The Dew of Their Youth, Samuel Rutherford Crockett [fox in socks read aloud .txt] 📗

cleanliness went, Miss Irma had done a great deal--so much, indeed, as to earn the praise of that severest of critics, my grandmother.
But there was much that no girl could do alone. Chair-seats and sofa-cushions had been beaten till no speck of dust was left. This had had to be carefully gone about. For though, apparently, no thieves had broken through to steal, it was evident that the house had last been occupied by people of excessively careless habits, who had put muddy boots on chairs and trampled regardlessly everywhere. But the other half of the text held good. Moth and rust had certainly corrupted.
However, Agnes Anne was handy with her needle, in spite of her father and his class on Ovid. There was always a good deal to do in our house, and since mother made no great effort, and was generally tired, it fell to Agnes Anne to do it.
She it was who had re-covered the worn old drawing-room chairs with brocade found in the deep, cedar-wood lined cupboards, along with wealth of ancient court dresses, provision of household linen, and all that had belonged to the Maitlands on the day when, after the falling of the head of their house upon Tower Hill, the great old mansion had been shut up.
The Doctor had been strictly enjoined to take good heed to write everything down on his mental tablets, and to give careful account to his lady. He found the two young Maitlands seated at a table from which the cloth had been lifted at one corner to make room for copybooks, ink, pens and reading-books. Evidently Miss Irma was instructing her brother.
"Now, Louis," they heard her say as they came in, "remember the destiny to which you are called, and that now is the time----"
"The Doctor to call upon you!" Agnes Anne announced in a tone of awe befitting the occasion.
Then the stately apparition in black and silver which followed her into the room came slowly forward, smiling with outstretched hand. Miss Irma was not in the least put out. She rose and swept a curtsey with bowed head. Little Sir Louis, evidently awed by the sedate grandeur which sat so well upon the visitor, paused a moment as if uncertain how he ought to behave.
He was a little behind his sister, and completely out of the range of her vision, so he felt himself safe in sucking the ink from the side of his second finger, and rubbing the wet place hard on his black velvet breeches. Then, as Miss Irma glanced round, he fell also to his manners and bowed gravely--unconsciously imitating the grand manner of the Doctor himself.
The room used for lessons was a wide, pleasant place, rather low in the roof, plainly panelled and wainscotted in dark oak, with a single line of dull gold beading running about it high up. There was a large fireplace, with a seat all the way round, and a stout iron basket to hold the fire of sea-coal, when such was used. Brass and irons stood at the side, convenient for faggots. A huge crane and many S-shaped pot-hooks discovered the fact that at some time this place had been occupied as a kitchen, perhaps in the straitened days of the last "attainted" Maitlands.
But now the chamber was pleasant and warm, the windows open to the air and the song of the birds. Dimity curtains hung on the great poles by the windows and stirred in the breeze, as if they had been lying for half a century in dusky cupboards. Agnes Anne looked carefully to see if the darning showed, and decided that not even her grandmother could spy it out--how much less, then, the Doctor.
She was, however, annoyed that the tall, brass-faced clock in the corner, dated "Kilmaurs, 1695," could not be made to go. But she had a promise from Boyd Connoway that he would "take a look at her" as soon as he had attended to three gardens and docked the tails of a litter of promising puppies.
The Doctor bowed graciously over the hand of Miss Irma, and shook hands gravely with Sir Louis, who a second time had rubbed his finger on his black velvet suit, just to make assurance doubly sure.
The conversation followed a high plane of social commonplace.
"Yes," said Miss Irma, "it is true that our family has been a long time absent from the neighbourhood, but you are right in supposing that we mean to settle down here for some time."
Then she deigned to enter into particulars. She had her brother to bring up according to his rank, for, since there was no one else to undertake the charge, it fell to her lot. Luckily she had received a good education up to the time when she had the misfortune----
"Ah," said the Doctor quickly, "I understand."
He said nothing further in words, but his sympathetic silence conveyed a great deal, and was more eloquent and consolatory than most people's speech.
"And where were you educated?" asked the Doctor gently.
"My father sent me to the Ursuline Sisters in Paris," said Miss Irma calmly.
The Doctor was secretly astonished and much disappointed, but his face expressed nothing beyond his habitual good nature. He replied, "Then your father has had you brought up a Catholic, Miss Maitland?"
"Indeed, no," answered Miss Irma, "only he had often occasion to be away on his affairs, and to keep me out of mischief he left me with the Ursulines and my aunt the Abbess. At my father's death I might have stayed on with the good sisters, but I left because I was not allowed to see my brother."
"Then am I right in thinking that--that--in fact--you are a Presbyterian?" said the Doctor, playing with the inlaid snuffbox which he carried in his hand. The amount of time he occupied in tapping the lid and the invisibility of the pinches he had ever been seen to take were alike marvels in the district.
"I have no religious prejudices," said Miss Irma to the Doctor, in a calm, well-bred manner which must have secretly amused that distinguished theologian, fresh from editing the works of Manton.
"I did not speak of prejudices, dear young lady" (he spoke gently, yet with the thrill in his voice which showed how deeply he was moved), "but of belief, of religion, of principles of thought and action."
Miss Irma opened her eyes very wide. The sound of the Doctor's words came to her ears like the accents of an unknown tongue.
"The sisters were very good people," she said at last; "they give themselves a great deal of trouble----"
"What kind of trouble?" said the Doctor.
"Kneeling and scrubbing floors for one thing," said Miss Irma; "getting up at all hours, doing good works, praying, and burning candles to the Virgin."
"I should advise you," said the Doctor, with his most gentle accent, "to say as little as possible about that part of your experience here in Eden Valley."
Miss Irma looked exceedingly surprised.
"I thought I told you they were exceedingly good people. They were very kind to me, though they looked on me as a lost heretic. I am sure they said prayers for me many times a day!"
The Doctor looked more hopeful. He was thinking that after all he might make something of his strange parishioner, when the young lady recalled him by a repetition of her former declaration, "As I said, I have no religious prejudices!"
"No," said the Doctor a little sharply--for him, "but still each one of us ought to be fully persuaded in his own mind."
"And that means," Miss Irma answered, quick as a flash, "that most of us are fully persuaded according to our father and mother's mind, and the way they have brought us up. But then, you see, I never _was_ brought up. I know very well that my family were Presbyterians. Once I read about their sufferings in two great volumes by a Mr. Wodrow, or some such name. But then my grandfather lost most of his estates fighting for the King----"
"For the Popish Pretender," said the Doctor, who could speak no smooth things when it was a matter of the Revolution Settlement and the government of King George.
"For the man he believed to be king, while others stayed snugly at home," persisted Miss Irma. "Then my mother was a Catholic, and my father too busy to care----"
"My poor young maid," said the Doctor, "it is wonderful to see you as you are!"
And secretly the excellent man was planning out a campaign to lead this lamb into the fold of that Kirk of Scotland, for the purity of whose doctrine and intact spiritual independence her forefathers had shed their blood.
"At any rate," said he, rising and bending again over the girl's hand with old-fashioned politeness, "you will remember that your family pew is in the front of our laft--I mean in the gallery of the parish kirk of Eden Valley."
And the Doctor took his leave without ever remembering that he had failed in the principal part of his mission, having quite forgotten to find out by what means these two young things came to find themselves alone in the Great House of Marnhoul.


CHAPTER VIII
KATE OF THE SHORE
It was, I think, ten days after Agnes Anne had left us for the old house of the Maitlands when she came to me at the school-house. My father had Fred Esquillant in with him, and the two were busy with Sophocles. I was sitting dreaming with a book of old plays in my hand when Agnes Anne came in.
"Duncan," she said, "I am feared to bide this night at Marnhoul. And I think so is Miss Irma. Now I would rather not tell grandmother--so you must come!"
"Feared?" said I; "surely you never mean ghosts--and such nonsense, Agnes Anne--and you the daughter of a school-master!"
"It's the solid ghosts I am feared of," said Agnes Anne; "haste you, and ask leave of father. He is so busy, he will never notice. He has Freddy in with him, I hear."
So Agnes Anne and I went in together. We could see the man's head and the boy's bent close together, and turned from us so that the westering light could fall upon their books. Fred Esquillant was to be a great scholar and to do my father infinite credit when he went to the university. For me I was only a reader of English, a scribbler of verses in that language, a paltry essayist, with no sense of the mathematics and no more than an average classic. Therefore in the school I was a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water to my father.
"Duncan is coming with me to bide the night at Marnhoul," said Agnes Anne, "and he is going to take 'King George' with him to--scare the foxes!"
"From the hen-coops?" said my father, looking carelessly up. "Let him take care not to shoot himself then. He has no nicety of handling!"
I am sure that really he meant in the classics, for his thoughts were running that way and I could see that he was itching to be at it again with Freddy.
"Tell your mother," he said, adjusting his spectacles on his nose, "and please shut the door after you!"
Having thus obtained leave from the power-that-was, the matter was broken to my mother. She only asked if we had told John, and being assured of that, felt that her entire responsibility was cleared, and so subsided into the fifth volume of Sir Charles Grandison, where thrilling things were going on in the cedar parlour. It was my mother's favourite book, but was carefully laid aside when my grandmother came--nay, even concealed as conscientiously as I under