Chapter VIII
Comfort, solid comfort, best describes The Beeches, its inmates, and all appertaining to it and them. Solid comfort without luxury, ease without laziness, happiness without a positively cloying sweetness.
John Travers was not handsome, but comfortable-looking; his figure, perhaps, was becoming a thought too comfortable; but then John Travers was fifty-five, and plenty had been his lot for nigh upon eightfold of the proverbial seven years that go to make plenty a really established fact. Then, too, he gave way, perhaps somewhat injudiciously, to a liking for white waistcoats and rather large and conspicuous watch-chains.
Of Elizabeth Travers, his wife, little need be told in description, for much is learned of her ways and days in twenty-four hours. That she, too, was comfortable need hardly be said; else John, who was a devoted husband, would not have been so. But she was not in the least too comfortable to be a fitting wife for John Travers, or the truly motherly mother of his children. For surely a broad breast is the natural haven for young heads, when wearied of the very fulness of the joys of childhood, or stricken with its tragic, if fleeting griefs.
John and Elizabeth Travers had two sons and two daughters. What could be more comfortable than that? Is not “two of each” in all good things the very acme of satisfaction and contentment? The children themselves were comfortable, considering their years; for if ever there is a period more devoted than another to strange misgivings, fervent hopes, and acute sensibilities, that period is youth; and none of these characteristics can be said to be “comfortable” ones.
Digby, their first-born, now twenty-three years of age, and a student at Oxford, was enjoying the long vacation under the comfortable parental roof-tree. Of Francis, the second son, aged nineteen, was to be made what is known as a gentleman farmer—an ever-increasing interest in the somewhat laborious pursuits of tilling, ploughing, sowing, and harvesting, not to mention a love of animals, making apparent at a very early age the bent of the boy’s mind. That he had not Digby’s intellect was obvious to those who knew both brothers; but that Francis was going to do very well in his own line was everybody’s opinion. His enthusiasm for all bucolic pursuits, together with a keen—no, not a keen; there was nothing keen about Francis—together with a good, sound judgment of all things connected with them, was marked. If his eye lacked quick observation or keen appreciation, as it lighted on some matter of interest or beauty, it was steady, honest, trustworthy, and not without a certain shrewdness. And it were hard upon him to criticise the tendency of lip to part with lip; for there was nothing of weakness or indecision about the large, well-cut mouth, which could close firmly enough at such times when depth of thought or concentration of mind were required of him. Rather should the characteristic be looked upon as the natural consequence of open-air labour, of a nature that demands more oxygen than can in reason be expected to find its way to the lungs by the nasal channel alone; if the fact that to one who frequently studies the sky for signs of changes of weather with the long, earnest scrutiny bestowed by Francis Travers, was not in itself explanation enough for an ofttimes open mouth.
The daughters, Doris and Phyllis, aged sixteen and twelve years, were slim, fair-haired maidens. Doris, the elder, looked upon life with grave eyes, seeing only its serious side, and determinedly facing that aspect with resolute lips and somewhat pale cheeks, quaint and demure. Phyllis, on the other hand, while in no way boisterous—sharing, indeed, in some part her sister’s quietude of mind and demeanour—was rosily cheerful and a thorough child. It was quaint Doris’s aim to keep her thus; and odd it was to note the enforcement of the staid authority which the slender four years of seniority gave to the girl in the absence of their mother, or of their governess, Miss Manifold.
Miss Manifold—nicknamed “Sins and Wickedness” by Hugh and Teddie Le Mesurier—the daughter of a Lincolnshire squire, long since deceased, was a good woman, well liked by her two pupils, whose well-being she had sincerely at heart. At the present moment she was absent from The Beeches, being once more returned into the bosom of her family for the Midsummer holidays. This fact, meaning as it did freedom of will and action, combined with the pleasing circumstance that Hazel Le Mesurier’s impending visit was about to be realised, brought much rejoicing to the girls; for even sober Doris was not impervious to the delights of a few weeks’ unrestricted leisure, nor unmindful of the advantages of living for that short interval without the eye of supervision upon her every movement.
She and Phyllis were, for the fourth time this morning, taking a survey of the bedroom that had been allotted to their girl-guest—moving, changing, and rearranging articles of furniture or ornament to suit Hazel’s queer taste and odd fancy. The bed they had dragged before one of the windows, for Hazel had once confided to these two friends that she liked nothing better than to sleep with her head pillowed on the sill; only that it was not often that bed and sill chanced to stand in the necessary relative position one to the other. Also the bed must needs be wide enough to permit the full stretch of her limbs, when she had twisted herself to this crosswise position. She assured Doris and Phyllis that to gaze up at the stars until you fell asleep was conducive to the dreaming of the most lovely dreams, whilst the soft fanning of the summer night-air proved most pleasant and refreshing.
“And what if it rains?” her breathless auditors had asked.
“That is nice, too, in its way,” Hazel had made answer. “But once,” she added ruefully, “when I was sleeping so, I was so sound asleep that it did not wake me until my hair was drenched, and I had to get up and rub it with a towel for nearly two hours.”
“How your arms must have ached,” Doris said, eyeing the heavy brown mane, half in admiration, half in pity.
“And I was so sleepy,” Hazel continued, “that every time I stopped to rest my arms a moment I found myself nodding, with the towel in my lap.”
“Didn’t you have a bad cold the next day?” Phyllis asked.
“No, I never catch cold,” Hazel answered. “It is being so much in the open air, I suppose.”
The dressing-table, too, was never to block a window and obscure the view in Hazel’s room; and there must always be flowers upon it. Having ascertained that all was to her liking, Phyllis and Doris fared forth to the garden gate, rightly judging that, had their brother found Hazel ready to accompany him, the two must long ere this have made their appearance.
It was a pretty view that stretched away before The Beeches. As they stood at the entrance gate, which faced the road, the girls looked upon a wide, sunny tract of undulating common ground, ablaze with yellow gorse. Trending toward the west in long dark line was a ridge of fir-trees sharply defined and almost black against the even blue of the sky, but merging into soft and softer gradations of consistency and colour on the wood’s southern extremity, its outline finally well-nigh lost in a mist of feathery larches. To the east was a low range of hills with brown, thatched, and red-tiled cottages and farmhouses dotted at intervals at its base, whilst a rivulet that flowed past the Travers’s estate, forming indeed the boundary on its right flank, wended its way in and out, twisting and twining, a white ribbon shot with sunlight, till lost to sight in the valley.
And there, round the bend came the trap. Hazel, perched high, her hands encased in Digby Travers’s thick gloves, was driving, to her own evident delight and self-importance, having successfully eluded her companion’s practically demonstrated teaching by declaring that she did not care what was the orthodox way of manipulating the reins; that she and the horse understood one another well enough.
Hazel was delighted with her room, and had no suggestions to offer respecting any change in the position of its furniture. Everything was perfect, she frankly told her gratified friends. Her quick eye had lighted upon a tiny escritoire standing in one corner, and a thought flashed into her mind, an idea as novel to her as it was pleasing. She grasped the delightful idea, seized upon it, and stowed it carefully away in a corner of her brain, until such time as she should have leisure to look into the alluring possibilities it suggested—to cogitate without fear of interruption.
Just now, with very active assistance from Doris and Phyllis, Hazel was removing the dust of travel from her person.
When the three girls descended to the dining-room for luncheon, they found the rest of the family already there assembled; and Hazel received a warm kiss from the motherly Mrs. Travers, whilst Mr. Travers took her right hand, and Francis possessed himself of her left; Doris and Phyllis hovered about her; Digby looked on approvingly. Having been thus duly welcomed and received into the bosom of the family, Hazel, as the party seated themselves around the table, addressed herself to Francis.
“Well, farmer,” she said, with bonne camaraderie, “and how are the crops?”
“They are coming on all right,” he replied, somewhat sheepishly. He liked Hazel; but considered her a terrible little tease. She had always laughed at his manner of walking, declaring that he swayed backwards and forwards, as a sailor will roll from side to side.
“It comes of always imagining that you are stepping over ploughed furrows,” she told him, “just as a horse is trained to step high by having obstacles put in his way.”
“And the live stock?” she went on.
“Flourishing, thank you,” he returned.
“Hens sitting?” she asked. “And oh, Francis, did that baby pig learn to grunt properly, the one that loved wallowing in the mire?”
But here her hostess claimed the girl’s attention, and Francis settled himself to the business in hand—luncheon—inwardly resolving to be even with Hazel yet.
The day passed pleasantly enough, resting with books and work in the shade during the afternoon, walking through the sunlit meadows when the heat of the day was subsiding. In the evening the young folk entertained each other with music, Hazel singing some quaint songs in her own way—an adorable little way in the opinion of Paul Charteris, an opinion shared to-night most fervently by Digby Travers.
Soon after ten o’clock Hazel found herself alone at last, with hours before her, supposing she could manage to keep awake, for meditation upon the scheme that had come to her at sight of the little writing-table. Her own room at home did not boast such a convenience, and it is to be presumed that the publicity of the position of the few desks and escritoires about the house had prevented the idea from occurring to Hazel’s mind before.
She would write a story—a thrilling, exciting story—and make all the money she could possibly want! Here, all alone in the undisturbed quiet of her own room, she would write diligently, and her week’s visit might result in half-a-dozen stories for Teddie to take to some editor!
Hazel was perturbed by no fear that she might lack talent and ability, but it was not long before she perceived that she was mistaken in the amount of work that she could accomplish in so short a time. She wisely refrained from installing herself at the desk that night, thinking that she could not do better in these first hours, while all was exciting and new in this plan of work, than get to bed as quickly as possible, and devote an hour or two to the evolving of a plot, and to the construction of her first story, before sleep should come upon her.
So far from thinking it hard to conjure up matter upon which to base her tale, the difficulty seemed to lie in the fact that she must perforce write only one at a time, if she wished to be conscientious and systematic. All through the washing of her face and hands, and the brushing of her hair, mechanically performed, her head was teeming with all manner of stirring incidents, which rose up in her imagination, refusing to be placed in any nice order of sequence; inconsistent with one another; contending together—obviously “copy” for many stories of widely different natures.
“And then there is my style,” the would-be authoress reflected, as she sank down at length among the pillows. “I wonder what my style will be: whether I have to find one—to settle upon one of many—or whether a particular one will come to me of itself.”
And this was as far as Hazel got that first night.