Brandon of the Engineers

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.