Before Cameron received her summons Kathleen went to Mrs. Ellicott's room, feeling sure of finding her there and alone. Her question, "May I come in, aunty?" was answered in the affirmative.
"I have come with the same old story," said Kathleen. "I know I do not deserve that you should speak to me, but I never meant to get angry to-day. You know, too, how I have fought and struggled, but it all seems useless. What shall I do?"
"Begin again, my dear child. The battle against temptation is a life-long contest, but we need not fight alone or unarmed."
"I know you will help me, aunty. I wonder you can bear to look at me, and yet your very face beams forgiveness before I have asked it."
"My darling, I want you to feel that a stronger than I is ready to help and make you strong. But, Kitty, have you thought that He knows all your inward struggles, your longings to conquer what you feel to be your besetting sin, your sorrow when, in place of coming off victorious, the old failing overcomes you and your good resolutions? You come to me penitent and grieved at having grieved me. Have you been to Him to seek His forgiveness, or shall you be contented with mine?"
"I am afraid I have thought only of having troubled you, and made poor Ger ill by my temper. I wish I could feel the peace and comfort that you get by going to God with everything."
"Take the one thing that presses upon you most heavily. Remember that whilst we are encouraged to go with everything, we cannot tell the story of all our needs at once. We have to leave so many to His love and providential care, just as little children lay down their heads at night, and sleep without a care as to how the wants of the morrow are to be met. 'That is father and mother's business,' they say, if they think at all. So we, Kathleen, have to leave so much to our Heavenly Father's foreseeing love, and the many every-day wants of His children are mercifully and lovingly supplied. But our spiritual needs must be taken to God and by ourselves. I can plead for you, Kitty, aye and with you, but unless you acknowledge your fault and ask forgiveness, your weakness and ask for strength, your ignorance and long for guidance, your helplessness and pray that God will enable you to take the armour of His providing, you must be beaten in the fight. Don't get disheartened, dear. All you need is to be had for the asking, and the great army of Christ's soldiers and servants, fighting against temptation and sin, for their own souls and the souls of others, is made up of all ranks and all ages. The hoary head fights, it may be, beside the stripling, the mere child beside the parent. Young men and maidens, old men and children, look alike to Jesus, the Captain of their salvation, the only Conqueror who never knew what it was to yield when the tempter strove to vanquish Him. He will lead you on that path which He trod when in the flesh. Seek Him. Trust Him; make a new beginning in His strength."
"I will try," whispered Kathleen; and before Cameron received her summons, the girl knelt to ask the help of which she felt her need to be so pressing and so constant.
CHAPTER X CONFIDENCES AND FOREBODINGS
HETTY STAPLETON had so often stayed with her brother and his wife at Oakwood, that she was regarded by Hollingsby folk almost as belonging to the family circle there. She and an unmarried brother, considerably older than herself, had a home together in town, but went their several ways in an independent fashion, and if their opinions of persons and things did not always accord, they agreed to differ.
Though only twenty-five, Hetty was the friend and chosen adviser of quite a crowd of girls, who went to her with their troubles and difficulties, for comfort and guidance. If the troubles were real, who so sympathetic as Hetty? If imaginary or self-made, no one could be more sternly straightforward in administering the needed reproof, or more forcible in pointing out unthankfulness for undeserved blessings, and the wisdom of self-examination and confession of wrong-doing.
Naturally, Hetty was not always successful in her endeavours to benefit other girls. Like her elders, she found, often enough, that her advice was only valued and followed when it fell in with the wishes of those who asked it, and that many who bemoaned their lot and made more troubles for themselves, instead of bravely meeting and conquering adverse circumstances, only wanted to be pitied and excused, when really they merited blame. But, despite such failures, there were numbers of girls who had cause to thank God that they had found a friend in Hetty Stapleton.
Aylmer Matheson was one who gauged Hetty's character correctly, and honoured her, despite certain little eccentricities of which he could not help being conscious. He and Hetty were thoroughly agreed in their estimate of Captain Torrance. She had told him certain particulars, which had come to her knowledge through her brother Gerard's intimacy with some officers who had known Captain Jack during his brief military career. She had kept back much that a pure-minded girl would not like to repeat, and which Hetty herself would have preferred not to know. Of one incident she had never spoken to any human being, and probably only Aylmer Matheson suspected the whole truth.
Eighteen months before, Captain Torrance had taken some pains to throw himself in Hetty's way. He knew that her fortune was inferior to Miss Mountford's, but it was considerable and in her own hands, whilst Kathleen was not nearly of age. He never dreamed that a girl with no pretensions to beauty would refuse him, though Hetty's manner was sufficiently distant to discourage a wooer less satisfied with himself than was handsome Captain Jack. In his own mind he decided that Miss Stapleton drew back, in order that her vanity might be satisfied by a more conspicuous wooing. When, however, he tried his fortune by sending a written proposal, he realized the mistake he had made.
Hetty's reply was courteous, but decisive, and from the moment of receiving it, Captain Torrance understood that there was one girl who had formed a true estimate of his character, and valued his professions of admiration and affection at just what they were worth.
A few plain words in that note of Hetty's roused feelings of varying kinds in Captain Jack's breast. He could not help respecting the writer for her straightforwardness, but anger, fear, and dislike were in equal proportions.
It was dreadfully mortifying to have been refused by any girl, but doubly so when the individual was such as Hetty Stapleton, and mortification produced anger and dislike also when he thought of her. Her quiet good sense and plain speaking inspired fear, lest Hetty should, in the future, interfere to prevent his success in another quarter. With such feelings, it may well be imagined that Hetty Stapleton was about the last person Captain Jack wished to see at Hollingsby for any length of time.
It was quite in accordance with Miss Stapleton's downright way of doing things, that she should speak to Aylmer Matheson about what had set all the village tongues going a few hours before.
"I am so sorry," she said, "that any mischance should have given people the power to couple the names of John Torrance and Kathleen. One feels sure that, so far as she was concerned, the meeting was unexpected and the companionship on the road a thing that a girl like Kitty would not know how to prevent. You see, she is not like me. She is so lovely and lovable, so fearful of hurting anybody's feelings, that she would be helpless to send a man like that to the rightabout, though his presence might be distasteful."
"I quite agree with you that to Kathleen the meeting was unexpected, for she, in common with the rest of us, believed that Captain Torrance was absent from the neighbourhood. I wish I could as easily believe that his company was distasteful, but had you met the two as I did, you, like me, would have doubted this. Torrance's face was full of triumph, and the mocking laugh I heard just before I reached them, together with Kathleen's amused face, told a different tale."
"And of course you were as self-conscious as most of us would be under similar circumstances. You took it for granted that you were the subject of John Torrance's jest, and that Kathleen enjoyed it, and joined in the laughter. Excuse my calling the man by his Christian name to you."
"He is not entitled to be called captain, though everybody uses the appellation. But I hate shams, and I will not insult the army by pretending that he belongs to it, after having left it perforce."
"Now, about the man's laugh. I am quite certain that he wished to annoy you by it and his whole manner. But that Kathleen would ever join in aught, whether word, deed, or gesture, that savoured of mockery towards yourself, I will not for a moment believe. She is one of the most impulsive, and, as a consequence, one of the most self-tormenting creatures on this earth, but she is true. Have I not heard her again and again speak of you in terms of the warmest esteem, and express her thankfulness that her father had chosen such a guardian for her? She could not be so false to her own generous nature as to join a man like John Torrance in holding you up to ridicule, with a view of wilfully causing you pain. Kitty is incapable of acting a lie."
Even in the dim light of the early winter's evening Hetty could see how Aylmer's face brightened under the influence of her cheery words. He believed them, and blamed himself for his over-sensitiveness in all wherein Kathleen was concerned.
"You have done me good, Hetty, by your common-sense words, and I have wronged Kathleen by my hasty judgment. God knows how I long to shield her from harm! and here am I judging her without a hearing, blaming her so that you need to be her champion, and all because she laughed at the idle words of a man who had forced his society upon her."
"Of course you have tormented yourself needlessly, but happily you have relieved your mind to me, made confession, and, if you have not promised, you have determined not to do so any more. I only wish," added Hetty, in a low tone, but one that expressed deep feeling, "that you were going to be Kathleen's life guardian by her own election."
If ever a man was longing for a friend and confidante, in whose ear he could pour out his tale of love, of fear, and of the doubts and scruples that harassed him, Aylmer Matheson was one. He had no one in his home to whom he could speak of anything which involved others than himself, though the faithful servants who were about him had grown grey at Westhill, having served his parents before him.
To Mrs. Ellicott he had never spoken, though he believed that she would be in his favour, and some instinctive feeling, which he could hardly have explained, had put Geraldine out of the question.
Now Hetty had boldly touched upon that dearest subject of all. The very wish she had uttered was an invitation to confidence. He knew she was his friend, and to be trusted, and he resolved not to lose the chance thus given him.
"Thank you, Hetty, for the wish, and thank you still more for having put it into words," he replied.
"Why thank me more for speaking than for the feeling which I expressed in the wish?"
"Because the words enable me to speak, and claim your continued sympathy. The wish unuttered would have been unknown to me, and I should have lost the comfort and sense of sympathy it has already given. You have been a good friend to many a girl, Hetty. It is doubly kind of you to extend your friendship to me, for I am, in a sense, a very lonely man."
"You may trust me, Aylmer, as the girls have done," replied Hetty simply; and it was really a pity that the sun had gone down, and the expression on her honest face was not more fully visible. But Aylmer had seen it many a time, and needed no assurance. It was a great comfort to him to open his heart, and to show Hetty all that was in it as regarded Kathleen, and he did it.
"And now," he added, "you can speak from a girl's point of view. You know what scruples have kept me from telling Kathleen my secret, and how fear of what the world might say, if I seemed to take advantage of my position to secure the hand of a rich ward, has kept me silent."
Hetty paused for a few moments, then asked—
"Has this fear been the only thing which has kept you silent? If it has, I should say the answer as to what you ought to do need not come from me. You are in earnest. You have given Kathleen your best affections, and without reserve. What is the value of such a gift? Is it to be measured by a market-standard?"
"Certainly not," replied Aylmer, unable to resist a smile.
"Then, if a girl gave you her heart in like manner, you would not begin to ask yourself whether your money, all told, was enough to offer in exchange?"
"Surely not. Love for love, heart for heart, can be the only fair exchange," said Aylmer.
"Put the money right out of the question, then, since it is not to be a matter of merely valuing your separate worldly goods, and considering whether the one will equally balance the other. Never mind the world's tongue. The voice of an approving conscience is better worth listening to than all the babel of tongues which goes by the name of the world's opinion of things. Remember my question, though. It must not be overlooked, and I want my answer to it."
"What was that?"
"I asked you if fear of the world's opinion were the only thing that had kept you from speaking your mind to Kathleen? If so, we have settled the question, and you will speak without further hesitation."
"I dare not say yes," replied Aylmer. "The greater fear is with regard to Kathleen herself."
"I thought so. You cannot divine how she would receive the confession you long to make."
"No man wishes to risk a refusal by over-haste, or to lose the prize for want of decision. I own that Kathleen has never given me cause to hope."
"Or to fear?" asked Hetty.
"I think I am all fears now, though had we been talking together last evening, I should not have said this, for of late our intercourse has been very pleasant."
"During John Torrance's absence, I suppose?"
"Yes; and I was beginning to think that I would not trouble myself about the opinion of outsiders, but would tell my story to Kathleen. Then I hesitated on her account."
"You were afraid lest she should be moved to accept you by any feeling short of that which inspired you, such as gratitude, esteem, the memory of her father's trust in and affection for you."
