitted me for seeing ladies toil so. My stay in the colonies before I went there has taught me how to be useful. May I do it?"

He spoke so eagerly, yet so wistfully, that Hope hesitated. Her hesitation gave him the opportunity at once. He drew forward the only easy chair in the kitchen, and Hope found herself in it, with a cushion at her back, before she could remonstrate.

"I forbid you to move," he said. "Direct me if you like. I see the kettle is boiling. Shall I find the tea in that cupboard? Ah, here it is! Now for the teapot! I see it, and I shall forage in the larder for the bread and butter. Sit still and see a man make tea. I assure you it will be a success."

Hope obeyed him. A strange sense of rest and security filled her heart whilst he was by her. She had been working very hard all day. The little house was in good order. Brian was settling things in his father's room; the boys were still at school, and were to come out in a farmer's trap an hour later. She felt she could with justice enjoy a quiet half-hour, and work the better for it afterwards.

As she sat in her chair, she could look out of the half-open door down the flagged brick path with the borders of dahlias and Michaelmas daisies on either side. The sun was getting low, and its golden rays shot across the old mossy trunks of the apple-trees in the orchard beyond. A blackbird was singing its evening song, and the lowing of some cows in a neighbouring field proclaimed the fact that it was milking-time.

Hope drew a long breath, and wondered if it were a dream. Her thoughts went back to a year ago, and she felt as if this past summer had been a lifetime. With the past came recollections of her aunt, and the shadows gathered in her eyes and left their impress on her face.

When Lancelot came into the room from the dairy, and glanced at her, he saw that rest and quiet thought were proving more painful than incessant action, and a longing seized him to take her into his arms and shield her for ever from care and pain. He was a quiet unemotional man upon the surface, but, when his feelings were deeply stirred, his self-control had hard work in suppressing his passion. From the moment he had seen Hope walk into the cathedral that spring evening, in all her fresh daintiness and grace, his heart had been taken captive.

He would not acknowledge it at first. He had seen many fair women in the East, he had noted many eyes brighten at his approach, and cheeks flush with self-conscious pleasure in his presence; and without undue self-esteem, he knew that he could have married over and over again, if he had so wished. Perhaps it was the strong hold that his mother had of his affections; perhaps her sweet and gracious dignity, her cultivated mind, and her winning personality, overshadowed the shallow, light-hearted Anglo-Indian girls of his acquaintance. He compared them all with his mother, and found them wanting. He may have judged them hardly; he saw them always smiling and gay, and did not realise that their frivolous talk often hid their deeper feelings.

But Hope came before him in a different light. It was not her beauty that attracted him; it was the sad wistful pathos in her grey eyes, the quiver of her sensitive lips, the troubled restless soul that looked out of her sweet girlish face. He had noted her tears, and when he left the cathedral with his mother, he vaguely wondered why he was so interested in her. Later on, he heard more about her, and then, when she visited his mother, he saw that the restlessness had passed out of her eyes, and great peace reigned there. From that time, her personality was ever in his thoughts. Now, though his eyes were keenly conscious of her every look and movement, his words were lightly spoken.

"There now!" he said with pride, as he set out her tea on the table beside her. "Am I not as good as my word? The world will look quite different when you've had some tea! I know the ways of women!"

Hope laughed as she took the cup from his hand, and her sadness vanished.

"The world is a pleasant place as viewed from these cottage walls. What a simple thing life is, after all! You only want shelter and warmth and food. I believe we shall get all that here."

"And rest of mind, and sometimes rest of body."

"Yes, I shall have both, certainly the former."

Hope looked away out of the window as she spoke. Then as her glance came back to Lancelot, her eyes twinkled.

"What would your mother say if she saw you now?"

"She would be glad to see her teaching from early boyhood carried out. She is old-fashioned, Miss St. Clair, and thinks that men ought to wait on women. I should wish your brother had had such a teacher."

"You must not abuse Brian. He is a dear good boy. I can't tell you how I admire him. And oh, Mr. Dane, if you saw his gentleness and patience with my poor father!"

"Yes, but I should also like to see more chivalrous attention to his sister."

Lancelot's voice rang sternly.

Hope hastened to change the subject, and they had an animated discussion upon the "simple life," with its attendant difficulties for educated people. When Brian came in, Lancelot got up to go.

"Look after your sister," he said, "and remember you cannot expect a race-horse to do a cart-horse's work."

"Now what does the fellow mean by that?" said Brian wrathfully, as he watched his retreating figure down the brick walk.

Hope laughed.

"Very impertinent, is he not? Come and sit down, Brian. I will go to father."

"He is asleep. We shall hear him if he wakes."

Brian smothered a quick sigh as he sat down on the old-fashioned window-ledge.

"Well," he said, "you've got it very shipshape here. I think we shall pull through all right. And if you want help in cooking, remember I'm colonial through and through, and can bake bread or cook a joint with any one, not to speak of making rabbit stews, and even an apple-tart!"

"We shall manage famously," said Hope cheerily, "and I shall look to you to make up my deficits."

Her short rest was over, but it had done her good, and when the boys arrived an hour later, she was equal to the task of quieting their high spirits, and getting them comfortably through their evening meal, and to bed in one of the attics.

Then she stood at the open cottage door, looking across the orchard in the waning light, and her heart rested itself on a verse she had read that morning in her Bible:

"When the Lord giveth quietness, who then can make trouble?"

The loss of her aunt, the distressing helplessness of her father, the scarcity of money, and the prospect of daily toil and anxieties, could not seem to touch her with the assurance of God's quietness and peace filling her soul.

She laid her tired head on her pillow that night with a smile upon her lips, and a prayer in her heart for guidance and strength.

In the days that followed, even Brian marvelled at her. Not that she was perfect. She made many and ludicrous mistakes, and the housekeeping did not run smoothly at first. But each day added to her experience, and the sweet air and country surroundings soothed and comforted her. She spent many hours with her father, for Brian's time was necessarily taken up with starting the poultry.

The boys were rather a trial at first. They were delighted with their new home, but Hope found the lack of space for them to play in a great difficulty. However, they soon settled down, and went to the Vicarage regularly morning and afternoon to be taught by the Vicar. Upon the third day of lessons, the Vicar and his daughter called. Mr. Parr was a widower; his eldest daughter, a sweet dreamy-looking girl of about five-and-twenty, managed his house and was an indefatigable worker in the parish, so she hinted to Hope.

"I have not time for many social calls, but we felt we must come and give you a welcome," she said, when her father, a quiet grave man, had gone into Mr. St. Clair's room to see him for a minute or two.

"I think I likewise shall be too busy for calls," responded Hope, smiling, "but I did not think there would be any society about here, not for us, at any rate."

"You see," continued Avice Parr, with an absent look in her eyes, "our parish is a very scattered one, and there is a factory three miles away which swallows up a great many of our young girls. I have special classes for them, and a great deal of work in connection with the factory. My interests are entirely in the parish, so I know little of anything else. Perhaps you may think me narrow, but the spiritual welfare of every soul in our charge is as dear to me as to my father, and that is saying a great deal."

Hope's heart quickened as she listened to this, but she had little opportunity of speaking, for Avice was a fluent talker, and commenced to tell her the histories of several of her girls, with her own difficulties in dealing with them. Before she had half finished her narration, her father came out.

"Is your father perfectly conscious of all that is going on, Miss St. Clair?" he asked.

"Perfectly. It is a comfort, in a way, but oh! so hard for him not to be able to make himself understood!"

"Yes, yes. Well, he seemed pleased to see me. Come, Avice, my dear, we must not keep Miss St. Clair; she will want to return to her father."

"My brother is out, or I would not have to leave you," said Hope, as she opened the porch door and wished her visitors goodbye.

Avice shook hands with her in rather a "distrait" fashion.

"Father," she said, "I have just time to go to Mrs. Jennings before tea. Do not wait for me."

She hurried off, and Hope went back to her father's room. She was not of a critical nature, but somehow or other Avice Parr disappointed her, though she could hardly have given a reason for it.

"She is good; she will help me," she said to herself, for often she longed for sympathy and counsel; and yet she wondered if she would come under the range of Avice's help.