CHAPTERIX.
Nellslept only by snatches through that night, and waked the next morning with a heart of lead in her bosom. She had been so long unused to country sights and sounds, that she opened her eyes with the first gleam of sunshine that streamed through her window. The air was so pure, and the surroundings so peaceful, that she could hear the gardeners whetting their scythes in Sir Archibald Bowmant’s grounds, and the milkers whistling, or talking to each other, as they took their way to the cowsheds. A lark was executing his wonderful, untaught trills far up somewhere in the blue heavens, and the farmyard chorus had commenced to tune up—hens clucking, ducks quacking, pigs grunting, and cows lowing, as they asked to be delivered of their burden of milk. The honeysuckle and roses, which clambered outside her window and tapped against the panes, were filling the morning air with their fragrance; the dew-laden grass sent forth a sweet, faint odour; the smell of ripening fruit and ripened vegetables permeated the air. These were the things of which Nell had dreamed in her town life with intense longing; which she had sickened to see and hear again; the re-enjoyment of which, she had believed would prove the panacea for every pain, the cure for every trouble. And now they were all before her in their fullest beauty, and she turned her face from them and hid it on her pillows. The innocent sights and sounds made her tremble and turn faint with despair. They were no longer for her; she had outgrown them. The simple tastes of her childhood mocked her as she lay there—a deceiver, a pretender, an acting lie in her father’s household. Nell had kept back the truth for years, but she had never perverted it before—stooped to falsehoods to hide her shame, deceived her father and her mother, and come back to take her place amongst them as a pure woman, when she knew herself to be no longer pure. The very things which she had believed would be her balm had proved her bane. The very daisies and buttercups rose up in judgment against her, until she felt herself unworthy even to pluck the flowers of the field. These thoughts so depressed her, that she rose in a melancholy mood, that quite precluded her keeping up the farce of gaiety which she had played the night before. She appeared at the breakfast-table so pale and heavy-eyed and languid, that her father gazed at her with surprise, and her mother, in pity for her looks, tried to divert her husband’s attention from them as much as possible by talking of Hetty and their acquaintances in Usk. The conversation came round in time to their landlord, Sir Archibald Bowmant.
‘Are the family at home, mother?’ asked Nell. ‘I could hear the men mowing the lawn distinctly from my window this morning, and I fancied I could smell the scent from those huge mounds of heliotrope they used to have in front of the dining-room windows. I have never seen heliotrope grow in such profusion anywhere else.’
‘No, my girl, there’s nobody there, nor likely to be till the summer is well over. Sir Archibald is our landlord, and a liberal one, so we’ve no call to say anything against him, and perhaps it’s no business of ours, but he is a very different gentleman since he married again. The first Lady Bowmant was a good woman, and though I suppose Sir Archibald was always inclined to be wild, she kept him straight as you may say. But since his second marriage, well, Usk Hall is not the same place.’
‘How is it altered?’ said Nell, trying to take a languid interest in her mother’s conversation.
‘Oh, in everything, my dear. Inmylady’s time (I always call hermylady, you know, Nell, on account of my having been her maid before her marriage) the family used to go to church regularly every Sunday; he and she in their carriage, and as many servants as could be spared following them up the aisle. But now their pew’s empty from week’s end to week’s end. Of course, if the master and mistress don’t attend church, the servants can’t be expected to do so. And I doubt if they’d have the time, for they seem to be kept working more on Sundays than on any other day in the week.’
‘How is that, mother?’
‘They keep such a heap of company, my dear, and when they’re not tearing over the country on horseback, they’re playing cards all day. James Powell, the under footman, says it’s something awful—like hell opened, was his words. They begin the first thing after breakfast, and then it’s gambling and swearing, and brandies and sodas, till night. My lady seems to think nothing of it. She has a lot of brothers, and I suppose she was brought up amongst it all. She drives a tandem, and has nearly killed several people by her fast driving—shedidrun over Betsy Rigden’s little girl one day; but it wasn’t much hurt, and Sir Archibald sent Betsy a ten-pound note, so nothing more was said about it; but, to my mind, it isn’t decent that just as sober people are on their way to church, my lady should come tearing down the road in her tandem, with some young gentleman by her side, and both laughing so loud you might hear them half a mile off. Ah, it’s a very different house to what it used to be.’
‘But they’re not at home now, you say.’
‘No, my lass, nor won’t be till October or thereabouts, and then they will keep it up till it’s time to go back to London, or off to some of those foreign places Sir Archibald is so fond of, and where, I hear, they do nothing but gamble. It’s a dreadful habit for them to have got into. I never thought at one time that I should have lived to see Sir Archibald the worse for liquor, but I’m sorry to say I have, more than once. However, as I said before, he’s been a good landlord to father there, so we’re the last as should speak against him. He fills my two rooms every autumn, and far into spring; and if I had six I could let them to him. Last year he came to ask me to let him have the whole farmhouse, and find beds for ourselves elsewhere, and he would have made it worth our while to, but I told him it couldn’t be. I couldn’t sleep away from my dairy and bakehouse; nothing would go right if I wasn’t on the spot.’
‘Do you go to church still, mother, or to chapel?’ asked her daughter.
‘Why, to church, Nell, of course. What makes you think we should change our religion? You go to church too, I hope?’
Nell waived the question.
‘Only because of Hugh Owen,’ she said. ‘You spoke so well of his preaching, that I thought you might have gone over to the Dissenters.’
‘No, no, my lass. No going over for us. Father and I were born and bred church people, and we’ll be buried as such, eh, father?’
‘Why, certainly,’ replied the farmer. ‘I never hold with chopping and changing. Live as you’ve been bred. That’s my motto.’
‘Of course the Owens have always been Dissenters,’ continued Mrs Llewellyn, ‘so I would never say anything against Hetty going to chapel with her husband, for where he goes it’s her duty to follow; but we only went to hear Hugh preach for friendship’s sake. But there, it was beautiful and no mistake. The words seemed to come flowing out of his mouth like milk and honey. They say as Mr Johnson, the curate, is quite jealous of the way that Hugh draws his congregation away to chapel. You must come with me and hear him one evening, Nell. It’s mostly Wednesday evenings that he takes the open-air service in Mr Tasker’s field. He stands on a high bench, and the people crowd round to hear him. He seems to speak so much from his heart. I’m sure if there was one woman crying, last Wednesday, there was a dozen.’
‘Including Mrs Llewellyn,’ remarked the farmer, as he rose from table, and shook the crumbs from his coat.
‘Well, I don’t deny it, and I’m not ashamed of it,’ replied his wife, ‘Nell will cry too, maybe, when she hears her old sweetheart talk. It’s not much of a match for Hetty, Nell—not such a match as I hope to seeyoumake some day, my girl—but they’re good people, the Owens, and she’s safe under their care.’
‘And what do you want more?’ demanded the farmer. ‘It’s far better than if she’d married some half-and-half fellow, who’d have brought her down to poverty, or worse. All I want for my girls is respectable husbands, men as will stick to them and work for them, not fashionable popinjays that would give ’em fine clothes and fine words for awhile, and then maybe desert ’em for another woman. You had better make a lot of Will Owen, wife, for you won’t get another son-in-law as good as he in a hurry.’
With which Mr Llewellyn took his thick, crabthorn walking-stick, and went on his way.
‘Lor’,’ said his wife, as he disappeared, ‘the way father do stick up for the Owens is wonderful. Not that I’ve a word to say against them, but I should have looked higher for Hetty myself. William is a good lad, but not more than a labourer on his father’s farm, and John Nelson at the post-office proposed twice for her, but she wouldn’t look at him, though he makes three hundred a year in hard cash. But I won’t hear of any farm-hand for you, Nell. You’ve got the looks to make a good marriage, my girl, and I hope you’ll make it. You’re rather peaky now, and your eyes are sunken and dark underneath. I shouldn’t wonder if your liver wasn’t out of order, but country fare and air will soon set you right again, and then there won’t be a prettier girl for miles round. It was time you came back to us, for you’d have lost all your good looks if you’d remained in London much longer.’
Nell had listened to this lengthy discourse almost in silence. She had been thinking all the time, ‘Oh, if they knew—if they only knew!’ She had tried to pull herself together several times, and laugh and chat as she had done the night before, but she had found it impossible. It was as if some weight had been attached to all her mental powers and dragged them down. She had a horrible feeling that if she spoke at all she should blurt out the truth and tell them everything. So she remained silent and miserable, wishing that she had never come back to Usk, but been drowned in the deep bosom of the Thames.
‘I’m afraid you’ve got a bit of a headache still, my dear,’ remarked her voluble mother, as she rose from the breakfast-table, ‘and so I won’t ask you to come round the dairy with me this morning. You’d rather rest on the sofa and read a book, I daresay?’
‘No, no,’ cried Nell, rousing herself, ‘I’d rather go where you go, mother. I should go mad—I mean, I should feel my headache much more sitting here by myself. Let me come and see all over the dear old house with you. It will do me good—I must keep stirring, or I shall feel things—my headache, so much worse for thinking of it.’
So she made a great effort, and followed her mother on her various vocations, and made the dairymaids open their eyes to hear the refinement of her speech and to see her graceful movements and the daintiness with which her clothes were made and worn. Had they but been able to read her mind they would have seen with amazement that she shrunk from contact with them, because her dread secret was eating into her very soul and making her feel unfit to associate with her fellow-men. She had only realised the truth, and what her love for Lord Ilfracombe had made her, by fits and starts in London, but here, in the heart of God’s country, it was borne in upon her to such an extent that she felt as if every innocent animal, and fresh, modest, wild blossom must proclaim it to the world. So she went moodily about the farmhouse all day, and her mother believed that she was ill, and ransacked her brain to think of a remedy for her. In the evening, as they were all sitting quietly together (for Mrs Llewellyn had been asking her husband for some money to get Nell a new outfit, which had recalled to his mind the impoverished condition in which his daughter had returned home), who should walk in amongst them, to the general surprise, but Hugh Owen. He looked rather conscious as he entered the room, but excused his visit on the score of asking how Nell had borne her journey, and to bring her a book which he thought she might like to read.
‘You need no excuses for coming to Panty-cuckoo Farm, my lad!’ exclaimed the farmer; ‘you’re always welcome here. What’s the day? Tuesday? Ah, then to-morrow’s the grand field-night, which accounts for your having the time to come over this evening.’
The young man blushed, and looked at Nell.
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘to-morrow is my field night, as you call it, farmer. I hope it may prove a harvest field.’
‘Now, just tell me how you do it, lad,’ said the old man. ‘Do you lie awake of nights, and make up all you’re going to say, or do you wait till the people are before you, and then just tell ’em what’s in your mind? I’m curious to know, for your flow of words is wonderful, and I can’t understand how any man can talk for two mortal hours as you did last Wednesday, unless he’s stored it all up beforehand. It beats me altogether. I never heard the like before.’
He had got Hugh astride his hobby, and the young man found his tongue at once.
‘Oh, Mr Llewellyn, if you loved the people as I do, you would find it quite as easy as talking to your family at home. I do think of what I wish to say to them; sometimes the thought walks with me, as you might say, all day long; but I seldom use the words I’ve been dreaming of. I go to the spot with my mind full of some set speech, but when I see the people who wait for me—all of them old neighbours or children whom I’ve seen grow up amongst us—and most of them dear friends, I feel as if my very soul went out to meet them, yearning to gather them all safe into the fold. The words in which to warn and entreat them come too quick then to my lips for utterance, and sometimes I’ve had to swallow down my sobs before I could find a voice with which to speak. The difficulty isnotto speak, Mr Llewellyn. The hard part is to keep silence, when one sees so many whom one loves living for nothing but to eat and to drink, and as if there were no God in the world.’
The farmer and his wife had been regarding Hugh Owen during this speech with open-eyed amazement—Nell, with a scared look, half fear and half annoyance.
‘Eh, lad,’ said Mr Llewellyn, ‘but it’s a rare gift, and you’ve got it, there’s no doubt of that. But as for living to eat and drink, we must do it, or we shouldn’t live at all, and we do it for others as well as ourselves. What would become of my missus there, and Nell now for the matter of that, if I didn’t see after the ploughing and reaping, and wife after the dairy and the bakehouse. We’d all be dead of starvation by the end of the year if I took to preaching in the fields like you, instead of farming them.’
‘Indeed, yes, Mr Llewellyn, you quite mistake if you think I consider it part of religion to neglect the work we have been given to do. But we can live to God and do our duty at one and the same time. It seems so difficult to me,’ continued the young enthusiast, as he flung his hair off his brow, and lifted his dark eyes to Nell’s face, ‘to live in the country, surrounded by God’s works, andnotremember Him. Why, a countryside like Usk is a continual church-going. Every leafy tree is a cathedral—the flowery meadows are altar carpets—each wild bird singing in its thankfulness a chorister. God’s face is reflected in the least of His works. How can we look at them and forget Him?’
‘Ay, ay, my lad,’ responded the farmer, as with a glance at his wife, as much as to say, ‘he’s as mad as a March hare,’ he rose to quit the house for the stables.
Hugh directed his attention more particularly to Nell.
‘I hope I haven’t worried you,’ he said sweetly. ‘I do not often introduce these subjects into my ordinary conversation, but your father drew me on before I was quite aware of it. I have brought you a book to read, which cannot fail to interest you, Livingstone’s Travels in Africa. Have you seen it yet?’
She took the volume listlessly, and answered ‘No.’
‘How I should love to travel amongst those wild tribes,’ continued Hugh enthusiastically; ‘to make friends with them, and bring them to a knowledge of the truth. The fauna and the flora, too, of strange climates, how interesting they must be. To have undertaken such a journey—to have left such a record behind one—would almost satisfy the ambition of a lifetime.’
‘You should be a missionary,’ said Nell; ‘you are cut out for it.’
‘Do you really think so, that I could be worthy of so high a vocation? I have sometimes thought of it, but always shrunk back from so great a responsibility.’
‘You seem fond of sacrifices,’ said Nell, half mockingly; ‘you were talking of making them just now. You would have plenty then. You would have to leave your parents and brother and sister, perhaps for ever; and be eaten up by a lion or your interesting cannibals instead.’
‘Yes, yes, it would be hard,’ he answered, ignoring, or not perceiving the joking spirit in which she treated the idea, ‘and harder now than it has ever seemed before; but the prospect will be always before me, to my life’s end, as something that may come to pass, if I find no higher duties to keep me at home. But I am tiring you perhaps. You have not yet recovered from your long journey, Nell—if I may call you so—your eyes look weary, and your hands tremble. Are you sure you are quite well?’
‘Yes, yes, perfectly so, only fatigued, as you surmise, and in need of fresh air. All Londoners are obliged, as a rule, to leave town after the hot season, you know, in order to recruit. I shall be all right when I have spent a few weeks in Usk.’
‘And then I hope you will cease to speak or think of yourself as a Londoner. I have never been there, but I have heard it is full of temptations to frivolity and careless living, and that it is difficult to keep close to God in London. Tell me something of your life there, Nell. Had you liberty to go to church whenever you chose, and did you hear any fine preachers, such as Dr Liddon and Dr Irons? Did you ever go amongst the poor—the poor who live in alleys and back slums, or did your employer disapprove of your visiting such?’
‘I know nothing—I mean, I can tell you nothing,’ cried Nell, suddenly rising to her feet. ‘I am weary. I must go to my own room. It will take me days to recover the fatigue I have gone through. Good-night. Don’t think me rude, but I cannot talk to you of such things now.’
And with a curt nod Nell went off in search of her mother, leaving him alone, and somewhat disconcerted at the abrupt ending of their conversation. Mrs Llewellyn was almost as puzzled as Hugh Owen at her daughter’s strange behaviour. She could not understand her. The next day dragged itself disappointingly away. Nell continued in the same passive, indifferent disposition, and when some neighbours, who had heard of her return home, called at Panty-cuckoo Farm expressly to welcome her, she locked herself into her bedroom, and refused even to answer Mrs Llewellyn’s entreaties that she would make an effort to come down and see them. Towards evening, however, she became feverishly excitable again, and seemed impatient to find some vent for it.
‘What can we do, mother?’ she exclaimed as they rose from the tea-table. ‘Isn’t this the night for Hugh Owen’s preaching? Let’s go and hear him. It’ll make me scream with laughter to see old Hugh stuck up as a minister.’
‘Ay, but, dearie, you mustn’t laugh when you get there, or there will be a scandal, and poor Hugh will be main hurt. Besides, you had better rest in the garden; the field’s more than a mile off, and I’m afraid you’ll feel tired before you get there.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ cried the girl. ‘I’m just in the humour for walking this evening, mother. I couldn’t remain in the garden; it’s too slow, so, if you don’t want to hear Hugh, I’ll go by myself.’
‘Oh, no, you don’t do that,’ replied Mrs Llewellyn hastily. ‘I’m too proud of getting my handsome daughter back again after so many years to let her go tramping over Usk by herself the first day she is at home. The Owens are sure to be there, and Hetty will be main glad to see us. So put on your hat, Nell, and we’ll be off. I wish you’d something a bit smarter to wear than that big black thing; however, I can’t deny but it suits you all the same.’
So chattering, the old woman trotted off by her tall daughter’s side, until they had reached Mr Tasker’s field. The open-air service had commenced some time when they arrived there. The thirty or forty people assembled had sung several hymns and listened to Hugh Owen’s earnest prayer, and were now engrossed by his address. The young preacher stood upon a bench, his long hair waving in the summer breeze; his eyes fixed upon his small congregation, and his arms stretched out as though to embrace them. He was not so enrapt, though, but that he perceived the approach of Nell and her mother, who took up their stand on the outside of the little group. His pale cheek glowed for a moment, and his heart beat more rapidly, but he soon subdued these feelings and threw his soul once more into the work he had appointed himself to do. He paused for one instant to recover his equanimity, and then proceeded with his discourse.
‘What is the great evil of this world, my friends?’ he said. ‘What is the greatest sin we sin against each other and ourselves? The sin of deceit. We deceive each other in trading—even the smallest grain of cheating, be it the quarter of a quarter of an ounce less in the scales than it should be, is as great a robbery in God’s eyes; as great a wrong to our neighbour; as great a wrong to ourselves, as if it had been a hundredweight! We deceive each other in religion. We go to church or chapel because others do, and others would think us irreligious if we neglected to do so, but we do not tell our neighbours this. We profess that we attend service for the love of God—because we could not be happy without attending; because the duty is a comfort and a delight to us. Can any duty so fulfilled bring any blessing in its train? And many of us are living lies! This seems a hard judgment, but look into your own hearts and say if it is not true! Which of you shows yourself in your true light to the world? Your small meannesses—your hasty tempers—your neglected duties—your backbitings—you put them all aside in public, and let your neighbours think you good mistresses; kind wives and husbands; liberal parents, and faithful friends. But do you imagine you can deceive God—the God of truth, who hates a lie—from whose heaven, we are told, all liars shall be excluded? How many of you now before me could enter that heaven to-day? How many are there who, if their real characters were known—if their secret sins were laid bare—would be received with the love and respect which you all accept as your due? Many a pure and beautiful outside conceals a deceitful soul—many an apparently innocent face is the mask for a guilty conscience; but you cannot deceive your God; He knows every sin you have committed—every wrong thought you have entertained. Is it not strange that what you are not afraid to let your God know you have done, you would not have your neighbour find out for all the world! But which is better, to be rejected of men to-day or of God in the days to come?—to endure a little scorn and contumely now, in a life which can only last at the best for a few years, or to be shut out from God’s love for ever? Think, my dearest friends, of what His lovefor evermeans! For ever and for ever and for ever!—without sorrow, or sickness, or sin—wrapped in the arms of His boundless mercy and protection for all time, and then compare it with the paltry gain of keeping the good opinion of your neighbour here below—one, who probably (if the truth were known) has sinned in like proportion with yourself! If I could only make you realise what God’s love is like, you would, in order to gain it, throw all earthly consideration to the winds and think of Him and of Him only! He loves you as no mortal man can ever love you, and He hates a liar. He has said He will have none of them—that if men will not confess their sins before the world, He will not number them with His elect in heaven; and this confessing includes—’
But here Hugh Owen’s discourse was interrupted by a shrill scream, as Nell Llewellyn fell back in her mother’s arms in a fit of violent hysterics. Of course everyone present (who had been longing for the address to be concluded, that they might renew their acquaintance with her) rushed forward simultaneously to offer their advice, or assistance. But Nell shrunk from them all alike, as she tried to quell the distressing cries that rose involuntarily from her, in her mother’s bosom.
‘Just stand aside a bit and let the poor lass have air,’ said Mrs Llewellyn. ‘She’s so weak and faint after that nasty London, that the walk’s been too much for her. I was afraid it might be, but she was so bent on hearing Hugh Owen preach! There! Nell—there, my lass! try and control yourself, do! Lean on me, and we’ll go slowly home again. I’m main sorry we’ve interrupted your discourse, Hugh, but I hope you’ll go on now all the same! And you must forgive poor Nell! It’s all because she’s so weak and upset like.’
‘I’m sorry she came this evening,’ replied Hugh, who was the picture of distress, ‘but let me take her, Mrs Llewellyn, I am stronger than you are and Nell can lean as hard as she likes, on me!’
But Nell turned her head away, and at this juncture, one of the neighbours, who lived close by, returned with a little chaise drawn by a ragged pony, which he had been to fetch, and putting Nell and her mother in it, he drove them home; and Mrs Llewellyn’s whole care was then directed to getting her daughter into bed, where she trusted she would sleep and recuperate her exhausted strength. But creeping up an hour afterwards to see how she was going on, she found her so ill that she sent for the village doctor, who pronounced her to be in a very critical condition, and before another twelve hours were over her head, Nell was raving in the delirium of a nervous fever.