'Go on, Jen.'
'Ye sees, what he willed to get, that he mun have, an' at the end he willed to have me—mind, body, an' soäl. He'd 'a had me, only I made a stand fur my life. Mother, she was all on his side, only she didn't want fur me to do what I wouldn't; but she cried like, an' talked o' his goodness—an' Dan'el, he wouldn't ask out an' out, or I could 'a told him my mind an' 'a done wi' it; but he went on giving us, an' paying things, an' mother she took it all, till I was fairly mad wi' the shame an' anger on't. I doänt say as I acted as I ought; I knowed I'd a power over him to drive him wild like wi' a smile or a soft word, an' power's awful dangerous fur a young thing—it's like as if God gave the wind a will o' its own, an' didn't howd it in His own hand. Then I was feared o' Dan'el's power over mother, an' give in times when I ought to 'a held my own. An' I liked to have him fur a sarvint to me, an' I led him on like. So it went on—he niver doubted I'd marry wi' him, an' I held out fur my life. Then at th' end, some words we had made things worse. 'Twas i' spring—i' March I think—he walked out milesan' miles on the bad roads to bring me the first flowers. I was book-binding then, out late at night, an' I comed home to find he'd left them fur me—snowdrops they was, an' moss wi' a glint o' green light on't, like sun shining through th' trees; an' there was a grey pigeon's feather he'd picked up somewheres, all clean and unroughed, like a bit o' the sky at th' dawn; an' there was a twig wi' a wee pink toädstood on't, all pink an' red. The sight o' them fairly made me mad. 'Twas bad enow to buy me wi' munny an' the things munny can buy, but it seemed he'd take the very thoughts o' God A'mighty and use them to get his will. I were mad; but if he'd comed to our house I couldn't 'a spoke fur mother's being there; so I just took them bits o' Spring i' my hand, an' went out i' the dark to his house, an' went into his room, an' threw 'em on the floor, an' stamped 'em wi' my foot, an' I told him how he'd sneaked round to bind me to him, an' as how I'd die first. I was mad, an' talked till I couldn't speak fur my voice give out, an' that wasn't soon. He just sat still hearing me, but he was white, an' shook like a man wi' the palsy. They said he'd had fits once an' that made him nervous, but I didn't think o' him like that. He was strong, fur he could make most all men do as he wanted. He was spoiling my life wi' his strength, an' I didn't think o' him as weakly. When I'd raged at him an'couldn't say more, I went out an' was going home i' the dark, howding by the wall, as weak as a baby; an' just afore I got home, I seed him stand just in front' o' me. I thought he'd runned after me—mebbe he did—but I've thought since, mebbe not, that his body mayn't 'a been there at all; but anyway I seed him stand just afore me, wi' his eyes large and like fire, an' him all white and trembling. He said, "I tell ye, Jen, I will have ye mine, an' as long as I live no other man shall," an' wi' that I went past him into the house.'
'Go on, Jen,' said the carter.
'All I knows is that the word he spoke was a true word. Next day they comed and telled us he was found all par'lysed in his chair, an' he couldn't move nor speak. From that time the doctors 'ud sometimes come from a long way off; they said as there was somethin' strange about his sickness. I doänt know what they said, I niver seed him again. There's part o' him lies i' the bed, an' the parish feeds him, an' the doctors they talk about him. I niver seed him again sin' that night, but I knows what he said was true, an' there's many a man as 'as seed him anear me sin' that day. I tell ye, Johnnie, there's trouble to face i' this world worse ner death,—not worse ner our own death, fur that's most times a good thing, but worse ner the death o' them we love most true—an' worse ner parting i' this world,Johnnie, an' worsea'mostthan sin itself; but, thank God, notquiteworse ner sin. But I never knowed, lad, how bad my own trouble was—though it's a'most drove me hard at times, not recking much what I said or did—I niver knowed, my lad, how bad it was till I knowed it was yer trouble too.'
The young carter stood quite silent. His blue blouse glimmered white in the darkness and flapped a little in the wind, but he stood still as a rock, with his strong arms crossed upon his breast, and the silence seemed filled with the expression of thoughts for which words would have been useless. It was evident that her strong emotion had brought to his mind a conviction of the truth of her words which could not have been conveyed by the words alone. So they stood there, he and she, in all the rugged power of physical strength, confronted with their life's problem. At last, after they had been silent a long time, and it seemed that he had said many things, and that she had answered him, he appeared suddenly to sum up his thoughts to their conclusion, and stretched out both his strong arms to take her and all her griefs into his heart. It seemed in the darkness as though he did clasp her and did not, for she gave a low terrible cry and fled from him—a cry such as a spirit might give who, having ascended to Heaven's gate with toil and prayer, falls backward into Hell; and she ran from him—it seemed thatwith only her human strength she could not have fled so fast. He followed her, dashing with all his strength into the darkness. They went towards the village, and in the mud their footfalls were almost silent.
The listener came out of his hiding and went back on the road by which he had come.
Next morning Skelton travelled northward to Yarm. After some difficulty he succeeded in discovering the paralytic whom he sought. The medical interest which had at first been aroused by the case appeared to have died away; and it was only after some time spent in interviewing officials that he at last found the man, Daniel McGair. A parish apothecary had him in charge. The apothecary was a coarse good-natured fellow, one of that class of ignorant men upon whose brains the dregs of a refined agnosticism have settled down in the form of arrogant assumption. He had enough knowledge of the external matters of science to know, upon receiving Skelton's card, that he was receiving a visitor of distinction. 'Yes, sir,' he said, leading the way out of the dispensary, 'I'll exhibit the case. I don't know that there's much that's remarkableabout it. Of course, to us who take an interest in science, all these things are interesting in their way.'
It was quite clear he did not know in what way the most special interest accrued to this case.
'No sir, he ain't in the Union; he saved, and bought his cottage before his stroke, so that's where he is. He ain't got no kith or kin, as far as we know.'
It was bright noonday when they walked through the narrow streets of mean houses, passing among the numerous children which swarm in such localities. The sun was shining, the children were shouting, the women were gossiping at their doors, when the apothecary stopped at a low one-roomed cottage, the home of Daniel McGair. He opened the door with a key and went in, as though the house were empty.
It was a plain bare room; there was no curtain on the window and the sun shone in. There was a smouldering fire in the grate, a bookshelf on one side, still holding its dusty and unused volumes; there was an arm-chair—was that the chair in which he had sat to see his love-gifts trampled down, in which he had received that mysterious stroke from the unseen enemy? There was also a table in the room, and a chest, and, in the corner, a pallet-bed, upon which lay the withered body of a man. That was all, except some prints that hung upon the wall, dusty and lifeless-looking. Such changes do yearsof disuse make in dwellings which, when inhabited, have been replete with human interest. Even yet there was abundant indication that the room had once been the abode of one who put much of his own personality into his surroundings. The chair and the chest were carved with a rude device—the Devil grappling with the Son of God. The prints were crude allegorical representations of Life and Death. The books were full of the violent polemic of the Reformation. A flowerpot stood on the window-sill; perhaps ten years ago it had had a flower in it, but now it held the apothecary's empty phials. Everything proclaimed the room tenantless.
Skelton walked to the bed and looked down upon it with profound curiosity. Only the head lay above the coverlet; withered and shrunken it was, yet the brow was high, and it was plain that the features had been fine and strong, betokening the once keen and sensitive nerve—there was nothing sensitive now; all thought and feeling had for ever fled. The half-shut lids disclosed the vacant eyes; the hair lay clammy and matted on the wrinkled brow; there was nothing of life left but the breath.
'It's my opinion, sir, that he'll live out his natural time. It's a theory of mine that we are all born with a certain length of life in us, and, barring accident, that time we'll live. Well, of course this man had the accident of his stroke, which by rightsought to have done for him, but by some fluke he weathered it, and now he'll live out his time. If one could find out his ancestors and see how long they each lived, with a little calculation I could tell you how long he'd lie there.' With that the apothecary poked his patient in the cheek, and jerked him by the arm, to show Skelton how completely consciousness was gone. He would have treated a corpse with more respect: the lowest of us has some reverence for death.
Just then the door, which had been left ajar, was pushed open, and a slight, sweet-faced woman came in from the street. She was evidently a district Bible-reader, but, although perceiving that she had entered a house where she was not needed, she advanced as far as the bed and looked down upon it with a passion of tenderness and pity depicted on her face.
'Bless you, mum, he ain't suff'ring,' said the apothecary.
'I was thinking of his soul, not of his body,' she said. 'I was wondering if he had been prepared to meet his Creator.'
'Where do you suppose his soul is?' asked Skelton curiously. He asked the question in all reverence; she was not a lady apparently, only a working woman, but there was about her the strong majesty of a noble life.
'He is not dead yet,' she replied with evident astonishment.
'Lor, mum,' said the apothecary, 'his brain ain't in working order just at present, and as for his spirit apart from his body, that's an unknown quantity we scientific men don't deal in.'
She looked at them both with a look of indescribable compassion, and went away. Skelton would fain have followed the woman out into the sunny street, but he remained to pay that courtesy which was due to the brusque good nature of his companion.
After examining the room and finding nothing more of interest, he went and talked over the physical circumstances of the case with the parish doctor. He did not gain much information about the patient's diseased body, and naturally none whatever concerning the whereabouts of his soul. The peculiar interest of the case he did not mention to any one. Afterwards he went back to the neighbourhood by himself, and endeavoured, as quietly as possible, to find out what traces the man's past life had left upon the minds of his neighbours. Ten years bring more change to any community than we are apt to suppose; and among the poor, where rude necessity rules rather than choice, there is more change than among the rich. There were a few who had seen McGair moving up and down the streets, and knew him to have been a book-binder by trade.One or two remembered the widow Wilkes and her daughter, and could affirm that they had been friends of McGair and had moved away after his illness. Whither they had gone no one knew.
When there was nothing more to be seen or heard at Yarm, Skelton went home. Again he threw himself into all the daily interests of his life in order that he might think the more dispassionately of the circumstances of this strange case. In truth it was not now entirely out of curiosity that he was tempted to think of it; his sympathy had been stirred by the courage and sorrow of the woman whom he had so idly accosted on that bright autumn day only a few weeks before. She had appealed to him because he had knowledge. Was all his knowledge, then, powerless to help her? He believed that the shadowy appearance which dogged her footsteps could only be some projection of mind, whether or not its cause was the strong will of the paralytic transcending the ordinary limits of time and space, he could not tell. Certainly no discussion as to its nature and origin could in any way aid its victim, and he could only fall back upon the comfort material kindness and sympathy could give. At last he went down once more to West Chilton, this time for the express purpose of seeing Jen.
He found the cottage in the glen road near the village, and his knock was answered by Jen herself.She recognised him instantly, but was too pre-occupied to take much interest in the fact of his coming. He learned that her mother had just died, and that the neighbours were in the house, keeping vigil during the few sad days preceding the burial. It was evident that there was little real sympathy between them and the bereaved daughter, so he easily persuaded her to come out and walk a bit up the road with him. She did so, evidently supposing that he had some business with her, but too deeply buried in her sorrow to inquire what it was.
They came to the house by the roadside where he had last seen her and she had been unconscious of his presence. The place seemed to rouse her from the dulness of grief, and she suddenly raised her head, like a beautiful animal scenting some cause of excitement, and stood still, looking round with brightened eyes, taking long deep breaths in the pure frosty air. No doubt she had passed the same road many times since the tryst, but the mind which has lately stood face to face with death perceives more clearly the true relations of all things to itself; and, in this spot, among all life's shiftings of the things that seem and are not, she had stood and wrestled with the reality of her ghostly bondage.
All about them the hills were covered with the year's first snow. How bright the light was upon their heights! how soft the shadows that gathered intheir slopes! The fields were white also, and the hedgerows. Above them the sky was veiled with snow clouds, soft and grey, except that at the verge of east and west there were faint metallic lines, such as one sees upon clouds across snowfields, like the pale reflections of a distant fire. Jen had come to a full stop now. She raised her hands to her face and sobbed out like a little child.
Skelton stood by her, feeling his own feebleness. 'I know you are in great trouble,' he said.
Her sobs did not last long; she soon mastered them, not by any art of concealment but by rude force. Then standing shame-faced, with half-averted head, she wiped her eyes with her apron.
'Yes, sir, I'm in great trouble, greater ner ye can know, fur death's neither here nor there—it's living that's hard. Parson, he speaks out about preparing to die, but to my mind it takes a sight more preparing to know how to go on living.'
'I know that you have greater trouble than your mother's death. I know that you love a young man who loves you, and also what it is that you think keeps you apart from him.'
'And how do you know that, sir?' she asked, still with averted face.
Then he confessed, humbly enough, just how he did know it, and all that he knew, and told her about his visit to Yarm. When he spoke of Yarm andhis visit to Daniel McGair she turned and looked full at him, drinking in every word with hungry curiosity.
'Yes, sir, we left the place, an' I haven't heard o' him this nine year, but I knowed he wasn't dead.'
'How did you know that, Jen?'
'Because, sir, when God A'mighty sees fit that he should die, I'll be free o' him, that's all.'
'And aren't you going to marry?'
'Noä, sir. Johnnie an' me has talked it over, an' he says as how he'll wait till such time as I'm free. An' I didn't say "no" to him, fur when one knows what it is to love true, sir, one knows well it's noä use to say as this thing's best or t'other, but just it's like being taken up like a leaf by the wind an' moved whether one will or no. There's just this diff'rence betwixt true love an' the common kind—the common kind o' love moves ye i' the wrong way, an' true love i' the right; fur it's a true word the blessed St. John said when he said that love is God.'
'Did St. John say that?' said Skelton.
'Yes, sir, I read it to mother just afore she died. An' Johnnie's gone across the sea, sir, wi' his mother; he got a right good chance to better hisself, an' I made him go. His ship sailed the day after Christmas; an' I said, "Johnnie, I'll bide here, an' God 'ull take care o' me as well as ye could yerself;" an' I said, "Johnnie, I'll pray every day, night an' morning,that if ye can forget me, ye will; for if ye can forget, then yer love's not o' the right sort, as I could take, or God 'ud want ye to give; and if ye can't forget, then there's nowt to say but as I'll bide here." An' I said, sir, as he munna think as loving him made me sad, fur I was a big sight happier to love him, if he forgets or if he comes again.'
'Will you live here; Jen, where the neighbours distrust you?'
'It 'ud just be the same any other place, sir, an' here I can work i' the fields, spring and harvest, an' earn my own bread. I know the fields, sir, an' the hills—they's like friends to me now, an' I knows the dumb things about, an' they all knows me. It's a sight o' help one can get, sir, when one's down wi' the sorrow o' all the world lying on the heart, to have a kind look an' a word wi' the dogs an' cows when they comes down the hills fur the milking. An' the children they mostly lets come to me now, though they kep 'em from me at first.
Then he told her that he had come a long way on purpose to see if he could help her; that he felt ashamed of having listened to her story, and that it would give him happiness in some way or other to make her life more easy. He explained that he had a great deal of money and many friends, and could easily give her anything that these could procure. In saying this he did not disguise from himself fora moment that his motive was mixed, and that he desired to gain some hold over her, such as benevolence could give, that he might further examine the problem of her extraordinary misfortune. Even as he spoke he marvelled at the strength of his respect for her, which could so outweigh his own interest as to make it impossible that he should interfere in her affairs otherwise than with all deference, as if she were a lady.
When he had made it quite clear to her that he was able and willing to give her anything she should ask, she thought of his words a while, and then answered—
'I thank ye, sir, but there's nowt ye can do o' that sort, fur if there was I'd take it from Johnnie an' none other. But there's one thing I'll ask, sir, an' wi' all yer kind offers ye can't but agree to it, fur it's not much. Ye've found out this tale o' my life; there's none else as knows it, save mother lying dead, an' Johnnie I telled fur love's sake, an' him as lies palsied i' Yarm—God A'mighty only knows, sir, what Dan'el McGair could tell on't—but this I ask, sir,—that ye'll keep all ye knows an' say nowt. I did Dan'el a great wrong, for I smiled on him whiles for the sake o' power; not but what he did me a worse wrong, so far worse that whiles I think no woman has so sore a life as me; but I did do him wrong, sir, and fur that reason I'll not ha' his nameblazed abroad, hanging on to a tale as 'ud buzz i' the ears o' all. To tell it 'ud not makemylife worse but better, fur now them as sees this thing says dark things, an' speaks o' the devil an' worse. The times ha' been when I cursed God an' prayed to die, but, thank Heaven, when I learned what love was, I learned as God A'mighty can love us in spite o' our wrong-doing, an' the pain it brings. Th' use o' such sore pain as mine, sir, isna fur us to say, or to think great things to bear it patient; but the use o' life, sir, to my thinking, is to keep all His creatures from pain if we can, an' to take God's love like the sunshine, an' be thankful. So I'll ask ye to keep what ye knows o' this tale an' not speak on't, an' go no more to Yarm; an' if ye'll give me yer hand on that, sir, I'll thank ye kindly.'
So he gave her his hand on it, and went away.
The earth was white, the firmament was white, the plumage of the wind was white. The wind flew between curling drift and falling cloud, brushing all comers with its feathers of light dry snow. At the sides of the road the posts and bars of log-fences stood above the drifts; on the side of the hill the naked maple trees formed a soft brush of grey; just in sight, and no more, the white tin roof and grey walls of a huge church and a small village were visible; all else was unbroken snow. The surface of an ice-covered lake, the sloping fields, the long straight road between the fences, were as pure, in their far-reaching whiteness, as the upper levels of some cloud in shadeless air.
A young Englishman was travelling alone through this region. He had set out from the village andwas about to cross the lake. A shaggy pony, a small sleigh, a couple of buffalo-robes and a portmanteau formed his whole equipment. The snow was light and dry; the pony trotted, although the road was soft; the young man, wrapped in his fur-lined coat, had little to do in driving.
In England no one would set out in such a storm; but this traveller had learned that in Canada the snowy vast is regarded as a plaything, or a good medium of transit, or at the worst, an encumbrance to be plodded through as one plods through storms of rain. He had found that he was not expected to remain at an inn merely because it snowed, and, being a man of spirit, he had on this day, as on others, done what was expected of him.
To-day, in the snow and wind, there was a slight difference from the storms of other days. The innkeeper, who had given him his horse an hour before by the walls of the great tin-roofed church, had looked at the sky and the snow, and asked if he knew the road well; but this had been accepted as an ignorant distrust of the foreign gentleman. Having learned his lesson, that through falling snow he must travel, into the heart of this greater snowstorm he travelled, valiant, if somewhat doubtful.
When he descended upon the ice of the lake he was no longer accompanied by the grey length of the log-fences. This road across the lake had been welltracked after former snowfalls, and so the untrodden snow rose high on either side; branches of fir and cedar, stuck at short intervals in these snow walls, marked out the way. The pony ceased to trot. The driver was only astonished that this cessation of speed had not come sooner.
Standing up in his sleigh and looking round he could see two or three other sleighs travelling across nearer the village. The village he could no longer see, scarcely even the hill, nor was there any communication over the deep untrodden snow between his road and that other on which there were travellers.
Another hour passed, and now, as he went on slowly up the length of the lake, all sound and sight of other sleighs were lost. The cloud was not dark; the snow fell in such small flakes that it did not seem that even an infinite number of them could bury the world; the wind drifting them together, though strong, was not boisterous; the March evening did not soon darken: and yet there was something in the determined action of cloud and wind and snow, making the certainty that night would come with no abatement, which caused even the inexperienced Englishman to perceive that he was passing into the midst of a heavy storm.
As is frequently the case with travellers, he had certain directions concerning the road which appearedto be adequate until he was actually confronted with that small portion of the earth's surface to which it was necessary to apply them. He was to take the first road which crossed his, running from side to side of the lake; but the first cross track appeared to him so narrow and so deeply drifted that he did not believe it to be the public road he sought. 'Some farm, hidden in the level maple bush just seen through the falling snow, sends an occasional cart to the village by this by-path,' so he reassured himself; and the pony, who had spied the track first and paused to have time to consider it, at the word of command obediently plodded its continuous route. A quarter of a mile farther on the traveller saw something on the road in front; as the sound of his pony's jangling bells approached, a horse lifted its head and shook its own bells. The horse, the sleigh which it ought to have been drawing, were standing still, full in the centre of the road. The first thought, that it was cheering to come upon the trace of another wayfarer, was checked by the gloomy idea that some impassable drift must bar the way.
The other sleigh was a rough wooden platform on runners. Upon it a man, wrapped in a ragged buffalo-skin, lay prostrate. The Englishman jumped to the ground and waded till he could lay his hand upon the recumbent figure.
At the touch the man jumped fiercely, and shookhimself from sleep. Warm, luxurious sleep, only that, seemed to have enthralled him. His cheeks were red, his aquiline nose, red also, suggested some amount of strong drink; but his black eyes were bright, showing that the senses were wholly alive. He looked defiant, inquiring. He was a French-Canadian, apparently ahabitant, but he understood the English questions addressed to him. The curious thing was that he seemed to have no reason for stopping. When he had with difficulty made way for the gentleman to pass him on the road, he followed slowly, as it seemed reluctantly. A mile farther on the Englishman, now far in front, suspected that the other had again stopped, and wondered much. The man's face had impressed him; the high cheek bones, the aquiline nose, the clearness of the eye and complexion—these had not expressed dull folly.
Now the Englishman came to another cross road, wider but more deeply drifted than the track he was on. He turned into it and ploughed the drifts. When he reached the shore, where the land undulated, the drifts were still deeper. There were no trees here; he could see no house; there was hardly any evidence, except the evergreen branches stuck in the sides, that the road had ever been trodden. The March dusk had now fallen, yet not darkly. The full moon was beyond the clouds, and whateverwave of light came from declining day or rising night was held in by, and reflected softly from, the storm of pearl. After some debate he turned back to the lake and his former road. It must lead somewhere; he pressed steadily on toward the western end of the lake.
The western shore was level; he hardly knew when he was upon the land. The glimmering night blinded the traveller; no ray of candle light was in sight. He began to think that he was destined to see his horse slowly buried, and himself to fight, as long as might be, a losing battle with the fiends of the air.
At last the plodding pony stopped again resolutely. Long lines of Lombardy poplars here met the road. They were but as the ghosts of trees; their stately shape, their regular succession, inspired him with some sentiment of romance which he did not stay to define. He dimly discerned shrubs as if planted in a pleasure-ground. Wading and fumbling he found a paling and a gate. The pony turned off the high road with renewed courage in its motion; the Englishman, letting loose the rein, found himself drawn slowly up a long avenue of the ghostly poplar trees. The road was straight, the land was flat, the poplars were upright. The simplicity affected him with the notion that he was coming to an enchanted palace. The pony approached the door of a large house, dimto the sight; its huge pointed tin roof, its stone sides, mantled as they were with snowflakes and fringed with icicles at eaves and lintels, hardly gave a dark outline in the glimmering storm. The rays of light which twinkled through chinks of shutters might be analogous to the stars produced by a stunned brain; it seemed to the Englishman that if he went up and tried to knock on the door the ghostly house, the ghostly poplar avenue, would vanish. The thought was born of the long monotony of a danger which had called for no activity of brain or muscle on his part. The pony knew better; it stopped before the door.
The traveller stood in a small porch raised a step or two from the ground. The door was opened by a middle-aged Frenchwoman clad in a peasant's gown of bluish-grey. Behind her, holding a lamp a little above her head, stood a young girl, large, womanly in form, with dimpled softness of face, and dressed in a rich but quaint garment of amber colour. With raised and statuesque wrist she held the lamp aloft to keep the light from dazzling her eyes. She was looking through the doorway with the quiet interest of responsibility, nothing of which was expressed in the servant's furrowed countenance.
'Is the master of the house at home?'
'There is no master.'
The girl spoke with a mellow voice and with amanner of soft dignity; yet, having regarded the stranger, there leaped into her face, as it seemed to him, behind the outward calm of the dark eyes and dimpling curves, a certain excited interest and delight. The current of thought thus revealed contrasted with the calm which she instinctively turned to him, as the words which an actor speaks aside contrast with those which are not soliloquy.
With more hesitation, more obvious modesty, he said—
'May I speak to the mistress of the house?'
'I am the mistress.'
He could but look upon her more intently. She could not have been more than eighteen years of age. Her hair had the soft and loose manner of lying upon her head that is often seen in hair which has, till lately, been allowed to hang loose to the winds. Her dress, folded over the full bosom and sweeping to the ground in ample curves, was, little as he could have described a modern fashion, even to his eyes evidently fantastic—such as a child might don at play. Above all, as evidence of her youth, there was that inward quiver of delight at his appearance and presence, veiled perfectly, but seen behind the veil, as one may detect glee rising in the heart of a child even though it be upon its formal behaviour.
'Can you tell me if there is any house withinreach where I can stop for the night?' He gave a succinct account of his journey, the lost road, the increasing storm. 'My horse is dead tired, but it might go a mile or so farther.'
The serving-woman, evincing some little curiosity, received from the girl an interpretation in low and rapid French. The woman expressed by her gestures some pity for man and beast. The girl replied with gentle brevity—
'We know that the roads are snowed up. The next house is three miles farther on.'
He hesitated, but his necessity was obvious.
'I am afraid I must beg for a night's shelter.'
He had been wondering a good deal what she would say, how she would accede, and then he perceived that her dignity knew no circumlocution. 'I will send the man for your horse.' She said it with hardly a moment's pause.
The woman gave him a small broom, an implement to the use of which he had grown accustomed, and disappeared upon the errand. The girl stood still in her statuesque pose of light-bearer. The young man busied himself in brushing the snow from cap and coat and boots. As he brushed himself he felt elation in the knowledge, not ordinarily uppermost, that he was a good-looking fellow and a gentleman.
'My name is Courthope.' The visitor, denuded of coat and cap, presented his card, upon which was written, 'Mr. George Courthope.'
He began telling his hostess whence he came and what was his business. A quarry which a dead relative had bequeathed to him had had sufficient attraction to bring him across the sea and across this railless region. His few words of self-introduction were mingled with and followed by regrets for his intrusion, expressions of excessive gratitude. All the time his mind was questioning amazedly.
By the time the speeches which he deemed necessary were finished, he had followed the girl into a spacious room, furnished in the large gay style of the fifties, brilliantly lit, as if for a festival, and warmed by a log fire of generous dimensions. Having led him in, listening silently the while, and put her additional lamp upon the table, she now spoke, with noempressement, almost with a manner ofinsouciance.
'You are perfectly welcome; my father would never have wished his house to be inhospitable.'
With her words his own apologies seemed to lose their significance; he felt a little foolish, and she,with some slight evidence of childish awkwardness, seemed to seek a pretext for short escape.
'I will tell my sister.' These words came with more abruptness, as if the interior excitement was working itself to the surface.
The room was a long one. She went out by a door at the farther end, and, as with intense curiosity he watched her quickly receding form, he noticed that when she thought herself out of his sight she entered the other room with a skip. At that same end of the room hung a full-length portrait of a gentleman. It was natural that Courthope should walk towards it, trying to become acquainted with some link in the train of circumstances which had raised this enchanted palace in the wilderness; he had not followed to hear, but he overheard.
'Eliz, it's arealyoung man!'
'No! you are only making up, and' (here a touch of querulousness) 'I've often told you that I don't like make-ups that one wants too much to be true. I'll only have the Austens and Sir Charles and Evelina and——'
'Eliz! He'snota make-up; the fairies have sent him to our party. Isn't it just fairilly entrancing? He has a curly moustache and a nice nose. He's English, like father. He says "cawn't," and "shawn't," and "heah," and "theyah,"—genuine, no affectation. Oh' (here came a little gurgle of joy), 'and to-night,too! It's the firstperfectlyjoyful thing that hasevercome to us.'
Courthope moved quietly back and stood before the blazing logs, looking down into them with a smile of pure pleasure upon his lips.
It was not long before the door, which she had left ajar, was re-opened, and a light-wheeled chair was pushed into the room. It contained a slight, elfin-like girl, white-faced, flaxen-haired, sharp-featured, and arrayed in gorgeous crimson. The elder sister pushed from behind. The little procession wore an air of triumphant satisfaction, still tempered by the proprieties.
'This is my sister,' said the mistress of the house.
'I am very glad to see you, Mr. Courthope.' The tones of Eliz were sharp and thin. She was evidently acting a part, as with the air of a very grand lady she held out her hand.
He was somewhat dazzled. He felt it not inappropriate to ask if he had entered fairyland. Eliz would have answered him with fantastic affirmative, but the elder sister, like a sensible child who knew better how to arrange the game, interposed.
'I'll explain it to you. Eliz and I are giving a party to-night. There hasn't been any company in the house since father died four years ago, and we know he wouldn't like us to be dull, so when our stepmother went out, and sent word that she couldn'tcome back to-night, we decided to have a grand party. There are only to be play-people, you know; all the people in Miss Austen's books are coming, and the nice ones out ofSir Charles Grandison.'
She paused to see if he understood.
'Are theMysteries of Udolphoinvited?' he asked.
'No, the others we just chose here and there, because we liked them—Evelina, although she was rather silly and we told her that we couldn't have Lord Ormond, and Miss Matty and Brother Peter out ofCranford, and Moses Wakefield, because we liked him best of the family, and the Portuguese nun who wrote the letters. We thought we would have liked to invite the young man inMaudto meet her, but we decided we should have to draw the line somewhere and leave out the poetry-people.'
The girl, leaning her forearms slightly on the back of her sister's chair, gave the explanation in soft, business-like tones, and there was only the faintest lurking of a smile about the corners of her lips to indicate that she kept in view both reality and fantasy.
'I think that I shall have to ask for an introduction to the Portuguese nun,' said Courthope; 'the others, I am happy to say, I have met before.'
A smile of approval leapt straight out of her dark eyes into his, as if she would have said: 'Good boy! you have read quite the right sort of books!'
Eliz was not endowed with the same well-balanced sense of proportion; for the time the imaginary was the real.
'The only question that remains to be decided,' she cried, 'is whatyouwould prefer to be. We will let you choose—Bingley, or Darcy, or——'
'It would be fair to tell him,' said the other, her smile broadening now, 'that it's only the elderly people and notables who have been invited to dinner, the young folks are coming in after; so if you are hungry——' Her soft voice paused, as if suspended in mid-air, allowing him to draw the inference.
'It depends entirely on who you are, who I would like to be.' He did not realise that there was undue gallantry in his speech; he felt exactly like another child playing, loyally determined to be her mate, whatever the character that might entail. 'I will even be the idiotic Edward if you are Eleanor Dashwood.'
Her chin was raised just half-an-inch higher; the smile that had been peeping from eyes and dimples seemed to retire for the moment.
'Oh, we,' she said, 'are the hostesses. My sister is Eliz King and I am Madge King, and I think you had better be a real person too; just a Mr. Courthope, come in by accident.'
'Well, then, he can help us in the receiving and chatting to them.' Eliz was quite reconciled.
He felt glad to realise that his mistake had been merely playful. 'In that case, may I have dinner without growing grey?' He asked it of Madge, and her smile came back, so readily did she forget what she had hardly consciously perceived.
When the sharp-voiced little Eliz had been wheeled into the dining-room to superintend some preparations there before the meal was ready, Courthope could again break through the spell that the imaginary reception imposed. He came from his dressing-room to find Madge at the housewifely act of replenishing the fire. Filled with curiosity, unwilling to ask questions, he remarked that he feared she must often feel lonely, that he supposed Mrs. King did not often make visits unaccompanied by her daughters.
'She does not, worse luck!' Madge on her knees replied with childish audacity.
'I hope when she returns she may not be offended by my intrusion.'
'Don't hope it,'—she smiled—'such hope would be vain.'
He could not help laughing.
'Is it dutiful then of you'—he paused—'or of me?'
'Which do you prefer—to sleep in the barn, or that I should be undutiful and disobey my stepmother?'
In a minute she gave her chin that lift in the air that he had seen before.
'You need not feel uncomfortable about Mrs. King; the house is really mine, not hers, and father always had his house full of company. I am doing my duty to him in taking you in, and in making a feast to please Eliz when the stepmother happens to be away and I can do it peaceably. And when she happens to be here I do my duty to him by keeping the peace with her.'
'Is she unkind to you?' he asked, with the ready, overflowing pity that young men are apt to give to pretty women who complain.
But she would have him know that she had not complained.
There was no bitterness in her tone—her philosophy of life was all sweetness. 'No! Bless her! God made her, I suppose, just as He made us; so, according to the way she is made, she packs away all the linen and silver, she keeps this room shut up for fear it will get worn out, and we never see any visitors. But to-day she went away to St. Philippe to see a dying man—I think she was going to convert him or something; but he took a long time to die; and now we may be snowed up for days, and we are going to have a perfectly glorious time.' She added hospitably, 'You need not feel under the slightest obligation, for it gives us pleasure to haveyou, and I know that father would have taken you in.'
Courthope rose up and followed her glance, almost an adoring glance, to the portrait he had before observed. He went and stood again face to face with it.
A goodly man was painted there, dressed in a judge's robe. Courthope read the lineaments by the help of the living interpretation of the daughter's likeness. Benevolence in the mouth, a love of good cheer and good friends in the rounded cheeks, a lurking sense of the poetry of life in the quiet eyes, and in the brow reason and a keen sense of right proportion dominant. He would have given something to have exchanged a quiet word with the man in the portrait, whose hospitality, living after him, he was now receiving.
Madge had been arranging the logs to her satisfaction, she would not accept Courthope's aid, and now she told him who were going to dine with them. She had great zest for the play.
'Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, of course, and we thought we might have Mr. Knightley, because he is a squire and not so very young, even though he is not yet married. Miss Bates, of course, and the Westons. Mrs. Dashwood has declined, of which we are rather glad, but we are having Mrs. Jennings.' So she went on with her list. 'We could not help asking SirCharles with Lord and Lady G——, because he is so important; but Grandmamma Shirley is "mortifying" at present. She wrote that she could not stand "so rich a regale." Sir Hargrave Pollexfen will come afterwards with Harriet, and I am thankful to say that Lady Clementina is not in England at present, so could not be invited.' She stopped, looking up at him freshly to make a comment. 'Don't you detest Lady Clementina?'
When they went into the dining-room, the choice spirits deemed worthy to be at the board were each introduced by name to the Lady Eliz, who explained that because of her infirmities she had been unable to have the honour of receiving them in the drawing-room. She made appropriate remarks, inquiring after the relatives of each, offering congratulations or condolences as the case demanded. It was cleverly done. Courthope stood aside, immensely entertained, and when at last he too began to offer spirited remarks to the imaginary guests, he went up in favour so immensely that Eliz cried, 'Let Mr. Courthope take the end of the table. Let Mr. Courthope be father. It's much nicer to have a master of the house.' She began at once introducing him to the invisible guests as her father, and Madge, if she did not like the fancy, did not cross her will. There was in Madge's manner a large good-humoured tolerance.
The table was long, and amply spread with fine glass and silver; nothing was antique, everything was in the old-fashioned tasteless style of a former generation, but the value of solid silver was not small. The homely serving-woman in her peasant-like dress stood aside, submissive, as it seemed, but ignorant of how to behave at so large a dinner. Courthope, who in a visit to the stables had discovered that this Frenchwoman with her husband and one young daughter were at present the whole retinue of servants, wondered the more that such precious articles as the young girls and the plate should be safe in so lonely a place.
Madge was seated at the head of the table, Courthope at the foot; Eliz in her high chair had been wheeled to the centre of one side. Madge, playing the hostess with gentle dignity, was enjoying herself to the full, a rosy, cooing sort of joy in the play, in the feast that she had succeeded in preparing, in her amusement at the literary sallies of Eliz, and, above all perhaps, in the company of the new and unexpected playmate to whom, because of his youth, she attributed the same perfect sympathy with their sentiments which seemed to exist between themselves. Courthope felt this—he felt that he was idealised through no virtue of his own; but it was a delightful sensation, and brought out the best that was in him of wit and pure joyfulness. To Elizthe creatures of her imagination were too real for perfect pleasure; her face was tense, her eyes shot sparkles of light, her voice was high, for her the entertainment of the invisible guests involved real responsibility and effort.
'Asides are allowed, of course?' said Eliz, as if pronouncing a debatable rule at cards.
'Of course,' said Madge, 'or we could not play.'
'It's the greatest fun,' cried Eliz, 'to hear Sir Charles telling Mr. John Knightley about the good example that a virtuous man ought to set. With "hands and eyes uplifted" he is explaining the duty he owes to his Maker. It's rare to see John Knightley's face. I seated them on purpose with only Miss Matty between them, because I knew she wouldn't interrupt.'
Courthope saw the smile in Madge's eyes was bent upon him as she said softly, 'You won't forget that you have Lady Catherine de Bourg at your right hand to look after. I can see that brother Peter has got his eye upon her, and I don't know how she would take the "seraphim" story.'
'If she begins any of her dignified impertinence here,' he answered, 'I intend to steer her into a conversation with Charlotte, Lady G——.'
Courthope had a turkey to carve. He was fain to turn from the guests to ask advice as to its anatomy of Madge, who was carving a ham and assuring Mr.Woodhouse that it was 'thrice baked, exactly as Serle would have done it.'
'Stupid!—it was apples that were baked,' whispered Eliz.
'You see,' said Madge, when she had told him how to begin upon the turkey, 'we wondered very much what a dinner of "two full courses" might be, and where the "corner dishes" were to be set. We did not quite know—do you?'
'You must not have asides that are not about the people,' cried Eliz intensely. 'Catherine Moreland's mother is talking common sense to General Tilney and Sir Walter Eliot, and there'll be no end of a row in a minute if you don't divert their attention.'
Eliz had more than once to call the other two to account for talking privately adown the long table.
'What a magnificent ham!' he exclaimed. 'Do you keep pigs?'
Madge had a frank way of giving family details. 'It was once adearlittle pig, and we wanted to teach it to take exercise by running after us when we went out, but the stepmother, like Bunyan, "penned it"—