Chapter XV: The Old Priory

"The thread of our life would be dark, Heaven knows,
If it were not with friendship and love intertwined."
MOORE.

SPRING again. We find Heather still in her country home. But Bluebell has married, and is travelling abroad with her husband. The wedding was a quiet one. Mrs. Carter wished it to be in town, but both girls decided that it must be in their old home. And so Captain and Mrs. Carter, and a few friends, came to be present at it, and Mrs. Carter enjoyed a battle of words again with the inexorable Abigail.

"Miss Heather must marry next, and if she is not quick about it, I shall carry her off to London again. She is not going to be an old maid, if I can help it!"

"She is going to be what the Lord means her to be, mem," retorted Abigail. "He is her Keeper, and not those that tempted her astray from His paths for a time! Miss Heather has thoughts above marryin' and givin' in marriage!"

"Her time hasn't come yet. Wait till the right man turns up, and then away she will go like all the rest of us! She is very much admired in town, Abigail. A certain major in my husband's battalion has not forgotten her yet. I think I shall give him a hint to follow Mr. Carter's example, and come and see how the land lies now. She would make a good soldier's wife!"

"A soldier, mem! A paid murderer, we would consider him! And Miss Heather has not been nurtured and brought up by a member of the Society of Friends, to fling herself away on one with the lowest calling in our nation!"

The wedding over, Heather settled down to her quiet life, having Mrs. Fisher to enliven her solitude, and her poor people to interest her. She steadfastly refused Mrs. Carter's invitation to pay her a visit, and, though missing her sister daily, preserved a bright and sunshiny spirit.

One morning, she received a letter from Ena Vaughan, in which she asked her to come and stay with her for a short time.

She sat with this letter in her hand for some time considering, and then consulted Mrs. Fisher.

The thought of seeing her friend again filled her with delight. It was a visit that would not only give her intense pleasure, but would, she felt sure, be beneficial to her in many ways. And when Mrs. Fisher and Abigail both said that a change would do her good, Heather wrote off, and joyfully accepted the invitation.

It was a lovely spring evening when she reached the small country station that was her destination. She alighted on the platform, and looked about her. There were very few passengers by the same train, and the old porter seemed half asleep. She was trying to make him understand where she wanted to go, when turning round, she encountered Dick, who had arrived rather warm and breathless after a sharp run.

"If you please, miss, the missus said as I were to take charge of your luggage and see it packed in the trap. Mr. Spike, he can't leave the horse, and I were kept waiting on a message or I should have been here before, and the master, he is away on business or he would have come to meet you himself. The trap is this way, if you please, miss."

Dick was struggling with his dignity and breathlessness, but Heather smiled, and understood. She followed him out, and found the trap waiting for her. In a few minutes, she was being driven swiftly through sweet-smelling lanes, eventually stopping at an old stone gateway with a rustic lodge at one side. Then up a rhododendron drive, where the flowers were in masses of bloom. They eventually drew up before an ivy-clad turreted stone house with old-fashioned casement windows, and a weather-beaten porch, over which was sculptured in stone the Latin device, "Sic vos non vobis."

Heather looked around her with a keen sense of pleasure and refreshment in everything she saw. Just inside the door, waiting in her wheelchair to receive her, was Ena. Great bowls of golden daffodils stood on the old oak sideboards in the square wainscoted hall. The stairs with their crimson carpets wound round and upwards, past a richly stained window, and all inside the house seemed to give an atmosphere of warmth and comfort, which contrasted delightfully with the dark oak panelling and dusky corners that abounded in the old Priory.

The first greetings over, Dick gently wheeled his mistress into the drawing-room, and Heather followed her. It was a quaint low room, panelled in oak; old china and beautiful paintings adorned the walls, thick oriental rugs covered the polished floor; books, music, spring flowers in abundance, and a dozen other nameless trifles, showed that it was a room for use and comfort, and not for show.

A bright wood fire was burning in the grate; the evening sun shone in, and played upon the silver tea-service and flowers that were on the afternoon tea-table drawn up to Ena's couch. Dick assisted his mistress there, then noiselessly left the room, and Heather sank into an easy chair feeling that her lines had fallen in pleasant places.

"It is delicious to be here," she said. "I feel rather tired of being mistress, and managing every one."

"You are looking tired and pale," said Ena, affectionately. "I have felt so sorry for you since your sister's marriage."

"Yes," Heather said, with a little sigh, "it is a dreadful experience to go through, for I feel that she will never be quite the same again. But I was prepared for it when she was away from me before. That was the worst wrench, I think, for it was our first parting."

"Now I am going to give you some tea, and then you would like to go to your room. I hope you will be comfortable, but I can trust my maid to see after you. It is one of my trials that I cannot look to my visitors' comfort, but I never go upstairs at all. I have my bedroom on the ground floor. What do you think of our home?"

"I think it is sweet," said Heather, enthusiastically. "It must be very old, isn't it?"

"Very old. The monks lived here in the time of Henry VIII., but were turned out by the king, who gave it to one of his court favourites—a certain baron, Sir Bertram Havish. The Havishes were ancestors of my mothers, and the Priory has belonged to them ever since. A cousin of ours lived here up to the time we came into it. He handed it over to my brother because he wanted to go off to the Colonies. I think I told you about it. Of course the best part of the Priory is in ruins; this is quite a small bit of it, but it is the only part of it that has always been lived in, and it is quite large enough for us. Did you notice the doorway as you came in?"

"Yes, I did, and the carved motto above. What is the exact meaning of it? Something about labour or work, isn't it?"

"'Thus you do not labour for yourselves.' Rather nice, isn't it? A gentle reminder to all who live here that selfishness and indolence will not be tolerated. I like to put with it that verse, 'that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them.'"

Heather's eyes shone.

"Yes," she said; "it isn't only living and labouring for other people, but for Him!"

Ena nodded smilingly.

They drank their tea and chatted together, and then Heather was taken upstairs to her room. It was as quaint as the rest of the house, with its deep recesses and low window-seat, overlooking a range of wooded hills and a winding river. All the rooms were panelled in oak, but light chintz curtains and hangings relieved the bedrooms of any gloom. A small wood fire was burning in her grate, and bowls of daffodils and primroses stood on her dressing-table.

Heather felt as she sat down on her cushioned window-seat, and surveyed the scene within and without, that her room would be a pleasant resort for rest and enjoyment.

Later on, she came down to the drawing-room in her dinner-dress, and found Ena and her brother together.

Captain Vaughan apologized, as he shook hands with her, for not meeting her at the station.

"My sister and I have so few guests now that I feel we ought to welcome warmly any who do come to us. But I was obliged to attend a committee meeting at the very hour your train arrived."

"I did not mind at all," Heather responded. "We have been so used to manage for ourselves lately that I feel quite independent. At home, no one ever meets us. You see, we have no trap, so we always take a fly and drive straight back with no difficulty."

"Bertram thinks that no woman ought to be able to do anything for herself," said Ena, laughing. "He can't understand the up-to-date girls, who are so well accustomed to take care of themselves."

Heather laughed as she turned frankly to Captain Vaughan.

"It is pleasant to be taken care of," she said, "but if you have no father or brothers, it naturally makes you independent."

"Oh yes," he said, with a little smile; "and the independence is very pleasant, is it not?"

"Perhaps it is. I know Bluebell and I gloried in it a year ago, but I fancy after a time, one tires of it."

There was unconscious wistfulness in her eyes. Ena said quickly—

"You have left all leadership and responsibility behind you now, and have sunk into a commonplace country visitor. I am going to treat you as such, and I am sure you are longing for some dinner. There is the gong, so let us go in. Do congratulate me upon my improvement. I can join you at dinner in my wheelchair. I have only managed this for the last month, so am still proud of my achievement."

Dinner was a pleasant meal. Heather thoroughly enjoyed the cheerful, cultivated society of her friends. Captain Vaughan had a good deal of quiet humour, but he was also a well-read and well-informed man with literary tastes. And both he and his sister took a keen interest in the current literature of the day.

"I feel very ignorant when I hear you and your brother talk," Heather said to Ena as they sat in the drawing-room afterwards, leaving Captain Vaughan to his smoke. "But you don't know how I like hearing you! We are so shut up at home to our housekeeping, and the wants of the village, that I sometimes forget the great world outside us."

"I don't know what I should do without outside interests," said Ena, thoughtfully. "It takes one out of one's self so, and I dread falling into an invalid's self-centred life. Bertram is such a help in that way. I always think men are like a fresh breeze through a house, especially those who are out-of-doors a good deal, and are in the way of meeting other men. Bertram is a keen sportsman, though he looks upon sport only as a recreation. And then he very often goes up to town, and I hear the latest news in that way."

"I should like to have had a brother," said Heather, as she gazed into the fire, making a pretty picture as she sat in an old oak chair, her slender little figure, in its white dress, thrown into full relief by the dark wood background.

Ena looked at her and smiled.

"Perhaps you will be given a husband instead," she said playfully.

Heather shook her head, and changed the subject.

Captain Vaughan soon came in, and Ena asked him what engagements he had for the next day?

"I want you to show Heather the church, and the dripping well. I cannot manage it because of the steps."

"I shall be busy all the morning," he said, "but after luncheon, I can take Miss Fotheringay anywhere. We can do the church and well and go on to St. Margaret's. I think those are all the antiquities to be seen. Are you fond of ruins, Miss Fotheringay?"

"Yes, if they're picturesque," said Heather, smiling. "It reminds me of old Ralph at home, who met a wandering artist one day. He asked if there were any ruins to be seen, and Ralph led him off with alacrity to a half-burnt pigstye of Farmer White's.

"'There,' he said, ''tis a newer ruin than those old ruins at Rome my paper tells me of, for 'twas only burnt last Toosday week, so you've come to the right man for showin' the right sort!'"

"One never quite understands whether it is simplicity or shrewdness in many of these rustics," said Captain Vaughan. "I always feel they're having a quiet laugh at my expense when I talk with them. Well, St. Margaret's is worth seeing. It used to be an old convent, and the good people in those days knew how to pitch their retreats in the most exquisite parts of our country."

"I suppose it solaced them for what they had forsaken," said Heather. "And after all, there is nothing like Nature to soothe and calm, and help meditation."

"For the tired and weary spirits," put in Ena, "but hardly for the young restless ones. There must have been many who, like caged birds, beat their wings against their prison walls, and pined away in the narrow sphere in which they found themselves. Their energies must have been cramped, their lives dwarfed, and their tempers soured by the constant restrictions and supervision over them."

"Yet I fancy it was easier in those days to act, when contrasts were so strongly defined," said Heather, thoughtfully. "If one wanted to be good, there was always the convent. You weren't supposed to be half in the world and half out of it; it was one thing or the other."

"Not taken out of the world, but kept from the evil. In the world, but not of it."

Ena spoke softly, and Heather looked up with a smile.

"I think the world has always approved of Christians taking themselves right out of the way so as not to be objectionable and give offence," said Captain Vaughan, strolling to the window and looking out on the dusky garden. "It always has been fashionable to enter convents and sisterhoods, but not fashionable to be introducing one's religious opinions to society in general."

"No," said Heather, "and I suppose if a Christian bottles up his religion, he becomes like a stagnant pool. He must be a worker of some sort. So there is nothing for it but to separate himself at once."

"But he need not hide himself away in a monastery," said Ena, brightly. "Do you think so, Bertram?"

Captain Vaughan turned round from the window with a smile.

"I consider if ever we are in doubt about the kind of life we should lead, whether we should mix with our fellows in society to show them that Christians are not narrow and bigoted, and are able to take part in all their pleasures, we have our guidance in Nehemiah, and a very good reason given for our withdrawal from much of it."

"What do you mean?" asked Heather, with interest.

"I suppose each one of us is helping to build the walls of the church. If we are, this is Nehemiah's excuse:

"'I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the
work cease whilst I leave it, and come down to you?'"

"I like that," exclaimed Heather, with a flash of gladness in her eye. "But of course it can only apply to busy Christians."

"Ought we not all to be busy about our Father's business?"

There was a little silence, broken by Dick's appearance with a message.

But Heather had enough for plenty of thought that evening, and she lay her head on her pillow a little later with a happy, restful heart.