Countess Kate Part 5

They were not fond of any children; and it upset all their ways very much to have to make room for a little girl, her maid, and her governess; but still, if she had been such a little girl as they had been, and always like the well-behaved children whom they saw in drawing-rooms, they would have known what kind of creature had come into their hands.

But was it not very hard on them that their niece should turn out a little wild harum-scarum creature, such as they had never dreamt of-- really unable to move without noises that startled Lady Jane's nerves, and threw Lady Barbara into despair at the harm they would do--a child whose untutored movements were a constant eye-sore and distress to them; and though she could sometimes be bright and fairy- like if unconstrained, always grew abrupt and uncouth when under restraint--a child very far from silly, but apt to say the silliest things--learning quickly all that was mere head-work, but hopelessly or obstinately dull at what was to be done by the fingers--a child whose ways could not be called vulgar, but would have been completely tom-boyish, except for a certain timidity that deprived them of the one merit of courage, and a certain frightened consciousness that was in truth modesty, though it did not look like it? To have such a being to endure, and more than that, to break into the habits of civilized life, and the dignity of a lady of rank, was no small burden for them; but they thought it right, and made up their minds to bear it.

Of course it would have been better if they had taken home the little orphan when she was dest.i.tute and an additional weight to Mr.

Wardour; and had she been actually in poverty or distress, with no one to take care of her, Lady Barbara would have thought it a duty to provide for her: but knowing her to be in good hands, it had not then seemed needful to inflict the child on her sister, or to conquer her own distaste to all connected with her unhappy brother James. No one had ever thought of the little Katharine Aileve Umfraville becoming the head of the family; for then young Lord Umfraville was in his full health and strength.

And why DID Lady Barbara only now feel the charge of the child a duty? Perhaps it was because, without knowing it, she had been brought up to make an idol of the state and consequence of the earldom, since she thought breeding up the girl for a countess inc.u.mbent on her, when she had not felt tender compa.s.sion for the brother's orphan grandchild. So somewhat of the pomps of this world may have come in to blind her eyes; but whatever she did was because she thought it right to do, and when Kate thought of her as cross, it was a great mistake. Lady Barbara had great control of temper, and did everything by rule, keeping herself as strictly as she did everyone else except Lady Jane; and though she could not like such a troublesome little incomprehensible wild cat as Katharine, she was always trying to do her strict justice, and give her whatever in her view was good or useful.

But Kate esteemed it a great holiday, when, as sometimes happened, Aunt Barbara went out to spend the evening with some friends; and she, under promise of being very good, used to be Aunt Jane's companion.

Those were the times when her tongue took a holiday, and it must be confessed, rather to the astonishment and confusion of Lady Jane.

"Aunt Jane, do tell me about yourself when you were a little girl?"

"Ah! my dear, that does not seem so very long ago. Time pa.s.ses very quickly. To think of such a great girl as you being poor James's grandchild!"

"Was my grandpapa much older than you, Aunt Jane?"

"Only three years older, my dear."

"Then do tell me how you played with him?"

"I never did, my dear; I played with your Aunt Barbara."

"Dear me how stupid! One can't do things without boys."

"No, my dear; boys always spoil girls' play, they are so rough."

"Oh! no, no, Aunt Jane; there's no fun unless one is rough--I mean, not rough exactly; but it's no use playing unless one makes a jolly good noise."

"My dear," said Lady Jane, greatly shocked, "I can't bear to hear you talk so, nor to use such words."

"Dear me, Aunt Jane, we say 'Jolly' twenty times a day at St.

James's, and n.o.body minds."

"Ah! yes, you see you played with boys."

"But our boys are not rough, Aunt Jane," persisted Kate, who liked hearing herself talk much better than anyone else. "Mary says Charlie is a great deal less riotous than I am, especially since he went to school; and Armyn is too big to be riotous. Oh dear, I wish Mr. Brown would send Armyn to London; he said he would be sure to come and see me, and he is the jolliest, most delightful fellow in the world!"

"My dear child," said Lady Jane in her soft, distressed voice, "indeed that is not the way young ladies talk of--of--boys."

"Armyn is not a boy, Aunt Jane; he's a man. He is a clerk, you know, and will get a salary in another year."

"A clerk!"

"Yes; in Mr. Brown's office, you know. Aunt Jane, did you ever go out to tea?"

"Yes, my dear; sometimes we drank tea with our little friends in the dolls' tea-cups."

"Oh! you can't think what fun we have when Mrs. Brown asks us to tea.

She has got the nicest garden in the world, and a greenhouse, and a great squirt-syringe, I mean, to water it; and we always used to get it, till once, without meaning it, I squirted right through the drawing-room window, and made such a puddle; and Mrs. Brown thought it was Charlie, only I ran in and told of myself, and Mrs. Brown said it was very generous, and gave me a Venetian weight with a little hermit in a snow-storm; only it is worn out now, and won't snow, so I gave it to little Lily when we had the whooping-cough."

By this time Lady Jane was utterly ignorant what the gabble was about, except that Katharine had been in very odd company, and done very strange things with those boys, and she gave a melancholy little sound in the pause; but Kate, taking breath, ran on again -

"It is because Mrs. Brown is not used to educating children, you know, that she fancies one wants a reward for telling the truth; I told her so, but Mary thought it would vex her, and stopped my mouth.

Well, then we young ones--that is, Charlie, and Sylvia, and Armyn, and I--drank tea out on the lawn. Mary had to sit up and be company; but we had such fun! There was a great old laurel tree, and Armyn put Sylvia and me up into the fork; and that was our nest, and we were birds, and he fed us with strawberries; and we pretended to be learning to fly, and stood up flapping our frocks and squeaking, and Charlie came under and danced the branches about. We didn't like that; and Armyn said it was a shame, and hunted him away, racing all round the garden; and we scrambled down by ourselves, and came down on the slope. It is a long green slope, right down to the river, all smooth and turfy, you know; and I was standing at the top, when Charlie comes slyly, and saying he would help the little bird to fly, gave me one push, and down I went, roll, roll, tumble, tumble, till Sylvia REALLY thought she heard my neck crack! Wasn't it fun?"

"But the river, my dear!" said Lady Jane, shuddering.

"Oh! there was a good flat place before we came to the river, and I stopped long before that! So then, as we had been the birds of the air, we thought we would be the fishes of the sea; and it was nice and shallow, with dear little caddises and river cray-fish, and great British pearl-sh.e.l.ls at the bottom. So we took off our shoes and stockings, and Charlie and Armyn turned up their trousers, and we had such a nice paddling. I really thought I should have got a British pearl then; and you know there were some in the breast-plate of Venus."

"In the river! Did your cousin allow that?"

"Oh yes; we had on our old blue checks; and Mary never minds anything when Armyn is there to take care of us. When they heard in the drawing-room what we had been doing, they made Mary sing 'Auld Lang Syne,' because of 'We twa hae paidlit in the burn frae morning sun till dine;' and whenever in future times I meet Armyn, I mean to say,

'We twa hae paidlit in the burn Frae morning sun till dine; We've wandered many a weary foot Sin auld lang syne.'

Or perhaps I shall be able to sing it, and that will be still prettier."

And Kate sat still, thinking of the prettiness of the scene of the stranger, alone in the midst of numbers, in the splendid drawing- rooms, hearing the sweet voice of the lovely young countess at the piano, singing this touching memorial of the simple days of childhood.

Lady Jane meanwhile worked her embroidery, and thought what wonderful disadvantages the poor child had had, and that Barbara really must not be too severe on her, after she had lived with such odd people, and that it was very fortunate that she had been taken away from them before she had grown any older, or more used to them.

Soon after, Kate gave a specimen of her manners with boys. When she went into the dining-room at luncheon time one wet afternoon, she heard steps on the stairs behind her aunt's, and there appeared a very pleasant-looking gentleman, followed by a boy of about her own age.

"Here is our niece," said Lady Barbara. "Katharine, come and speak to Lord de la Poer."

Kate liked his looks, and the way in which he held out his hand to her; but she knew she should be scolded for her awkward greeting: so she put out her hand as if she had no use of her arm above the elbow, hung down her head, and said "--do;" at least no more was audible.

But there was something comfortable and encouraging in the grasp of the strong large hand over the foolish little fingers; and he quite gave them to his son, whose shake was a real treat; the contact with anything young was like meeting a follow-countryman in a foreign land, though neither as yet spoke.

She found out that the boy's name was Ernest, and that his father was taking him to school, but had come to arrange some business matters for her aunts upon the way. She listened with interest to Lord de la Poer's voice, for she liked it, and was sure he was a greater friend there than any she had before seen. He was talking about Giles--that was her uncle, the Colonel in India; and she first gathered from what was pa.s.sing that her uncle's eldest and only surviving son, an officer in his own regiment, had never recovered a wound he had received at the relief of Lucknow, and that if he did not get better at Simlah, where his mother had just taken him, his father thought of retiring and bringing him home, though all agreed that it would be a very unfortunate thing that the Colonel should be obliged to resign his command before getting promoted; but they fully thought he would do so, for this was the last of his children; another son had been killed in the Mutiny, and two or three little girls had been born and died in India.

Kate had never known this. Her aunts never told her anything, nor talked over family affairs before her; and she was opening her ears most eagerly, and turning her quick bright eyes from one speaker to the other with such earnest attention, that the guest turned kindly to her, and said, "Do you remember your uncle?"

"Oh dear no! I was a little baby when he went away."

Kate never used DEAR as an adjective except at the beginning of a letter, but always, and very unnecessarily, as an interjection; and this time it was so emphatic as to bring Lady Barbara's eyes on her.

"Did you see either Giles or poor Frank before they went out to him?"

"Oh dear no!"

This time the DEAR was from the confusion that made her always do the very thing she ought not to do.

"No; my niece has been too much separated from her own relations,"

said Lady Barbara, putting this as an excuse for the "Oh dears."