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One of the best-known arts of the Mapuche is their textiles. The Mapuche women were responsible for spinning and weaving. Knowledge of both weaving techniques and textile patterns particular to the locality were usually transmitted within the family, with mothers, grandmothers, and aunts teaching a girl the skills they had learned from their own elders. Women who excelled in the textile arts were highly honored for their accomplishments and contributed economically and culturally to their kinship group.
A measure of the importance of weaving is evident in the expectation that a man give a larger dowry for a bride who was an accomplished weaver. In addition, the Mapuche used their textiles as an important surplus and an exchange trading good. Numerous 16th-century accounts describe their bartering the textiles with other indigenous peoples, and with colonists in newly developed settlements.
Such trading enabled the Mapuche to obtain those goods that they did not produce or held in high esteem, such as horses. At present, the fabrics woven by the Mapuche continue to be used for domestic purposes, as well as for gift, sale or barter. Most Mapuche women and their families now wear garments with foreign designs and tailored with materials of industrial origin, but they continue to weave ponchos, blankets, bands and belts for regular use.
Many of the fabrics are woven for trade, and in many cases, are an important source of income for families. This form of learning is based on gestural imitation, and only rarely, and when strictly necessary, the apprentice receives explicit instructions or help from their instructors. Knowledge is transmitted as fabric is woven, the weaving and transmission of knowledge go together.
Clava is a traditional stone hand-club used by the Mapuche. It has a long flat body. Its full name is clava mere okewa ; in Spanish, it's known as clava cefalomorfa. It has some ritual importance as a special sign of distinction carried by tribal chiefs. Many kinds of clavas are known. This is an object associated with masculine power. It consists of a disk with attached handle; the edge of the disc usually has a semicircular recess.
In many cases, the face portrayed on the disc carries incised designs. The handle is cylindrical, generally with a larger diameter at its connection to the disk. In the later half of the 18th century Mapuche silversmithing began to produce large amounts of silver finery. The great diversity in silver finery designs is due to the fact that designs were made to be identified with different reynma families , lof mapu lands as well as specific lonkos and machis. In the late 18th century and early 19th century Mapuche silversmithing activity and artistic diversity reached it climax.
The Mapuche culture of the 16th century had an oral tradition and lacked a writing system. Since that time, a writing system for Mapudungun was developed, and Mapuche writings in both Spanish and Mapudungun have flourished. The ritual transvestism of male machi Following the independence of Chile in the s, the Mapuche began to be perceived as Chilean by other Chileans, contrasting with previous perceptions of them as a separate people or nation.
Yes, Chile is the name of the country over where its flag waves and its laws are obeyed. There are various recorded instances in the 19th century when Mapuches were the subject of civilizing mission discourses by elements of Chilean government and military. This event, so important to our social and political life, and so significant for the future of the republic, has ended, happily and with costly and painful sacrifices. Contemporary attitudes towards Mapuches on the part of non-indigenous people in Chile are highly individual and heterogeneous.
Nevertheless, a considerable part of the non-indigenous people in Chile have a prejudiced and discriminatory attitude towards Mapuche. The Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco claims to have the goal of a "national liberation" of Mapuche, with their regaining sovereignty over their own lands. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Incas in Central Chile. Indigenous peoples of the Americas portal. Tomo 1" PDF in Spanish. Archived from the original PDF on 8 December Retrieved 5 December In Dillehay, Tom; Netherly, Patricia. La frontera del estado Inca in Spanish.
Memoria chilena in Spanish. Biblioteca Nacional de Chile. Historia de Chile ed. Copper metallurgy was flourishing in South America, particularly in Peru, from around the beginning of the first millennium AD. Possibly the Mapuche learned copper metal working from their prior interaction with the Inca Empire or prior Peruvian cultures, or was a native craft that developed independently in the region copper being common in Chile.
Retrieved 15 July Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power, and Healing among Chilean Mapuche. University of Texas Press. Violence and the Body: Race, Gender, and the State. Archived from the original PDF on 3 December Retrieved 13 November Archived from the original PDF on 2 December EBSCO host , search. Wright, Taylor and Francis, , pp ProQuest Ebook Central, https: Imprenta el Ferrocarril, Archived from the original on Sociedad mapuche y sociedad chilena: Polis, Revista de la Universidad Bolivariana.
Retrieved 17 January Retrieved June 20, Members of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. Retrieved from " https: CS1 Spanish-language sources es Webarchive template wayback links Articles with Spanish-language external links All articles with dead external links Articles with dead external links from December Articles with permanently dead external links CS1 maint: Archived copy as title "Related ethnic groups" needing confirmation Articles using infobox ethnic group with image parameters All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from January Articles containing Spanish-language text CS1 errors: Views Read Edit View history.
In other projects Wikimedia Commons. This page was last edited on 16 November , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. For then, Bar, I should ask you to give my love to the Priory—I do so cherish that place! I mean with us to St. Look, I have brought her a special invitation all to herself!
Cloud, 9 Juin, Surely you would not wish the child to miss such a delightful experience? More than once we have been offered introductions which would have brought us in contact with the Tuileries and with St. Cloud, but Richard feels that in the circumstances we cannot live too quietly. Before another word could be uttered on either side, the two oddly contrasted figures of Lord Bosworth and his small companion were seen hastening towards them.
The man and the child had already become good friends, and, as they drew near to Madame Sampiero and Mrs. Rebell, little Barbara, a charming figure in her white muslin frock, blue sash and large frilled hat, ran forward with what was for her most unusual eagerness and animation. The Prince Imperial has invited me to his gouter , and my marraine and this gentleman are going to take me to St. There is a little seat in the carriage which can be let down. But the words seemed to nerve Mrs. Rebell to instant decision.
It would make your father very very angry. Madame Sampiero bent towards the child. And some day I will myself persuade your father to let me take you to a real ball, at the Tuileries! Surely this is rather premature? But, Adela, I was not only thinking of my Julia, but also of your little Barbara. Richard cannot mean her always to lead a cloistered life. In eight years she will be grown-up, eager to see something of the world. Then, after long clinging leave-taking, Mrs. Rebell and Barbara, both with bitter tears in their eyes, watched the fairy-like equipage disappear down the sanded road leading to the Grande Place, and so towards the broad highway which would bring it ultimately to St.
In fact I would far rather believe myself guilty of cheating at cards than I would Richard. I think it was an infamous accusation! Why, surely you, Julian, felt and feel the same? Still, his present way of going on looks very odd. Why should he compel his wife to lead such a life as that she evidently does lead at St.
But each of the speakers felt that this visit to St. Germains had been vaguely disappointing, that it had not yielded all they had hoped it would do. Barbara Sampiero made up her mind that before leaving Paris she would come again, and come alone. She did not carry out her good resolution, and many long years were to pass by before she and her god-daughter met again. And to both, by the time of that second meeting, St. Germains had become a place peopled with sad ghosts and poignant memories which both strove rather to forget than to remember.
So stumbled the Conqueror! And then, as the stranger advanced, hesitatingly, into the hall, she found herself confronted by an odd, indeed an amazing figure, which yet also brought a quick sense of being at last in a dear familiar place offering both welcome and shelter. Two earrings, evidently belonging to the same set, had been mounted as pins, and gleamed on the black lace partly covering Mrs.
For a few moments the housekeeper held, as it were, the field to herself: Rebell, half smiling, put out her hand, the old woman—for, in spite of her look of massive strength Mrs. Turke would be bound to speak, if under stress of emotion, in quite other accents. A muttered exclamation, a growl from that other presence who still stood apart, hidden in the deep shadows cast by the music gallery which stretched across the hall just above the head of the little group, seemed to nerve the housekeeper to a fresh effort: He also knew your dear Mamma, and is very pleased to see you once more at Chancton Priory.
From behind Barbara Rebell lumbered forth into the light another strange figure, a man this time, clad in evening dress. But he also seemed oddly familiar, and Mrs. Rebell knew him for a certain Alexander McKirdy, of whom, again, she had often heard from her mother. My words, no doubt, will be poor things, Mrs. Turke, compared to yours, but they will have the advantage of being my own! Of fair height, he yet gave the impression of being short and ungainly, owing to the huge size of his head and the disproportionate breadth of his shoulders.
His features were rough-hewn and irregular, only redeemed by a delicate, well-shaped mouth, and penetrating, not unkindly pale blue eyes. His hair, once bright red, now sandy grey streaked with white, was always kept short, bristling round a high intelligent forehead, and he was supposed to gratify Scotch economy by cutting it himself. He was clean-shaven, and his dress was habitually that of a man quite indifferent to his outward appearance; like most ugly and eccentric-looking men, Doctor McKirdy appeared at his best on the rare occasions when he was compelled to wear his ancient dress clothes.
Such was the man who now turned and cast a long searching look at Barbara Rebell. Rebell up to Madam now,—this very minute? Instead, he jerked his right shoulder, that as to which Barbara wondered if it could be higher than the other, towards the shadows from which he had himself emerged, and Mrs. Turke meekly turned away, her yellow silk gown rustling, and her barbaric ornaments jingling, as she passed through the swing door which shut off the hall, where they had all three been standing, from the commons of the Priory.
Doctor McKirdy lifted one of the high lamps, which seemed to make the darkness of the hall more visible, in his strong, steady hands. Then he turned abruptly to Mrs.
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Without waiting for an answer, he started walking down the hall, Barbara following obediently, while yet finding time to gaze, half fearfully, as she went, at the quivering grotesque shadows flung by herself and her companion across the bare spaces of flagged floor, and over the high-backed armchairs, the Chinese screen, and the Indian cabinets which lined the walls on either side of the huge fire-place. At last they stopped before a closed door—one curiously ornate, and heavy with gilding. Doctor McKirdy motioned to his companion to open it, and as she did so they passed through into what was evidently the rarely-used drawing-room of the Priory.
Then, putting the lamp down on the top of a china cabinet, the Scotchman turned and faced his companion, and with a certain surprise Mrs. Rebell realised that he was much taller than herself, and that as he spoke she had to look up into his face. The knowledge had troubled her, for it implied that her letter of appeal, that to which this was an answer, had also been read by alien eyes.
I thought may-be he might explain how matters are here—Well, did you see him? Goodchild told me that my godmother was paralysed,—but that, of course, I knew already. Perhaps you have forgotten that you yourself long ago wrote and told me of her illness? Goodchild also explained to me that Madame Sampiero sees very few people.
He looked down at the delicate, sensitive face of the young woman standing before him, with an intent, scrutinising gaze, allowed it to travel slowly downwards till it seemed wholly to envelop her, and yet Barbara felt no offence: That was the question he had set himself to solve in the next few moments. It was about this time of the year—that is the time when keepers and vermin are busy. We were walking, I say, and I—young fool! I was uglier, yes, and I think even more repulsive-looking than I am now! And we heard suddenly a piteous squeal: Richard—she was the tenderest creature alive, remember—never flinched.
Those were not the days of gun ladies, but there, with me standing by, foolish, helpless, she put an end to the poor beastie—she put it out of its misery—with my knife too. I never go by there without thinking of it. Turke, and she shall show you your rooms. We thought you would like those Mrs. Richard used to have when she came here.
Richard there after all! A few moments later Barbara was following the stout housekeeper up the small winding stair which occupied, opposite the porch and vestibule, one of the four corners of the great hall, for those who had designed and built the newer portion of Chancton Priory had had no wish to sacrifice any portion of the space at their disposal to the exigencies of a grand staircase.
Turke, on the first landing, called a halt, and Barbara looked about her with languid curiosity. To the right stretched a dark recess, evidently the music gallery which overlooked the hall; to the left a broad well-lighted corridor led, as Mrs. Rebell at once divined, if only because of the sudden silence which had fallen on her companion, to the apartments of the paralysed mistress of the Priory, to those of her godmother, Madame Sampiero.
Turke, her loquacity stilled, laboured on up more narrow winding stairs till they reached the third storey, and, groping her way down many winding turnings, she finally ushered Mrs. Rebell with some ceremony—for every incident connected with daily life was to Mrs. Turke a matter of ritual—into a suite of low-ceilinged, plainly furnished rooms, of which the windows opened on to the Tudor stone balcony which was so distinctive and so beautiful a feature of the great house, as seen from the spreading lawns below.
Till Barbara found herself left solitary—she had declared herself well able, nay, desirous to unpack and dress alone—all that had taken place during the last hour had seemed hardly real. It is said that the first feeling of those who, after being buffeted in the storm, tossed to and fro by the waves, are finally cast up on dry land, is not always one of relief. Barbara was no longer struggling in deep water, but she still felt terribly bruised and sore, and the smart of the injuries which had befallen her was still with her.
Standing there, in the peaceful rooms which had been those of her own mother, a keen, almost a physical, longing for that same dear tender mother came suddenly over her. Then she looked at herself in the glass, rather pitifully anxious to make a good impression on her godmother—on this paralysed woman, who, if the London lawyer said truly, was yet mentally so intensely and vividly alive. Why had they done so? Standing there, looking down on the great dark spaces below, she suddenly felt, for the first time, a deep sense of peace and of protection from past sorrows and indignities.
For the first time also she felt that she had been justified in coming, and in leaving the man who,—alas! During the long, solitary journey home—if, indeed, England was home—there had been time for deep misgiving, for that quick examination of conscience which, in a sensitive, over-wrought nature, leads to self-accusation, to a fear of duty neglected.
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Barbara Rebell was but now emerging from what had been, and that over years, the imprisonment of both body and soul. Physically she had become free, but mentally she still had often during the last five weeks felt herself to be a bondswoman. During the voyage—aye, even during the two days spent by her in London—she had seemed to suffer more sentiently than when actually crushed under the heel of Pedro Rebell, the half-Spanish planter whose name seemed the only English thing about him.
Since she had escaped from him, Barbara had felt increasingly the degradation of her hasty marriage to one whose kinship to herself, distant though it was, had seemed to her girlish inexperience an ample guarantee. That she had once loved the man,—if, indeed, the romantic, high-strung fancy which had swept over the newly-orphaned girl could be dignified by the name of love,—served but to increase her feeling of shame.
To-night, leaning over the stone balcony of Chancton Priory, Barbara remembered an incident which had of late receded in her mind: Again she turned hot, as though the episode had happened but yesterday instead of six long years before; and she asked herself, with sudden misgiving, how she had ever found the courage to petition her godmother for the shelter of her roof.
She could never have brought herself to do so but for the kindly letter, accompanied by a gift of a hundred pounds, which had reached her once a year ever since her ill-fated marriage. These letters seemed to tell her that the old link which had bound her mother and Barbara Sampiero so closely had not snapped with death, with absence, or even, on the part of the writer of them, with physical disablement. At last Barbara turned back into the room, and, taking up a candle, made her way slowly and noiselessly down the old house. Rebell was surprised to note the state and decorum with which the meal to which she sat down in the dining-room was served.
She looked with some curiosity at the elderly impassive butler and the young footman—where had they been at the moment of her arrival? Barbara had yet to learn that implicit obedience to the wills of Doctor McKirdy and of Mrs. Turke was the rule of life in Chancton Priory, but that even they, who when apart were formidable, and when united irresistible, had to give way when any of their fancies controverted a desire, however lightly expressed, of their mistress. Doctor McKirdy would long ago have abolished the office of butler, and even more that of footman; it irked him that two human beings,—even though one, that selected by himself, was a Scotchman,—should be eating almost incessantly the bread of idleness.
But Madame Sampiero had made it clear that she wished the entertainment of her infrequent guests to be carried on exactly as if she herself were still coming and going with fleet, graceful steps about the house of which she had been for so many years the proud and happy mistress. She liked to feel that she was still dispensing hospitality in the stately dining-room, from the walls of which looked down an odd collection of family portraits, belonging to every period of English history and of English art; some, indeed the majority, so little worthy from the artistic point of view, that they had been considered unfit to take their places on the cedarwood panels of the great reception rooms.
Barbara found the doctor waiting for her in the hall, walking impatiently up and down, his big head thrust forward, his hands clasped behind his back. In theory no living man was less amenable to the influence of feminine charm or of outward appearance, but in actual day-today life Alexander McKirdy, doubtless owing to the old law of opposites, had a keen feeling for physical perfection, and all unconsciously he abhorred ugliness. Rebell came silently towards him from behind the Chinese screen which concealed the door leading from the great hall to the dining-room, he shot but at her a quick approving glance.
Her white gown, made more plainly than was the fashion of that hour, fell in austere folds about her upright slender figure; the knowledge that she was about to see Madame Sampiero had brought a flush to her pale cheeks and a light to her dark eyes. Without a word the doctor turned and led the way up the winding stair with which Barbara was already feeling a pleasant sense of familiarity; an old staircase is the last of household strongholds which surrenders to a stranger.
When they reached the landing opposite the music gallery, the doctor turned down the wide corridor, and Barbara, with a sudden feeling of surprise, realised that this upper floor had become the real centre,—the heart, as it were,—of Chancton Priory. When opposite to the high door with which the corridor terminated, Doctor McKirdy turned and looked for a moment at his companion; and, as he did so, it seemed to Barbara that he was deliberately smoothing out the deep lines carved by ever-present watchfulness and anxiety on the rugged surface of his face.
And then, standing just within the door, and gazing with almost painful eagerness before her, Mrs. Rebell saw as in a vision that which recalled, and to a startling degree, a great Roman lying-instate to which she had been taken, as a very young girl, during a winter spent by her with her parents in Italy.
Between the door and the four curtainless windows, through one of which now gleamed the young October moon, Barbara became aware that on a long narrow couch, placed catafalque fashion, in the centre of the room, an absolutely immobile figure lay stretched out. The light shed from candles set in branching candlesticks about the room threw every detail of the still figure, and especially of the head supported on high pillows, into prominent relief.
On the mittened hands, stiffly folded together, gleamed a diamond and a ruby. There was present no distortion—the whole figure, only looking unnaturally long, was simply set in trembling immobility.
Madame Sampiero—the Barbara Rebell of another day—was still made up for the part she chose to play to the restricted audience which represented the great band of former adorers and friends, some of whom would fain have been about her still had she been willing to admit them to her presence in this, her time of humiliation. As the door had opened, her large, wide open deep blue eyes, still full of the pride of life, and capable of expressing an extraordinary amount of feeling, turned with a flash of inquiry to the left, and a touch of real colour—a sign of how deeply she was moved—came into the delicately moulded, slightly rouged cheeks.
He had become quite gentle, and his face was even twisted into a wry smile as he put his small strong hands over the trembling fingers of Madame Sampiero. Barbara Rebell at last! Barbara was amazed, indescribably moved and touched, to see the light which came over the stiff face, as the dark blue eyes met and became fixed on her own.
Words, nay, not words, but strange sounds signifying—what did they signify? And now if you please she will say good-night. Following a sudden impulse, Mrs. Rebell bent down and kissed the trembling mittened hands. The words seemed, to the woman who uttered them, poor and inadequate, for her heart was very full, but Doctor McKirdy, glancing sharply at their still listener, saw that Madame Sampiero was content, and that his experiment—for so the old Scotchman regarded the coming of Barbara Rebell to Chancton—was likely to be successful.
Rebell, as child and girl, lived the ordinary life of a young Englishwoman, she would have realised, from the first moment of her arrival at Chancton Priory, how strange, how abnormal were the conditions of existence there; but the quiet solitude brooding over the great house suited her mood, and soothed her sore humiliation of spirit. As she moved about, that first morning, making acquaintance with each of the stately deserted rooms lying to the right and left of the great hall, and seeking to find likenesses to her father—ay, even to herself—in the portraits of those dead and gone men and women whose eyes seemed to follow her as she came and went among them, she felt a deep voiceless regret in the knowledge that, but for so slight a chain of accidents, here she might have come six years ago.
In fancy she saw herself, as in that case she would have been by now, a woman perhaps in years—for Barbara, brought up entirely on the Continent, thought girlhood ended at twenty—but a joyous single-hearted creature, her only past a not unhappy girlhood, and six long peaceful years spent in this beautiful place, well spent too in tending the stricken woman to whom she already felt so close a tie of inherited love and duty.
Turke resplendent in a black satin gown, much flounced and gathered, trimmed with bright red bows, and set off by a coral necklace. For they were standing in the first of the two great drawing-rooms, and Mrs. Turke looked round her ruefully: James Berwick, I mean—we would be perished with dulness. Folk were born, married, and died in the same service. Rebell was looking at the old woman with some curiosity.
James Berwick, he knows it quite well,—that of the Primrose family. Olivia her name was, and she was deceived just as I was,—but there, I made the best of it, and it all came to pass most providentially. Why, they would never have reared Mr. A half shuffling step coming across the hall checked, as if by magic, Mrs. As Doctor McKirdy opened the door Mrs. Turke slipped quickly past him, and silently he watched her go, with no jibe ready.
He was looking straight at Mrs. Rebell, hesitating, even reddening dully, an odd expression in his light eyes. Then he came close to her, and thrust a large open envelope into her hand. Madam likes those about her to look well. Richard,—the other packets, you will please, she says, not disturb. He waited a moment, then walked across to the Louis XV. Would you be feeling inclined for a walk? Madam will be expecting you to tell her what you think of the place. Doctor McKirdy hurried her through into the hall, and Barbara was grateful indeed that he took no notice and seemed oblivious of the tears—tears of oppressed, moved gratitude—which were trickling slowly down her cheeks.
Alexander McKirdy had come to have something of the pride of ownership in Chancton Priory, and as he walked his companion quickly this way and that,—making no attempt to suit his pace to hers,—he told her much that she remembered afterwards, and which amused and interested her at the time, of the people who had lived in the splendid old house. When they had skirted the wide lawns, the doctor hurried her through a small plantation of high elms to the stables. In this large quadrangular building of red brick, wholly encompassed by trees, reigned a great air of desolation: I thought in England there were always flowers.
Is not this prospect more grand and more permanently pleasing than that which would be produced by flowers? He had brought her to an opening in the high trees which formed a rampart to the lawn in front of the Priory, and, with his lean arm stretched out, he was pointing down a broad grass drive, now flecked with long shafts of golden October sunlight. On one side of this grassy way rose a holly hedge, and on the other, under the trees, was a drift of beech leaves. Turning round, Barbara suddenly gave a cry of delight; set in an arch, cut out of the dense wall of holly, was a small iron gate, and through the aperture so made could be seen a rose garden, the ancient rosery of Chancton Priory, now a tangle of exquisite colouring, a spot evidently jealously guarded and hidden away even from those few to whom the familiar beauties of the place were free.
Doctor McKirdy followed her gaze with softened melancholy eyes. He had not meant to bring Mrs. Rebell to this spot, but silently he opened the little iron gate, and stood holding it back for her to pass through into the narrow rose-bordered way. Surrounded by beech trees and high hedges, the rosery had evidently been designed long before the days of scientific gardening, but in the shadowed enclosure many of the summer roses were still blooming. And yet a feeling of oppression came over Barbara as she walked slowly down the mossy path: As the two walked slowly on side by side, they came at last to a fantastic fountain, set in the centre of the rosery, stone cupids shaking slender jets of water from rose-laden cornucopias, and so to the very end of the garden—that furthest from the Priory.
It was bounded by a high red brick wall, probably all that remained of some building older than the rosery, for it had been cleverly utilised to serve as a background and shelter to the earliest spring roses, and was now bare of blossom, almost of leaves. In the centre of this wall, built into the old brick surface, was an elaborate black and white marble tablet or monument, on which was engraved the following inscription: What is written there?
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She had turned to her companion, but for a while he made no answer. Then at last, speaking with an even stronger burr than usual, Doctor McKirdy translated, in a quiet emotionless voice, the inscription which had been composed by Lord Bosworth, at the bidding of Madame Sampiero, to the memory of their beloved child. Barbara looked up, questions trembling on her lips, but her eyes dropped as they met his.
But beyond the walls,—ah! What had she been promised? I make no doubt that those folk have no time to cast their minds back so far as to remember little Julia. He turned sharply round and walked as if in haste through the garden, his head thrust forward, his hands clasped behind his back, in what Barbara already knew to be his favourite attitude. Once outside the gate, Doctor McKirdy looked long, first towards the Priory, then down the broad grass drive. The road leading from the Priory gates to the open downs lay along a western curve of country-side, and was over-arched by great elms.
To the west Mrs. Rebell caught glimpses of a wide plain verging towards the sea, and in the clear autumn air every tree and bush flamed with glory of gold and russet. As they walked along the white chalky ridged cart track, the doctor looked kindly enough at the woman by his side. She was not beautiful as had been her mother, and yet he saw that her features were very perfect, and that health,—perfect recovery from what had evidently been a bad illness,—might give her the bloom, the radiance, which were now lacking.
The old Scotchman also told himself with satisfaction that she was intelligent—probably cultivated. With the one supreme exception of Madame Sampiero, Doctor McKirdy had had very little to do with intelligent women; but Barbara, from her way of listening to his stories of Chancton Priory, from her questions and her answers, had proved—or so thought the doctor—that she was one of the very few members of her sex who take the trouble to think for themselves.
Here at Chancton he is forgotten, completely obliterated—wiped out. She is the mother of my friend Mrs. How the doctor longed to tell Mrs. Rebell what he really thought of this Mrs. But native caution, a shrewd knowledge that such warnings often bring about the exact opposite to what is intended by those who utter them, kept him silent. He was a man of feuds, and to him the land agent, all the more so that he was a highly educated man, who had been a civil servant, and later, for a brief period of glory, a member of Parliament, was a very real thorn in the flesh.
But Barbara was laughing, really laughing, and for the first time since her arrival at Chancton. But of course his sister, Mrs. Johnstone, has talked to me of him: Oliver Boringdon just considers that he is always right, and that such a good thinker as himself can never be wrong. He looked quite angrily at his companion. Barbara was still smiling: Poor Barbara was waking up to life again, ready to take pleasure in the slightest matter which touched her sense of humour. The doctor, however, had become seriously uneasy. Why this strange interest in the Boringdons?
Her next words fortunately gave him the opening he sought. The father of her is General Thomas Kemp. Her eyes were brimming over with soft laughter. Living with her parents first in one and then in another continental town, she had had as a young girl many long solitary hours at her disposal, and she had then read, with keen zest, numberless old-fashioned novels of English life.
This talk seemed to bring back to her mind many a favourite story, out of which she had tried in the long ago to reconstruct the England she had then so longed to know.
Why does Satan rebel against God?
I was just about explaining to you that there is no doubt something like a kindness betwixt them. Boringdon, and then, after a long engagement,—oh! Even as he spoke the deeply rutted path was emerging abruptly on a vast expanse of rolling uplands. Before her, to the east, lay a dark oasis, a black-green stretch of fir plantation, redeemed a hundred years ago from the close cropped turf, and a large white house looked out from thence up the distant sea.
To the north, some three miles away, rose the high sky-line. A dense wood, said to be part of the primeval forest, crept upwards on a parallel line. There, so says tradition, Boadicea made her last stand, and across this down a Roman road still asserts the final supremacy of the imperial force.
A sound of voices, of steady tramping feet, broke the exquisite stillness. Towards them, on the path which at a certain point sharply converged from that on which Doctor McKirdy and Barbara stood, advanced Fate, coming in the shape of two men who were in sharp contrast the one to the other. Oliver Boringdon—dark, upright, steady-eyed—had still something of the Londoner and of the Government official about his appearance.
His dark, close-cropped hair was covered by a neat cap which matched his serge coat and knickerbockers. His companion, James Berwick, looked—as indeed he was—far more a citizen of the world. He was bare-headed, his fair hair ruffled and lifted from his lined forehead by the wind; his shooting clothes, of rough tweed and ugly yellow check colouring, were more or less out of shape. He was smoking a huge pipe, and as he walked along, with rather ungainly steps—the gait of a man more at home in the saddle than on foot—he swung an oak stick this way and that, now and again throwing it in the air and catching it again—a trick which sorely tried the patience of his staider companion.
When they reached the nearest point to Doctor McKirdy and Mrs. Rebell, the one took off his cap and the other waved his stick vigorously by way of greeting. Indeed Berwick, as Doctor McKirdy very well saw, would have soon lessened the ten yards space between the two groups, but Boringdon, looking before him rather more straightly than before, was already walking on. Oliver Boringdon, and the other is his fidus Achates, Mr. She was still feeling as if a sudden blast of wind had beaten across her face—such had been the effect of the piercing, measuring glance of the man whom she took to be Oliver Boringdon.
Barbara flushed deeply; she was wondering, with acute discomfort, what account of her, and of her affairs, Grace Johnstone—impetuous, indiscreet Grace—had written to her mother and brother? Boringdon, sitting in the drawing-room at Chancton Cottage, looked, in spite of her handsome dress and her manner and appearance of refinement, strangely unsuited to the place in which she found herself. Even the Indian tea-table—one of the few pieces of furniture added to the room by its present occupant, and now laden with substantial silver tea-pot, cream-jug, and sugar-basin burnished to their highest point of brilliancy—was out of keeping with its fragile charm.
On her arrival at Chancton Mrs. Boringdon would have dearly liked to consign the shabby old furniture, the faded water-colours and colour prints, to some unhonoured lumber-room of the Priory, but even had such desecration been otherwise possible, the new mistress of Chancton Cottage was only too well aware that she lacked the means to make the old-fashioned house what she would have considered habitable. Indeed, she had been thankful to learn that the estate agency offered to her son through the intermediary of his friend, James Berwick, carried with it the use of a fully furnished house of any sort.
To-day, her son had brought his friend back to lunch, and the two young men had stayed on in the dining-room and in the little smoking-room beyond, talking eagerly the one with the other. Boringdon was one of the many in whom the mere possession of wealth in others excites an almost hypnotic feeling of interest and goodwill. That fact impressed her far more, and was ever more present to her mind, than the considerable political position which his personality and his wealth together had known how to win for him.
When with Berwick Mrs. Boringdon was never wholly at ease, never entirely her cool, collected self. And now this afternoon, sitting there waiting for them to come in and join her, she wondered for the thousandth time why Oliver was not more amenable to his important friend—why he had not known how to make himself indispensable to James Berwick. Had there only been about him something of the sycophant—but Mrs. Boringdon did not use the ugly word—he would never have been allowed to slip into this backwater. Berwick had thrown himself as he spoke into a low chair, which creaked ominously under his weight.
How indignant would Mrs. Boringdon have felt had any other young man, looking as James Berwick now looked, his fair hair tossed and rumpled with the constant ruffling of his fingers, come and thrown himself down in this free and easy attitude on one of the few comfortable chairs in Chancton Cottage! I suppose it would mean going and living in London? She had once been able to render him a slight service—in fact, on two occasions he had been able to meet a friend, a lady, in her drawing-room. In doing what she had done Mrs.
Women now played a great part in politics. Boringdon preferred to think that the fair stranger, concerning whose coming to her house there had been so much mystery, had been one of these. But just now, the less you say the more you will be listened to when the moment comes for saying it! The speaker was walking up and down the narrow room, looking restless and impatient, with Berwick smiling lazily up at him, though evidently rather nettled at the frank, unasked-for advice. Boringdon judged the moment had come to intervene.
Boringdon, ought to enjoy the humours of the place. What other village can offer such a range of odd-come-shorts, of eccentrics? He came forward smiling, good humour restored, and took his share of the good things his mother had provided. Here one may always expect to come across the unexpected!
To-day whom should we meet, Mrs. Boringdon, but McKirdy, wrapped in his historic plaid and snuff-coloured hat, and accompanied by a nymph, and an uncommonly attractive nymph too! Boringdon looked gently bewildered. What an extraordinary thing! Berwick looked across at his hostess and grinned. But Boringdon was frowning. McKirdy has always been fond of making friends with the summer visitors, and he always prefers strangers to acquaintances.
I must say the doctor is one of the Chancton characters with whom I, for one, could well dispense! He was really insolent to me yesterday, but there is no redress possible with an old man like that. His latest notion is that I must only communicate with Madame Sampiero through him! James Berwick turned round, and Mrs. Boringdon thought he looked annoyed; he always chose to regard everything and everybody connected with the Priory as his very particular concern.
Walk with me as far as the great gates, old fellow? But Boringdon shook his head. But I expect to be over just for the night tomorrow. Oliver came back from the hall door and sat down. His mother saw with a pang how tired and how discouraged he looked. Berwick asked you to do—I mean, as to seeing him back part of the way to Fletchings.
That village lad could have waited for you—and—I suppose it was all a joke about the new paper and the editorship? Some fellow has been talking to him about it, and now he thinks he would like to resuscitate it. Incredible that so shrewd a man should sometimes choose to do such foolish things, actuated, too, by the silliest of sentimental motives! If I were he, I should feel anything but proud of my descent from the Stuarts. His tone of dejection went to her heart, but she answered, not the last, but the first sentence he had uttered. Oliver looked up at his mother uneasily; he was aware that with her a confidence was rarely spontaneous.
Pray do not answer me if you would rather not do so. Still, he was glad that she went on staring into the fire, and that he was safe from meeting the acute, probing glance he knew so well. She also felt unwontedly moved.
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She had not expected so honest a confession. But Oliver was again speaking, in a low, preoccupied voice. I have certainly become fond of Lucy—in fact, I think I may acknowledge to you, mother, that she is my ideal of what a girl should be. For what I am pleased to call my political ambitions, you have already made sacrifices. If I am to do what I wish with my life, such a marriage—indeed, any marriage, for years to come—would be for me quite out of the question.
It would mean the condemnation of myself to such a life as that I am now leading, and I do not feel—perhaps I ought to be ashamed of not feeling—that my attraction to Miss Kemp is so strong as to make me desirous of giving up all I have striven for. Boringdon made no reply.
She still stared on into the fire; a curious look, one of perplexity and hesitation, had come over her face. Then a vision of Lucy Kemp, steady, clear-eyed Lucy, almost too sensible—so the people at Chancton, he knew, regarded her to be—came to his help. We will be more careful. I am willing to admit that I have been foolish. Boringdon scarcely heard what he was saying. She who so seldom doubted as to her course of action, was now weighing the pros and cons of what had become to her a matter for immediate decision.
But even you once thought that it could be too dearly purchased. She was aware that he was alluding to an offer of marriage which she herself had unhesitatingly rejected at a time when her daughter was still in the schoolroom, and her son at Charterhouse. Boringdon, her children believed, had not hesitated for a moment between a life of poor gentility and one of rather vulgar plenty.
But still, you on your side, you and your sister Grace, have always thought far too little of it. And then, while her son listened to her in complete silence, giving no clue as to how he regarded the information, she explained her knowledge as having come to her from an absolutely sure source, from a certain Miss Vipen, the chartered gossip of Chancton, whose information could be trusted when actual facts were in question.
Boringdon had done speaking, Oliver still sat on, resting his head on his hands. Boringdon felt keenly, perhaps not unreasonably, irritated. But when, some three hours later, the mother and son had finished their simple dinner, and Oliver announced to his mother that he must now go down to the Grange for half an hour in order to consult General Kemp over that village lad whose conduct was giving Oliver so much trouble, Mrs.
Her son caught the smile and it angered him. How utterly his mother misunderstood him, how curiously little they were in sympathy the one with the other! As he left the house she heard the door bang, and sitting in the drawing-room knitting him a pair of silk socks, she allowed her smile to broaden till it transformed her face almost to that likeness which Berwick sometimes saw in her, to that of a prim Mistress Quickly. Boringdon did not go straight down to the Grange. Instead, after having groped his way through the laurel hedges and so into the moonlit road, he turned to the left, and struck out, making a long round before seeking the house for which he was bound.
Both his long talk with Berwick, and the short, strange conversation with his mother, had disturbed and excited him, bringing on a sudden nostalgia for the life he had left, and to which he longed so much to get back. During his eager discussion with the man whom he regarded as being at once his political chief and his political pupil, Chancton and its petty affairs had been forgotten, and yet now, to-night, he told himself with something like dismay that even when talking to Berwick he had more than once thought of Lucy Kemp.
The girl had become his friend, his only confidante: A bitter smile came over his face—no wonder Mrs. Boringdon had so often left them together! Her attitude was now explained. Boringdon had no wish to pose, even to himself, as a Don Quixote, but, in his views as to the fitting relationship of the sexes, he was most punctilious and old-fashioned, perhaps lacking the essential nobility which would have been required in such a man as himself to accept a fortune, even from a beloved hand. How little his mother understood him if she seriously thought he could bring himself to do such a thing, and in cold blood!
Those men and women who jeer at first love have surely never felt its potent spell. Twelve years had gone by since Boringdon had dreamed the dream which had to a certain extent embittered and injured the whole of his youth. What a fool he had been! She had liked him quite well enough to accept smilingly his adoration, to allow that he should amuse her so he had realised ever since in the intervals of a more serious love affair. Well, as he reminded himself to-night, they had been quits!
Small wonder indeed that even now, after twelve years had gone by, the recollection of certain bitter moments caused Boringdon to quicken his footsteps! To-night it all came back to him, in a flood of intolerable memories.
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Some merciful angel or some malicious devil—he had never quite known which—had caused him, one Sunday afternoon, while actually on the way to Bosworth House, to turn into Kensington Gardens. There, in a lonely grassy by-way among the trees, where he had turned aside to think in solitude of his beautiful lady, he had suddenly come on her face to face,—on Arabella Berwick, on his goddess, on the woman whose every glance and careless word had been weighed by him with anxious thought,—finding her in such a guise that for a moment he had believed that his mind, his eyes, were playing him some evil trick.
He stopped short, staring with fascinated, horror-stricken eyes, making no effort to pass by, to show the decent hypocrisy he should have shown; and what he heard made it only too easy to reconstitute the story. Miss Berwick had also dreamed her dream, and she was now engaged in deliberately putting it from her.
Boringdon, with all my heart—with all my body—with all my soul! But certain things are impossible in this world,—apart from everything else, there is the fact that for the present we are both penniless. He admits that often years go by before a man situated as he is makes any real way at the Bar.
I ought not to have allowed it to come to this! I have been a fool,—a fool! Boringdon, never allow yourself to really care. I have James,—till now I have never cared for anything but James. How well he remembered it all still, and yet what a long time ago all that happened! He himself had altered, incredibly, in these short years. Of the two men who at one and the same moment had loved Arabella Berwick, it was he who had forged ahead, Oliver Boringdon who had lagged behind. And the heroine of the adventure? More, she had so fashioned her life during the last ten years that she was regarded by many shrewd observers as being quite as remarkable a person as her brother—in fact, where he was concerned, the power behind the throne.
She loved, too, to exercise her power, to obtain good places for her favourites, to cause some humble climber of the ladder of fame to leap at one bound several of the hard intervening bars. It was admitted that the only strong feeling finding place in her heart was love of her brother, James Berwick, and for him, in a worldly sense, she had indeed done well. Since that afternoon, twelve years before, Miss Berwick and Oliver Boringdon had never been on really cordial terms.
She had at first tried, foolishly, to make a friend of him, a confidant, but he had not been possessed of the requisite amount of philosophy, and she had drawn back mortified at the condemnation, even at the dislike, which she had read in his eyes. As so often happens, the stirring of heart depths brings up to the surface of the mind more than one emotion. He had meant that this evening call at the Grange should be of a purely business character, and at the door he asked only for General Kemp. And then she seemed so simply, so unaffectedly glad to see him!
Berwick ought not to start such a paper—that it might do him harm? How good, how noble he was, she thought, and, how unconscious of his own goodness and nobility! The girl was in that stage of her mental development when the creature worshipped must necessarily appear heroic. But I want to ask you why a hundred years have made such a change? He had not thought that Mrs. Boringdon would find the girl so apt a pupil.
Poor Lucy shrank back. Perhaps you did not know that this was an old quarrel between my mother and myself. Berwick did once make me such an offer, but I think you will see—that you will feel—with me that I could not have accepted it. General Kemp, coming down half an hour later, found them still eagerly discussing Edmund Burke, and so finding, told himself, and a little later told his wife, that the world had indeed changed in the last thirty years, and that he, for his part, thought the old ways of love were better than the new. In truth, to James Berwick one of the greatest charms of Chancton Priory had come to be the fact that when there he was able almost to forget the wealth which had come to him with such romantic fulness when he was only four-and-twenty.
Turke never seemed to remember that he was one of the richest men in the kingdom, and this made his commerce with them singularly agreeable. Certain men and women have a curious power of visualising that fifth dimension which lies so near and yet so far from this corporeal world. For these favoured few, unseen presences sometimes seem to cast visible shadows—their intuition may now and then be at fault, but on the other hand, invisible guides will sometimes lead them into beautiful secret pastures, of which the boundaries are closely hidden from those of their fellows who only cultivate the obvious.
It was so with James Berwick, and, as again so often happens, this odd power—not so much of second sight as of divination—was quite compatible with much that was positive, prosaic, and even of the earth earthy, in his nature and character. He attributed his undoubted gift to his Stuart blood, and was fond of reminding himself that the Old Pretender was said always to recognise a traitor when approached by one in the guise of a loyal servant and friend. He came the short way through the Priory park—that which finally emerged by a broad grass path into the lawn spreading before the Elizabethan front of the great mass of buildings.
As he moved across, towards the porch, he thought the fine old house looked more alive and less deserted than usual, and having passed through the vestibule, and so into the vast hall, he became at once aware of some influence new to the place. He looked about him with an eager, keen glance. A large log fire was burning in the cavernous chimney, but then he knew himself to be expected: Berwick, hardly aware of what he was doing, glanced idly down at them: Here, at least, Berwick felt with satisfaction, everything was absolutely as usual. He went through into a narrow passage, up a short steep staircase to the upper floor, and so to the old-fashioned bedroom and dressing-room which no one but he ever occupied, and which were both still filled with his schoolboy and undergraduate treasures.
There was a third room on each of the floors composing the two-storied building which had been added to the Priory some fifty years before, and these extra rooms—two downstairs, one upstairs—were sacred to Mrs. There, as Berwick well knew, she cherished the mahogany cradle in which she had so often rocked him to sleep: James Berwick had been sadly spoilt by the good things life had heaped on him in almost oppressive lavishness, but no thought of personal convenience would have made him give up, when at the Priory, these two rooms—this proximity to the elderly woman to whom he was so dear, and who had tended him so devotedly through a delicate and fretful childhood.
As he walked about his bedroom, he looked round him well pleased. A good fire was burning in the grate, still compassed about with a nursery fender, and his evening clothes, an old suit always kept by him at Chancton, were already laid out on the four-post bed. Everything was exactly as he would have wished to find it; and so seeing, he suddenly frowned, most unreasonably. Why was it, he asked himself, that only here, only at the Priory, were things done for him as he would have always wished them to be—that is, noiselessly, invisibly? His own servants over at Chillingworth never made him so comfortable!
But then, as he was fond of reminding himself, he was one of those men who dislike to be dependent on others. A nice regard, perhaps, for his own dignity had always caused him to dispense with the services of the one dependant to whom, we are told, his master can never hope to be a hero. There came a knock, a loud quavering tap-tap on the door. Berwick walked forward and opened it himself, then put his arms round Mrs. The mauve and white striped gown was new to him, but each piece of handsome jewellery set about the substantial form had been his gift.
But make me welcome now that I am come, eh Turkey? We have missed you dreadful all this summer! Turke went off into a fit of laughter. Not but what, thanks to glass and the stoves, the fruits of the earth do appear at queer times nowadays, but it would be a sin to waste glass and stoves on beans! My sister has got a French chef at Fletchings, and luncheon today was—well, you know, Turkey! Turke thought to chef was French for to cook. They were here constant,—now let me see, a matter of twenty-five years ago and more, when you, Mr.
James, were ten years old, my dear. Is he here too? Turke folded her hands together, and shook her head sadly, but with manifest enjoyment. It was well that Mr. James knew nothing, and that it had been her part to tell the great news. From what I can make out from the doctor,—but you know, Mr. It seems to run in the family. Has she been here long, Turkey?
But Madam has already took to her wonderful: Turke shook her finger at the speaker. What call would the doctor have to be such a thing as jealous? A tall, dark, slim creature, eh, Turkey? James; and if I was you, sir, I would make up my mind to stay to-night and to be kind to her. Again she gave him that quick shrewd look which seemed to say so much more than her lips uttered.
Sometimes Berwick felt an uncomfortable conviction that very little he thought and did remained hidden from his old nurse. Turke had felt quite sure he would do, he made up his mind to remain at Chancton Priory and to follow, in this matter of Mrs.