It was with mixed feelings that Clare Kenwardine got down from the
stopping train at a quiet station and waited for the trap to take her
home. The trap was not in sight, but this did not surprise her, for
nobody in her father's household was punctual. Clare sometimes wondered
why the elderly groom-gardener, whose wages were very irregularly paid,
stayed on, unless it was because his weakness for liquor prevented his
getting a better post; but the servants liked her father, for he seldom
found fault with them. Kenwardine had a curious charm, which his daughter
felt as strongly as anybody else, though she was beginning to see his
failings and had, indeed, been somewhat shocked when she came home to
live with him not long before.
Now she knitted her level brows as she sat down and looked up the
straight, white road. It ran through pastures, and yellow cornfields
where harvesters were at work, to a moor on which the ling glowed red in
the fading light. Near the station a dark firwood stretched back among
the fields and a row of beeches rose in dense masses of foliage beside
the road. There was no sound except the soft splash of a stream.
Everything was peaceful; but Clare was young, and tranquillity was not
what she desired. She had, indeed, had too much of it in the sleepy
cathedral town she had left.
Her difficulty was that she felt drawn in two different ways; for she had
inherited something of her father's recklessness and love of pleasure,
though her mother, who died when Clare was young, had been a shy Puritan.
Clare was kept at school much longer than usual; and when she insisted on
coming home she found herself puzzled by her father's way of living.
Young men, and particularly army officers, frequented the house; stylish
women came down from town, often without their husbands; and there was
generally some exciting amusement going on. This had its attraction for
Clare; but her delicate refinement was sometimes offended, and once she
was even alarmed. One of the young men had shown his admiration for her
in a way that jarred, and soon afterward there had been a brawl over a
game of cards.
Kenwardine had then suggested that she make a long visit to her aunts, in
the cathedral town. They had received her gladly but she soon found her
stay there irksome. The aunts were austere, religious women, who moved in
a narrow groove and ordered all their doings by a worn-out social code.
Still, they were kind and gave Clare to understand that she was to stay
with them always and have no more to do with Kenwardine than duty
demanded. The girl rebelled. She shrank with innate dislike from license
and dissipation, but the life her aunts led was dreary, and she could not
give up her father. Though inexperienced, she was intelligent and she saw
that her path would not be altogether smooth now that she was going home
for good. While she thought about it, the trap arrived and the shabby
groom drove her up the hill with confused apologies.