Copyright Story. Cousin Anne.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXI, Issue XVI, 17 October 1903, Page 55

Copyright Story. Cousin Anne.

By ‘

THEODORE WILSON WILSON.

(Author of “T* Bacca Queen.”>

I. The pink and white petals were tumbling from the apple tree, not in a shower, but one by one —pensively—sorrowfully, because their work was done, and nothing needed them any more. A few tumbled on to the lap of Ursula Tennant, as she rested for those last few moments in the dear old garden.

She gathered the petals together affectionately—so light, so crisp, so delicate were they! And though the sound of wheels on the gravel warned her that her last few moments were indeed over, she could not find it in her heart to fling them to their fate: so she slipped them hastily into her purse—such a very shabby, empty little purse, and clasped them in with the half sovereign—her only gold. Then she jumped up and ran across the lawn, just as Cousin Anne came out, and the carriage drove up to the front door. “Ah, there you are child!”

Miss Davenant was tall, and rather severe looking when her face was at rest. She had quantities of wavy hair with a mother of pearl sheen on it, large, deeply-sunken eyes which shone with a strange brilliance when she smiled; but looked impenetrably dark at other times, and a worn, firmlv-set mouth. She had difficulty in reaching the wide porch, so stiff was she with rheumatism.

“Good-bye, dear, dear Cousin Anne!” cried the girl. “Oh, you have been good to me! This visit has been one long delicious dream! I have never in all my life had such a blissful time!”

Ursula threw her arms upwards, and drew Miss Davenant’s face down to her for a long good-bye kiss. “And you, child —you have made me almost feel young again! I shall miss you every hour I think! But there—now that you have once found your Way here, you must come again!” “If I only could! But I must be good now, and do a little grubbing! An April at Bassenthwaite will give me strength for at least eleven months* grind at Liverpool—amongst my family!” The girl laughed, but her mouth gave a mournful little pout at the prospect. The maid had opened the carriage door, the modest little trunk was already up in front, and the old coachman was looking down anxiously. “So sorry, darling, I dare not venture to the station, but take this with you.” She placed a precisely folded note in Ursula’s hand.

“Oh, Cousin Anne!” the girl gasped. “It’s nothing, nothing, child! Get a frock or two to remember your old cousin by! Jump in!”

Her manner was so peremptory, that the girl obeyed, and in another moment she was away, driving along by the edge of the shining Bassenthwaite lake towards Keswick station, while the morning sun was played enchant ingly in shadow and shine on the great bosom of Skiddaw.

Ursula opened the note. “Twenty!” she ejaculated. Her highest imagination had only reached to five. So she folded it again in its creases, and clasped it carefully in with the half sovereign and the apple blossom n. Miss Davenant waited at the door until the sound of the carriage wheels had died away. The garden seemed all at once to have grown quiet and empty. She limped along the tiled verandah to look at her plants, and having plucked off a faded leaf or two here and there without much method, she turned and entered the old billiard room through a French window. It was still early, and the maids had not yet done their usual work. The great table seemed as empty as the green outside —the balls were lying as they had been left—they looked helpless and inade quate. Her orderly soul discovered two empty coffee cups close together on the mantelshelf (Miss Davenant never drank coffee), and then she smiled as she took down a long length of bright pink ribbon from the cue stand. “Careless child!” she breathed, as she carefully pulled out the rumples and folded it together. ‘’Miss Davenant!” She started. “Charlie!” “What time does she go?” “Gone!” “Gone?” He was bitterly disappointed. “Yes, her people urged the early train, so we had a scramble, and I hurried her away.” Now night after night lately it had seemed imperative to stroll on after dinner from the dull old Hall for a game of billiards. And what billiards! What merriment, what chaff! How small she seemed as she hoisted herself on to the edge of the table! How often she appealed for the indispensable jigger! How short her breaks! What admiration she expressed for his own performances? And Miss Davenant, in the big armchair, dressed in her usual black satin and grey-white lace, seated safely out of harm’s way, tatting her interminable edgings—surely she too had enjoyed the chatter and the fun!

“Look here, Miss Davenant, you’ve seen, of course ”

“I think so!” She tat down with difficulty on the large cushioned bench which ran along one side of the room.

“Of course I must follow her—go to her home, and get the thing properly settled !”

“Are you consulting me?” “Well, I don’t know ” “Nor do I, my dear boy? It you love her, that is the point!” “If!” He smiled to think that Miss Davenant should think that small word necessary. He came across, and held out his hand. “Good-bye. Miss Davenant! You’ve been awfully good to me—to ns. don’t you know! You’ll wish me luck?” And she. looking up at the hearty young Englishman, with his face alight with open air health, and Love’s bright dawn, caught the reflection on her own tired countenance, and returned, quietly. “Luck and Pluck, and Common-sense, Charlie!” Then handing him the ribbon she had been so carefully folding, she added: “And take her that, and—if the opportunity arises, give her my best wishes!" 111. On the third day Charlie Daly returned. and threw himself down on a hard chair, hardly. “My dear boy, those chairs were not made yesterday!” Miss Davenant looked anxious—possibly regarding the fate of the chair. She poured tea into the delicately thin shallow cups. “You’ll have tea, Charlie’” “Thanks!” He drew nearer, and handed the hot cake to his hostess. Then they discussed a new variety of roses, which Sir Robert, his father, was interested in. Roses comprised the sum total of Sir Robert Dalv*s interests.

“Well?” Miss Davenant remarked at last. “And what did she sav?”

He slipped one leg from off the other, and put his cup down on the table.

“Oh, she —that is to say—J never asked her!”

A look of keen distress twitched Miss Davenant’s face suddenly.

“Ah!” she ejaculated, as if acute pain had touched her. In the short silence that follow, it seemed that the woman had forgotten the presence of the man—as if a long past was clouding her pre sent.

“Miss Davenant!” she was recalled with a start.

“Miss Davenant,” the voice was self accusing. “Listen! I love her, love her more than any man ever loved woman before!” Miss Davenant inelined her head seriously.

“It isn’t her poverty—her home—l mean I’m not, I hope, a downright snob! I knew that she could not hare money. Why, I loved her all the better because she wore that little faded green frock, made, well don’t you know, not exactly by a fashionable dressmaker. And the white muslin, and the pink one she had on the other night, with the black velvet round her neck because she hadn’t any jewels—and I knew her little hands were all worn with work—not like the girls about here, and, fact is, I’ve come back to breathe!”

Miss Davenant again inclined her head. She seemed to understand perfectly.

"When a man has had a cold plunge after the Turkish, he seems to want time to gasp! Excuse the simile.” “And you did not find things quite ”

“Miss Davenant. let me be candid. Iliad no conception that anybody, I mean of our sort, don’t you know, could live in such a desperate style. I tell you I found the household a mere riot! The poor child had evidently mentioned my personality, and when I arrived, they all seemed to immediately divine what I had come for. I tell you, servants, brutes of school boys, giggling young sisters, an exasperating Mamma, and a painfully apologetic Papa, each after his or her own kind, proclaimed me the anxious lover!”

Miss Davenant again nodded, and murmured under her breath, “Poor Edward Tennant!”

“The moment I appeared, they seemed to think the business a settled thing, and. Miss Davenant, the child positively quivered with shame. I caught her looking at me now and then with an appeal that nearly drove me wild. And I did try to bear it bravely! I never moved a muscle in spite of the hints I kept hearing. and I tried to look as though I noticed nothing out of the common, and as if I was used to the evening meal scramble. I did not even obi oct when Mrs. Tennant, in an excess of politeness, insisted on helping me before Ursula! And she. she was loyal as an Englishwoman to her family; smoothing over their gaucheries. changing awkward subjects, nipping sisterly and brotherly bickerings in the bud. and finishing up by trying desperately to escape when they pointedly left us alone together. Oh, it was brutal!” “Ah. then you did have her alone to yourself? That was something!" One might almost have imagined a jealous tone in her voice.

“That was it! That was the ghastly part. She looked at me for a moment, and before I could speak, began without a scrap of her old enthusiastic manner: “‘Mr. Daly, do go away! You never ought to have come! We are not in the least what you expected. Please don’t shame me any more by staying. I mean I can’t liear it. You made a great mistake to come!’

“Then she looked up at me with her great blue eyes, and I was just going to protest that nothing mattered, to say what I had come to say, when we both heard clearly out in the passage a boy’s voice saying: ‘They are at it this very moment, and Mamma says he is awfully rich, and will be a Baronet some day, and Ursula will be a Lady, and -’ And then someone said *Hush!’ “But she, my Ursula, trembled as if someone had struck her. and she put o it her hand and cried: ‘Oh, will von PLEASE go, Mr. Daly’’

“And I—fool! Brute that I was- I took a sudden kind of fright, and I really can’t tell you how it happened. Imt I held her hand for a moment, and then fled—literallv fled!”

Again Miss Davenant’s chair was in great danger.

“I see!” “Tell me, Miss Davenant,” and he leaned forward and laid his hand on her

knee. “Tell me, you who know what a second-rate sort of dog I am—Have I the pluck to go on? Can I stand tlio situation for better for worse? Dare 1 take the girl? Can I make her happy, come what may ? Do you think that as time went on I should turn again and rend her, like a miserable coward, if I acquire sueh a family-in-law?’’ “Charlie!” she lingered over the name as if she loved it. “Just listen an instant !”

He looked at the stately old lady before him, and it struck him that she was growing older, this Miss Davenant to .whom he had been “Charlie” as long as ever lie remembered. Her hands worked nervously, but there seemed a set purpose in the stern face. He turned towards her respectfully and bowed his head.

"I once knew a girl—quite a young girl, who went on a long happy visit, and met—the love of her life. Her chattering relations with whom she had been staying gossiped home the gossip, and to make a long story short, when he went to her home, the household was prepared for his advent precisely as you have described. But there was this difference. The young girl herself was excited. In a fit of madness she joined in the wild romps inaugurated by the rest, and her father, a rough, well-meaning, country gentleman, realising nothing regarding the feelings possible in an exceedingly proper, and highly-cultured only sou from the South, increased rather than sulxlued the family mirth. "He spent one evening—that was all— He never saw the girl alone. Everything was too riotous. He returned to London. 'flie gill never saw him, nor heard from him again.” Charles Daly divined that Miss Davenant was speaking of herself, yet he could not help ejaculating: “Cad!” “No, mv dear, no! T think not. She. was greatly to blame!” A blush deeplydyed the old lady's stern face. “Perhaps he wanted moral courage—perhaps he was just a little wanting in—in eonsidera t ion! ” “And that is all the story?” “Yes, that is all! It was a great pity. He never married, yet lie had got on well —made his mark. Is in fact a Cabinet Minister now!” Hastily Charlie ran over in his mind the present Cabinet. “I have followed his career ever since,” she continued, giving herself unconsciously away-. I rejoice when the papers praise him, and when they- speak ill of him 1 am sorry. Then it is tliat I think 1 might have been a comfort to him!” (She smiled as she realised what she had said. “Ah, Charlie, think your business well over, and may God defend the right!” The young man rose. “You have taken the scales from my eyes, Miss Davenant, and I am grateful. It will not be my fault if you are not some day my “Cousin Anne.” And left alone Miss Davenant whispered to herself: •'Poor little girl—poor little girl!” Then she leaned forward on the table, and said softly, “Oh, my God, bless them! Grant me the joy of saving these two children from treading the long, long path that I have travelled!” IV. Everybody knew that when Charlie Daly had once made up his mind ho was sts firm as a rock—or obstinate as a mule, as bis intimates put it. Therefore, he provided himself with an engagement ring, and set forth onee more to the Liverpool suburb, to that thoroughly desirable residence inhabited by the Tennants. He walked boldly up the weedy little drive to the front door, with its blotched green paint, and its rusty bell.

The bell was out of order, as the untidy servant, grinning broadly, informed him when apologisinb for keeping him Wailing.

But he set Ids lips, determined that no difficulty, no perplexing adventure should daunt him. His Princess was immured behind the stucco, and not all the dragons of shabbiness. or self conscious gentility, should drive him away. So he, accustomed to his father's deferential staff, asked the grinning servant for Miss Tennant. “Yes, she'll lie in, Sir, and if you'll step thia way. Sir, I'll tell her, Sir!” He did as he was bid, and followed the manifestly excited domestic into the drawing room.

It was an unmistakably shabby- room. Yet, left alone for an instant to glanee round, it struck him that it was not quite as bad as he had imagined. The pictures were shocking, but as he eaught the titles of the books lying on the polished, oval mahogany table, he knew, though not much of a reader himself, that these were real books, and that some people had evidently been reading them.

Then he began to tremble, and actually turned rosy red under his tan, as he recognised a piece of fancy-work, lying crumpled up on the dingy sofa, the needle planted at a most dangerous angle. “Miss Ursula!” came the mysterious voice of Martha at Ursula's bedroom door. Hastily she unlocked it. “Mr. Daly, again, Miss Ursula!” Martha nobly tried to control her voice, but she could not subdue its triumphant tone. Ursula turned as white as her own uncooked pastry. “Where is mamma?” “Oh, the Mistress has gone down to him, Miss.” “Thank you, Martha,” said the girl. Then she turned into her room again. Sl.e sat down on the bed for a. moment, and clasped her hands together. She had meant to change her frock, but the big apron was still covering her from neck to wrists, and down to the hem of her skirt. “If he really ” she began to argue to herself. “No, no,” she said. “No, he must not! Must not! And mamma will be saving—■ Oh!” At the though of what her mother might possibly be saying, she jumped up, and fled downstairs. At -he end of the passage, however, she wavered. The door was ajar, and she could dis-

tinctly hear her mother’s strident tones. “And WHAT a wet day, Mr. Daly, to venture; It IS brave of you? I am sure we are all very much honoured that yon should have taken so much trouble to call. My daughter will be down directly. She is so desperately busy just now with bazaar work. Really, I tell her sometimes that committees have no mercy—that I must stop all this work, morning, noon, and night. Now, don’t you think, Mr. Daly, that for a girl like Ursula ” A bit of sheer temper rose in the girl's heart, and she literally stalked into the room. Charlie Daly rose, and stepped forward gallantly. Despite the tmexpected apparition of his apron-enveloped sweetheart, a glad light rose in his face. “How do you do, Miss Tenant?” Simple words, yet meaning so much. “Oh, quite well, thank you!” she returned, the hot temper flushing her cheeks and making her eyes sparkle. “I am extremely busy. I have been making puddings and pies all the morning, and I am tidying out my room this afternoon!” “My dear child!” laughed her mother warningly. “It must be delightful to be able to do so many things!” said Charlie, politely.

“Delightful when one must! There is nothing more delightful than real hard work!” she said desperately. She noticed the work lying on the sofa, and stopped to fold it together. He did not quite know what to say next. Evidently flint had been struck. He wished the mother would have the sense to leave them.

“Please 'urn, cook would like to speak to you,” said Martha, mendaciously, opening the door. Martha was a person of considerable penetration. So with apologies, and knowing glances, Mrs. Tennant was obliged to depart. “Why did you come?” the girl exclaimed fiercely. Then she blushed at her own stupidity in so framing the question.

“Why? You know perfectly well why I have eome, Miss Ursula! And what is more, I won’t be put off again!” He went up to her, and took her hand, but she pulled it away petulantly. “But I will put you off! I tell you, you had no right to come!” she burst forth. “You don't in the least know what you arc doing! You have no conception how sordid wo all are! How you would hate the lot of us if you really knew us! You

would regret every day of your life that you ever had anything to do with me!” “Do you love me, Ursula?” His voice was strong and deep, and be laid his hand firmly on her shoulder—on the brown hoi la nd apron. “That is not the point.” “It is exactly the point. There is no other point!” “I tell you we are a miserable, untidy, quarrelsome family, and I have the worst temper of any of them.” She looked up at him defiantly. “Do you love me?” he again demanded.

She marked a line with her finger on the dust lying on the black mantelshelf, and made no reply.

“See! This is the second time I have brought this to return to you, or rather to ask you to let me keep it!” He drew out the pink ribbon, and held it towards her.

“Thank you. I was wondering where it was. Ccusin Anne will think me careless as usual.” She laughed nervously, trying to speak in ordinary tone.

“You need someone to look after you!” ‘‘lndeed!” She. tried to make her tone sound proud and independent, but Ursula was not the right type of girl to play the part she had so rigidly set herself. Somehow the voice faltered in spite of her.

“It's no use, Ursula. Better give in with a good grace, darling. Quick, before your mother returns!” He laughed in sheer buoyant delight, and kissed her emphatically. “Oh, why DID you?” and she seemed on the point of crying. “Because, my darling, you are my very own,”- —he placed the ring on her finger —“and perhaps also because I do so want to call Miss Davenant ‘Cousin Anne!’” And then, in spite of herself, Ursula laughed with pure happiness.