The Young Clementina (13 page)

I rode slowly across the field toward a gate and found myself in a narrow muddy lane which led at right angles up the hill and down to the farm. A girl was standing in the lane; she was covered with mud from head to foot and looked somewhat dazed.

“I say, have you seen my horse?” she inquired anxiously. “A bay with two white stockings—the brute fell with me and then bolted. I was stunned for the moment.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I don't think so—my head feels a bit queer.”

Just at that moment there was the snarling sound of a kill, it seemed to come from the direction of the ravine. The girl raised her head and listened.

“Blast that horse,” she said, “I haven't missed a kill this season.”

I did not share her feelings. I had enjoyed the run immensely, but I had no wish to be in at the death. Fortunately I knew enough about the game to conceal such unworthy sentiments from my new acquaintance.

“Well, it's over,” she said. “I suppose we had better make for the farm.”

We walked slowly down the hill together toward the farm-house from which we had started. Fortunately it was quite near, for the hunt had gone full circle. We talked, as we went along, in a friendly manner. She admired my mount, and cursed her own.

“You're a stranger, aren't you?” she inquired. “I know most of the regulars. I'm staying for the winter with my aunt, Lady Bournesworth—I suppose you know my uncle and aunt, they seem to know everybody.”

“Then I must be nobody,” I replied smiling. The girl amused me rather, she was so extremely naïve and her airs of a woman of the world were so transparent.

We had reached the farm by this time; the yard was cluttered with gleaming cars, some of them trying to turn under the direction of a farm boy who looked as if he knew more about farm-carts than motors.

“Talk of an angel,” said my companion suddenly. “There's Aunt Anne in the Daimler, bless her heart! I'll introduce you, shall I? She always wants to know everybody.”

She hurried across the yard and poked her head into the window of a huge, old-fashioned Daimler which had backed precariously into a manure heap. I had no wish to be introduced to Lady Bournesworth, but I could hardly refuse the honor, so I waited for a little while to see what would happen. The field straggled into the yard; little groups of people on foot or on horseback drifted down the hill, talking excitedly. The yard became unpleasantly congested; grooms ran hither and thither ducking under horses' noses and avoiding their heels. I moved away from the vicinity of a meek-looking horse with a red ribbon on its tail.

“There you are, Miss!” said Sim's voice, at my elbow. “I wondered where you 'ad got to—a beautiful kill, Miss.”

Clementina was just behind him; her shoulder was muddy, and her hat had vanished, but her eyes were bright with excitement. I saw that there was not much wrong with her and decided not to inquire about her muddy condition. I was beginning to know the child now—she hated a fuss.

“There's nothing to wait for, is there?” she said, drawing back from the crowd. “We can go out the back way, can't we, Sim?”

Sim agreed that we could. I glanced over at the Daimler and saw that it was maneuvering out of the gate in the opposite direction—Lady Bournesworth had evidently no desire to make my acquaintance. I was neither glad nor sorry. I followed Sim and Clementina down the back lane.

You went splendidly,” I said to Clementina, as we rode home together through the muddy lanes with Sim behind, walking his horse.

“You didn't do so badly yourself, Aunt Charlotte.”

I looked at Clementina and saw that she was smiling at me. I was absurdly elated at the child's praise. It was the first gleam of friendliness that I had seen. Something warned me not to notice the difference, not to force the small opening that had appeared in her armor. It was difficult to hide my pleasure and to maintain a detached air, for I had been trying to make friends with Clementina for weeks and had failed lamentably. Here at last was a faint sign of recognition—I must not misuse it.

“I used to ride a lot at one time,” I said quite casually. “When your father was at school I always exercised his pony. And once or twice, when I could get hold of a mount, we hunted together. But of course I haven't ridden for a long time—years and years.”

“Why didn't you come and stay when Mummy was here?” she asked.

I was silent for a few moments wondering how to reply. I did not want to push her back into herself, but it was a difficult question to answer.

“Lizzie says you didn't like Mummy,” she added.

“That isn't true,” I said hastily, “and Lizzie had no business to say so. It is not wise to discuss that kind of thing with servants, Clementina.”

“Well, I shan't be able to talk to Lizzie much longer—she told me you were sending her away.”

“Don't discuss things with any of them,” I said quite gently.

“I only do it when I can't find out things from other people,” she replied in an indifferent tone.

“Don't do it anymore. If you want to know anything, ask me. I will tell you.”

“Tell me that then,” she said quickly. “Why didn't you come?”

“Because I love Hinkleton so much, Clementina. It was my home, you see. And I found it so hard to go back again to my poky little flat in London among all the smuts and the dirt and the noise. It made me discontented to come here.”

I saw that she understood. She didn't say anything for a few minutes and we trotted on in silence. The winter afternoon was closing in, but there was a queer ghostly light in the sky which shone upon the snow-sprinkled fields and hedges so that the land seemed brighter than the sky—it was almost as if what light there was emanated from the snow. I was meditating upon the strange effect, and had almost forgotten our conversation when Clementina spoke again.

“I thought you did not come because Mummy had wronged you,” she said suddenly.

“Wronged me?”

“Yes, Daddy said she had wronged you, and I wondered what it meant. He said to Mummy one day, ‘Of course you hate Charlotte. People always hate those they have wronged.'” She quoted the words carefully in her precise little voice.

“Mummy didn't wrong me,” I said, startled and dismayed. “You can't have understood the words properly. When grown-up people talk to each other it is difficult for you to understand—you shouldn't listen.”

“I was there, and I couldn't help hearing. And I understood the words all right, although I didn't know what they meant. Of course I knew you didn't really mean it when you said I was to ask you anything I liked, and you would tell me.”

“I did mean it, Clementina,” I replied quickly. “But I don't understand the words myself so I can't tell you what they mean. Can I?”

“Honor bright?” she asked.

“Honor bright,” I replied solemnly.

She dropped the subject without another word. She never pestered you with questions like some children do.

“I like being called Clementina,” she said.

“It is a pretty name,” I agreed.

“Nobody calls me by it except you. Daddy calls me Clem, so everybody else does.”

“Daddy would call you Clementina if he knew you liked it better,” I replied gravely. “If you asked him.”

“It's not worthwhile,” she replied listlessly. “I should know he was doing it because I had asked him to, and laughing at me in his mind all the time.”

There seemed to be no reply to that; at least I could find none. We relapsed into silence. My brain was busy with the words that Clementina had overheard. Hard, bitter words. No wonder that Garth and Kitty had drifted apart if that was the way they spoke to each other. I did not know what the words could mean if Clementina had really heard them aright, and the way she had quoted them had impressed me with their correctness. “People always hate those they have wronged.” Did Kitty hate me? Had she wronged me? I could find no answer to the questions. Kitty had married Garth, but he was lost to me before that. He was lost to me when he came home from the war. Kitty had not taken him from me any more than any other woman who might have married him. I had always felt—perhaps not unreasonably—that Kitty was in the place which really belonged to me, but it was not Kitty's fault. If it was anybody's fault it was Garth's. He could scarcely accuse Kitty of wronging me on that account.

I tried to think of some other matter to which the words might have referred, but I could think of nothing. Father had left no money, so it could not have been anything of that kind. Of course Kitty had had the lion's share of the furniture, but that was only because I had no use for it, and I preferred her to take what she wanted rather than have it sold. There was no explanation to be found for the strange words.

I puzzled over the problem for days, and eventually gave it up.

We hunted quite a lot that winter, Clementina and Sim and I. I tore her away from Miss Milston whenever there was a meet conveniently near Hinkleton. We had some splendid runs. The child went like a bird. I was proud of her in the hunting field for she rode well, and was so bold and fearless. Sometimes my heart rose into my throat at the sight of Clementina flying over a particularly nasty hedge on her black cob—it was a frightful responsibility for me. Supposing she came to grief, what should I do? Her father was somewhere in the wilds of Africa, lost to civilization, so the responsibility was all mine. But Clementina did not come to grief; she took one or two tosses, but she was always up again the next moment and anxious to pursue the chase. She never learned caution from her experiences.

“Miss Clem rides like the Squire,” said Sim one day. “
He
gives me the 'eebie-jeebies sometimes. They both ride as if they didn't care, and it's just the people that don't care that never takes any 'arm. That's my experience, Miss.”

This comforted me a little, because I knew it was true.

“Look at Lady Vera,” Sim continued (he was busy bandaging the gray's off-fore, which was apt to fill a little after a long day). “Lady Vera's ridden to 'ounds for more years than I'd like to say, and she's never come to no 'arm, not to speak of—a broken bone or two she may 'ave 'ad, but what's a broken bone, Miss?”

“Is Lady Vera very reckless?” I asked. It amused me to talk to Sim and watch his capable hands at work.

“Reckless!” Sim exclaimed. “Why the Squire's
timid
compared to Lady Vera. You've seen 'er 'aven't you, Miss? A thin lady with a brownish face. She's bin huntin' a chestnut most of the winter.”

“Oh, that's Lady Vera, is it?” I said. “Yes, I've spoken to her once or twice. She certainly seems a thruster.”

“Yes, that's her—she breeds horses, you know, Miss. We get quite a lot of our horses from Lady Vera. But what I wanted to say is don't you worry about Miss Clem. She'll be all right. Lady Vera doesn't come to no 'arm and Miss Clem won't neither.”

It was easy for Sim to say “Don't worry,” but I found the advice difficult to take. I was watching Clementina one day. She was flying down a steep field toward a bank with a thick-set hedge on the top. I had decided that the hedge was impracticable and was casting about for a convenient gate, but nothing was impracticable to Clementina in the heat of the chase. The black cob was a marvelous jumper, and his mistress made good use of his skill. I saw Clementina gather the animal together with her competent hands, and the next moment they were over the obstacle and away.

I sighed with relief and found a gentleman at my elbow looking at me with whimsical sympathy.

“You find the young Diana something of a responsibility,” he suggested, raising his hat. He was a man of about fifty, a real hunting man, with a lean, red face and iron-gray hair. His eyes, set about with creases and shaded by rather bushy eyebrows, were friendly and humorous.

“She terrifies me,” I admitted. “You see I am entirely responsible for her.”

“Wisdon is in Africa, isn't he? By the way, my name is Felstead and I know Wisdon quite well. You are Miss Dean, of course.”

We walked our horses down the field toward a gate. The hunt had swept on over a hill and left us behind. I was not sorry to draw out of the hunt, for it had been a long and tiring day. Brown Betty was tired too.

“I'm ridin' a green beast,” Mr. Felstead said. “He's had enough for today and so have I. He's had me off twice, and I'm getting too old for that sort of thing. We may see something of the hunt if we bear left for Borland Corner. What do you say?”

I was quite pleased to accept Mr. Felstead's guidance; he was pleasant and kind and he knew Garth. Until now, nobody had spoken to me, except in the casual manner of hunting folk. I had exchanged civilities with various people over gates, and had chatted about the scent and the weather conditions, but this was different. This man knew who I was, knew Garth and asked about him—I found it unexpectedly pleasant. I had not missed friendly neighbors until now. I had been too busy trying to master the various intricacies of my new job. But it suddenly occurred to me, as I walked down the hill beside Mr. Felstead, that it was really rather peculiar how few friends Garth and Kitty seemed to have—in fact, as far as I knew, they had none. Nobody had called; nobody ever stopped Clementina in the village or spoke to her when we came out of church.

“May my wife call?” Mr. Felstead inquired, when I had answered his questions about Garth's whereabouts to the best of my ability. “We are quite near neighbors, you know. Ten miles is nothing in these days. We live at Oldgarden. I have a girl just Clem's age.”

I said it would be nice.

“They used to see a good deal of each other, the girls,” he added, rather diffidently. “In fact they were tremendous pals, but recently—the last year or so—er—my wife—”

He leaned over to open the gate, and I saw that his red face had grown quite scarlet with embarrassment, and suddenly I understood him—or thought that I understood him—perfectly. Mrs. Felstead had been unwilling to let her girl come to a house which was the subject of so much talk and gossip in the neighborhood. One could hardly blame her. The divorce case must have caused a considerable stir—it was foolish of me not to have realized this before—here was the explanation of our isolation at Hinkleton Manor. How dreadful it must have been for Garth, how humbling to his pride to find himself ostracized by the County. (Humbling was the wrong word, he was embittered, not humbled by the experience.) No wonder he had left the place and gone to Africa—Garth's pride came into this again. Garth's pride of race which made him feel himself the equal of any man in England and the superior of most. I had heard no talk, of course, no gossip of any kind had reached my ears, but I was the last person who would be likely to hear anything—the whole County might still be discussing Garth and Kitty and their lamentable affairs for all I knew.

These disjointed thoughts flashed through my head as I watched Mr. Felstead open the gate, and in a few moments I made up my mind what to say.

“It would be kind if you would allow your little girl to come to tea with Clementina,” I told him frankly. “She is a solitary child and needs the companionship of children of her own age.”

“I will speak to my wife about it,” he promised. “She likes Clem—we all like Clem—and Violet will be delighted to see her again. My wife and daughter are away from home just now, but when they come back—”

There was a good deal left unsaid in the conversation, but I felt that we understood each other. I sensed Mr. Felstead's friendliness and was glad of it. Glad to feel that Clementina and I had one friend.

We had not gone far when we saw the hunt streaming across a field at right angles to our course and less than a quarter of a mile away. I looked at Mr. Felstead and smiled.

“Yes,” he said laughing, “I'm an old hand at this game—Yoicks tally-ho.”

He clapped his knees to his green horse and cantered down the field—I followed him. We skirted a ploughed field, crossed a cart-road and emerged into the ruck of the hunt. Clementina was well in front, still going strong. Sim, on the lean gray, was close to her. We swept across a stubble field and over a low fence into a large square meadow. Before us was a small wood, hounds were already disappearing into it.

“We shall kill now, if the earths have been stopped,” said Mr. Felstead at my elbow.

Some of the hunt servants were skirting the wood and taking up positions to watch for the fox in case he should give the hounds the slip, but it was unnecessary. There was a burst of music followed by the unmistakable snarling of a kill.

“Do you want to see the end of Mr. Reynard?” inquired my companion. “I'm afraid we're too late.”

I shook my head. “It's the only bit I don't like,” I told him.

“Paula doesn't like it either,” he said, smiling. “My wife, you know. She goes like the devil, but she looks the other way when the end comes. You're rather like Paula in some ways.”

We waited for a little at the edge of the wood, walking slowly up and down to cool off the horses. There was, perhaps, about a score of others like ourselves, who had chosen not to see the end. The women were eating biscuits, and the men regaling themselves from pocket flasks. The wind was very cold, and the sun was sinking behind the hills like a round red ball.

“Looks like frost,” somebody said.

Just at that moment a tall man on a bay mare approached me and raised his hat. He had a pleasant, open face, very brown and weather-beaten, and his eyes were intensely blue.

“You won't remember me,” he said, smiling. “Geoff Howard is my name. My brother was up at Oxford with Garth Wisdon and we came down to Hinkleton for Garth's coming-of-age ball. It was just before the war.”

I shook hands with him and said, “How stupid of me to forget!”

“My people have taken Fairways for two years,” he said and looked at me inquiringly.

“I am staying at Hinkleton Manor looking after my small niece—or rather trying to look after her,” I told him. “Garth has gone to Africa with the Fraser expedition.”

He looked at me with a puzzled frown. “Your niece? I thought—”

“Garth married my sister,” I explained.

“You are very like your sister,” he replied.

“Am I?” I inquired feebly. Nobody had ever told me such a thing before. He couldn't really think that I was like Kitty—we were totally different in every way—I felt that we were at cross purposes, but I didn't see how.

“No wonder you didn't remember me,” laughed Mr. Howard. “It was your sister that I met at the dance of course. Wisdon was crazy about her that night. We were all crazy about her, but she had eyes for nobody else. We teased Wisdon like anything about her because he was such an innocent, wouldn't look at a girl, couldn't be bothered with girls, hadn't time for them, and then quite suddenly he was completely sunk. You know how it is with fellows like that—or perhaps you don't know.”

I saw now how we had got muddled, but it was impossible for me to explain the matter. The whole thing was too painful and intimate to expound to a strange man in the middle of a hunting field. We were surrounded by a chattering throng of people, and our horses were turning and backing every moment as new arrivals divided the crowd into fresh patterns. Could I say to the man, “Garth jilted me and married my sister, and now he has divorced her?” I hadn't the moral courage to attempt it.

“Wisdon was as badly hit as any man I've seen,” continued Mr. Howard, laughing merrily. “It served him right for saying he hadn't time for girls. I was jolly glad when I saw the marriage in the papers—after the war, wasn't it?—I've been in Canada ever since the war—just got home for a bit of a holiday. I told you my people have taken Fairways, didn't I?”

“Look out, you,” cried a gruff voice on the other side of Mr. Howard. “Can't you manage your damned horse, sir? He's eating my boot.”

Mr. Howard pulled up his horse's head and raised his hat politely. “I beg your pardon, sir. She must have mistaken your foot for a banana. She dotes on bananas. Queer taste, isn't it?”

The man grunted fiercely and turned away, leaving Mr. Howard free to resume his rather one-sided conversation with me. I had never met a man who talked so continuously as Mr. Howard without being boring or didactic. I found afterward that he had spent long months snowbound in Canada with nobody of his own stamp to converse with, and concluded that he was still busy making up for lost time.

The rest of the hunt was now emerging from the trees. Clementina rode up to me and displayed the brush. Her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks were flushed with excitement—I scarcely knew the child.

Mr. Felstead and Mr. Howard congratulated her warmly, and several other gentlemen followed suit.

“By Gad! You deserved it,” cried Mr. Howard. “I saw you sailing over fences like a cavalryman. Your father will be proud of you when he hears about it. I'd no idea you were Garth Wisdon's daughter, thought you must be Diana at least. That's a damn good cob you've got. He's earned his feed today.”

Clementina looked up and smiled at him, then she stopped and patted Black Knight's shoulder, but she didn't speak.

The hunt was dispersing now, the luxurious ones dismounted and left their horses to be brought home by grooms while they themselves were whirled off in cars which had appeared in the road nearby as if by magic. Clementina and I walked slowly down the hill with Mr. Howard—our roads home lay in the same direction, for Fairways was about three miles on the other side of Hinkleton Manor. I knew the place well, it was a charming old house flanked by Georgian pillars and covered with Virginia creeper. It was occupied, in the days when I had known it, by a couple of maiden ladies, the Misses Golding; they were rather terrifying to children, for they were large and stout and had very red faces—one of them had a beard. They used to ask us to tea sometimes, and we were obliged to go because they were important parishioners, but it was always an ordeal, and we breathed sighs of relief when we were safely out of the gates again and our feet set on our homeward way. The tea they provided was a poor meal—sandwiches filled with cucumber, and fancy biscuits, which were always very soft and stale, served on an enormous silver tray, and watery tea in an immense silver teapot. Mother hated going as much as we did, but she would never own to the fact; she had a very high conception of her duties as a parson's wife.

I came back from the past to hear Clementina talking to Mr. Howard in quite an animated manner. Her thin, light, childish voice was a strange vehicle for the mature conversation which she produced for Mr. Howard's benefit.