“Mamma,” she broke in, before Mrs Western had time to say any more, “you must really have tea at once; it will be getting cold. Shall I pour it out, Lilias, or will you?”
“I will, thank you,” said Lilias, not quite sure if she appreciated her sister’s tactics, but seating herself before the tea-table as she spoke. “Mother, dear, stay where you are, do,” seeing that Mrs Western was getting up from her seat.
“I was only looking to see if there were cups enough, my dear. Captain Beverley, you will have a cup of tea?” said Mrs Western, her natural instinct of hospitality asserting itself in defiance of her dislike to strangers.
“Thank you,” he replied, gratefully; “I really cannot resist the chance of a cup of good tea. My old woman has been giving me such a horrible decoction. What do people do to tea to make it taste so fearful, I wonder?” he continued, seriously. “It seems the simplest thing in the world just to pour hot water over a spoonful or two, and let it stand for a few minutes.”
The girls laughed, and Mrs Western smiled.
“It is evident you are a bachelor, Captain Beverley,” she said. “There is nothing that depend more on how it is made than tea. For instance, hot water is not necessarily boiling water as it should be, and the ‘standing a few minutes’ should not mean brewing by the fire for half an hour or more.”
“I see,” said Captain Beverley. “I wonder if it would be any use trying to teach old Mrs Bowker how to make tea properly.”
“Mrs Bowker!” repeated Mrs Western in surprise.
Lilias laughed again at the bewilderment in her mother’s face.
“How prettily she laughs,” thought Captain Beverley, “I wish Laurence could see her. He declares not one woman in a hundred can laugh becomingly.”
“Captain Beverley is staying at old Mrs Bowker’s, mamma,” she exclaimed – “at least, at John Birley’s farm.”
“Or, to be perfectly correct,” said Captain Beverley, “old Mrs Bowker is staying with me, though I am quite sure she does not see the arrangement in that light at all. I was just telling Miss Western,” he continued, turning to the mother, “that Hathercourt Edge – that is to say, the old farm-house and, what is of more importance, a considerable amount of land – has just become my property; the last owner, John Birley, left it to me as the oldest lineal descendant of the name– of the Beverleys of Hathercourt. He had no near relations, and had always been proud of his own descent from the Beverleys; he came straight down from a John Beverley who owned all the land about here early in the seventeenth century, I believe, but whose eldest son sold a lot of it, so that in process of time they came to be only farmers.”
“That John Beverley must have been ‘Mawde’s’ husband, Lilias,” said Mary.
Captain Beverley looked up with interest.
“Do you mean the ‘Mawde’ about whom there is a tablet in the church here?” he said.
“Yes,” replied Mary. “Mawde Mayne, who married John Beverley of Hathercourt.”
“Ah! yes, that’s the same Mawde,” said Captain Beverley. “She is our common ancestress – poor old John Birley’s and mine, I mean. I come from another of her sons, who left these parts and married an heiress, I believe, but his descendants have had nothing to do with this place from that time to this. Isn’t it strange that Hathercourt, a part of it at least, should come back to me after all these generations?”
“It is very nice, I think,” said Mary. “I should be so proud of it, if I were you.”
Her eyes sparkled, and her face brightened up eagerly. For the first time it struck Captain Beverley that there was something very “taking” about the second Miss Western. But his glance did not rest on her; it travelled on to where Lilias sat behind the tea-tray, with a half-unconscious appeal to her for sympathy in what he was telling. Lilias, looking up, smiled.
“Yes,” she said, softly, “it is very strange.”
“Then,” began Mrs Western, with some little hesitation, “are you, may I ask, Captain Beverley, going to live altogether at Hathercourt Edge? You can hardly do so, though, in the house as it is at present. It is barely habitable, is it?”
“Very barely,” replied the young man. “You never saw such a place. But I must not grumble; poor old John kept the land up to the mark, though he spent nothing on the house. I don’t mean to settle here,” (Mrs Western breathed a sigh of relief), “I have another place which is let just now, but will soon be free again, and my cousin advises me to live there and farm it myself. All I mean to do here is to build a good farm-house, and establish some trusty man as bailiff, and then I can easily run down now and then – I am often at Romary – and see how things are going on. And this brings me to what I wanted to see Mr Western about. I want to ask his opinion of a young man here who has been recommended to me for my situation.”
“Mr Western will be very glad to tell you all he can, I am sure,” said the Rector’s wife. “I dare say he will be able to walk over to Hathercourt Edge to-morrow to see you, for about such a matter it would be better for you to speak to himself.”
“Thank you,” said Captain Beverley. “But I couldn’t think of giving Mr Western so much trouble. I can easily come over again, and if he is out it doesn’t matter – it is only a pleasant walk – and – and if I am not a great trouble, I shall be only too grateful to have some one to speak to, for I am dreadfully tired of the old farmhouse, and I must be here alone another fortnight. By then my cousins will be back at Romary, and I can take up my quarters there. You know Romary, of course?”
“No,” said Lilias, to whom the question seemed to be addressed, her colour rising a little; “at least, I have only been there once.”
“It is some miles from here, and we have no carriage,” said Mrs Western, simply. “Old Mrs Romary called on me when we first came here, but I never saw any more of them. We know very few of our neighbours, Captain Beverley, for we are not rich, and we live very quietly.” Mary looked up at her mother admiringly. Lilias glanced at Captain Beverley. His colour, too, had deepened a little.
“Then I must thank you all the more for being so kind to me,” he said, impulsively. “And, Mrs Western, if, as I shall really be your very nearest neighbour, you will let me be to some extent an exception to the rule, I shall thank you still more,” he added, with a sort of boyish heartiness which it was difficult to resist.
He had got up to go, and stood looking down at his hostess as he spoke with such a kindly expression in his honest blue eyes, and – he was so undeniably handsome and gentlemanlike that Mrs Western’s cold manner thawed.
“The thanks will, I think, be due from us to you if you come to see us now and then when you are in the neighbourhood; that is to say, at Hathercourt Edge. Romary is too far off for us to consider its inhabitants neighbours,” she replied. “And I don’t quite understand, but Romary is not your home, is it?”
“Oh dear, no,” he replied, evidently a little surprised at the question. “Romary belongs now to my cousin, Mr Cheviott. It has been his ever since his uncle’s death, but he has only lately come to live there. He was my guardian, and the best and wisest friend I have ever known, though not more than ten years older than myself,” he added, warmly.
“And that young lady – we thought her so pretty,” said Lilias – “she is Miss Cheviott, then, I suppose?”
“Yes, she is his sister. I am glad you think her pretty. She is a dear little thing,” he replied, looking pleased and gratified. “But I am really detaining you too long. Will you be so kind as to tell Mr Western that I shall hope to see him in a day or two? Good-bye, and thank you