CHAPTERV.
Thetime was altered at Panty-cuckoo Farm. Christmas had come and gone—rather a melancholy Christmas. The weather had been raw and chill; Mrs Llewellyn had been laid up with sciatica; and the farmer had appeared depressed and out of spirits. Hugh Owen had left off coming to the farm altogether, at which Nell was not surprised, though her mother grumbled, and her father said that with some people out of sight seemed out of mind. But with the advent of spring things grew better. Is it not always the way with spring? Its bright, hopeful surroundings seemed to make one ashamed of murmuring over one’s own troubles. The bursting buds; the rivulets released from the icy grip of winter;the callow birds; the balmy life-giving air; all speak of renewed action and strength, after the numbing effects of winter. One grows young again with spring. The buoyancy of the atmosphere, and all the glad sights and sounds that salute one’s eyes and ears, seem to fill one with newfeelings—newideas—newhopes. Even Nell succumbed to the delights of the season, and felt sorry to think she had driven her kindest friend from her side. She had tried several times to see Hugh Owen, and make up her quarrel with him, but he always managed to avoid meeting her. There was a baby at Dale Farm now, over which Hetty and her mother-in-law were crooning half the day, with which, of course, old Mrs Llewellyn was delighted, but which Nell never saw without a sigh. She thought that when Hugh christened her little nephew, she would at least secure a word or two with him in private, but it was not so. He never turned his eyes her way during the ceremony, andpleaded other duties as an excuse for not being present at the substantial feast which was spread for them afterwards at Dale Farm.
‘I can’t think what’s come of Hugh lately,’ said his mother. ‘He was never what you might call very sociable-like, but now it’s a wonder ever to get a word out of him. He seems to spend his life praying people out of the world, and I’m sure it don’t make him more cheerful at home.’
‘There, missus, let the lad alone, do!’ exclaimed her husband. ‘You know’d from the first that he was good for nothing but the ministry. He’s got no heart, nor stomach, nor liver, nor nothing, hasn’t Hugh; he’s just a minister and nothing else. He’s been as silent and as sulky as a bear for the last three months, but I take no notice of it. Let him go on his own way, say I, and thank the Lord, ’tain’t mine.’
‘Well, I suppose we’ve offended him, though I’m sure I can’t tell how,’ interposedMrs Llewellyn, ‘for he’s not been near us for ever so long. When our Nell was ill, he was at the farm every day, praying most beautiful, and bringing her books and flowers, and such-like; but I don’t believe we’ve seen him, not to speak of, since Christmas, have we, Nell?’
‘I don’t think we have, mother,’ replied Nell consciously.
‘Oh, that’s plain enough,’ said Farmer Owen. ‘You ain’t dying any longer, my lass, or you’d have Master Hugh at your bedside often enough. He don’t care for lasses with rosy cheeks, and who can eat a good dinner, and use their legs. They’ve no interest for a minister. You shouldn’t have got well, if you wanted to keep Hugh by your side.’
‘Well, for my part, I wish she was better than she is, if we never saw Hugh again for it, begging your pardons, neighbours. But Nell ain’t half satisfactory. Dr Cowell, he says it’s only the weakness after the fever, but she’s a longtime coming round, to my mind. She eats pretty well, but she hasn’t got any life in her, nor she can’t seem to take any interest in anything. Her memory too is something dreadful. She’s always dreaming when she ought to be doing. We must see if we can’t send her to Swansea this summer for the benefit of the sea air.’
Nell coloured faintly as she replied,—
‘Now, mother, I wish you’d talk of something more interesting than me. I’m right enough. And we’re all talking of ourselves, and forgetting the little man’s health. Who’ll propose the toast? Shall I? Here’s to the very good health of Griffith William Owen, and may he live a long life and a happy one!’
And in the chatter and congratulations that followed the toast, Nell and Hugh were both happily forgotten. All the same, she wished he had not taken her communication so much to heart, and was dreadfully afraid lest his evident avoidance of Panty-cuckoo Farm should end bydirecting some sort of suspicion towards herself. It was about this time that Nell perceived that there was something decidedly wrong with her father. Not in health, but in mind. He seemed to regard everything in its worst light, and to have some objection to make to whatever might be said to him. If her mother remarked how comfortable and happy Hetty was in her new home, Mr Llewellyn would observe,—
‘Ay, ay, it’s just as well she’s feathered her nest before troubles come,’ or if Nell said she felt stronger and better for the fine weather, it would be, ‘Well, I don’t know as it’s a thing to crow over. Many a person’s happier dead than alive.’
At last one morning she came down to breakfast to find him in a brown study over a lawyer’s letter, which had reached him in a long, blue envelope. The postman was a rare visitor at Panty-cuckoo Farm. The Llewellyns had not many relatives, and were not a writing family, if they had had them. Everything wenton too simply with them to require much correspondence. Above all, a lawyer’s letter was a rarity.
‘Had bad news, father?’ inquired Nell, as she met him.
‘Ay, my lass, as bad as it could well be. Sir Archibald Bowmant’s going to raise the rent of the old farm again, and I don’t know how it’s to be made to pay it. Times have been awful bad the last year or two, Nell. Of course, the mother didn’t say nothing to you up in London town about it. Where was the use? You was well provided for in a rare good and respectable situation; we knew you was safe, and didn’t want to worry you with our troubles. But since Sir Archibald’s married this new lady he’s been an altered man. He used to think a deal of his tenants in the old times, and I don’t say he’s a bad landlord now, but she runs him into a lot of money, I hear, and then the land has to pay for it. Here’s a notice from the solicitor, to say the rents will all be raisedagain after next summer. It’s deuced hard on a man like me. I’ve spent more than I knew where to put my hand on, this autumn, draining and manuring, and now I shall have to pay all I hoped to make by it on the rent. But it can’t go on for ever. The worm will turn some day, and I shall chuck up the farm and emigrate.’
‘Oh, father, don’t talk like that!’ cried his wife. ‘What would you and I do emigrating at our age? ’Tisn’t as if we were young and strong. We should die before we had crossed the sea. We’ll get on right enough, now I’ve got Nell to help me with the dairy, and that must keep us going till you’re straight again.’
‘You’re a good wife, Mary,’ said the farmer, ‘but you’re a fool for all that. Will the dairy keep the men and horses, and pay for the subsoil dressings and the fish-manure and the losses which every year brings with it? You women don’t understand the number of expenseskeeping up a large farm like this entails. I’ve only just done it for years past, and if the rents are to be raised, why, Ican’tdo it, and that’s all.’
‘But you won’t decide in a hurry, father?’ said Nell.
‘No, lass, no. But it’s very discouraging. It takes the heart out of a man for work, or anything. Sometimes I wish I had emigrated when I was a young man. There, out in Canada, the Government give a man one hundred and fifty acres of land free, and, if he’s got a little money of his own and a little gumption, he can make a living for his family, and have something to leave behind him when he dies.’
‘Well, well,’ said his daughter soothingly, ‘if the worst comes to the worst, father, I will go out to Canada with mother and you, and we’ll see if we can’t manage to keep ourselves alive somehow.’
She put her hand on the old man’s grey head as she spoke, and he gothold of it and drew it down with his own.
‘What a soft, white hand it is!’ he said admiringly. ‘You’re a good, kind lass, Nell, but I doubt if you could do much work with such fingers as these. Where did you get them from? Who’d think you’d done hard work in your lifetime? They look like a lady’s, so smooth and soft. You must have had a fine easy place of it up at Lord Ilfracombe’s, Nell. It was a pity you ever left it. You won’t get such another in a hurry.’
‘No, father, I know that,’ she answered sadly.
‘And you think you were foolish to chuck it, my girl? You fret a bit over it sometimes, eh, Nell?’
‘Sometimes, father,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Ah, my lass, you see we never know what’s best for us. I was main glad to see ye home, so was mother; but if times get worse than they are, I shall be sorry ye ever came.’
‘Then I’ll go to service again,’ she answered quickly. ‘Don’t be afraid I’ll ever be a burden on you, dear father. I am capable of filling many situations—a nurse’s, for instance. If, as you say, times get worse, I’ll practise on little Griffith, and advertise for a place in the nursery.’
She spoke in jest, but Mr Llewellyn took her words in earnest.
‘Ay, my lass, and you’d get it too. The earl would give you a grand character, I’m bound to say. Wouldn’t he, now? Three years is a good time to stay in one place.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Nell hastily, as she remembered the circumstances under which she had left Grosvenor Square, and hurried away for fear her father should take it in his head to question her about it.
Poor Nell! Her absent lord was never absent from her heart or thoughts; but she dared not indulge herself in too much reminiscence lest she shouldbreak down under it. Whilst Lord Ilfracombe was growing happier day by day in the increasing affection of his wife, the unfortunate woman whom he believed to be buried beneath the bosom of the river was wearing her heart out for news of him, and wondering often how she could possibly contrive to get sight or speech with him without attracting the attention of her friends. By day she had little leisure to indulge in dreaming; but as soon as night fell, and she found herself in solitude and silence on her bed, the ghost of her happy, reckless past would walk out of its sanctuary to confront her, and she would lie awake half the night, pondering on Ilfracombe’s appearance, and recalling his tenderest moments and sayings and doings, till she had worked herself up into a state of despair. She had persuaded herself that her separation from her lover was no fault of his, but the combined work of Mr Sterndale and the woman he had married, andthat if Ilfracombe saw her again all his first admiration and affection would be rekindled.
Nell did not stop to consider how bitterly unfair this would be to his young wife. She hated the very thought of Nora, and would have injured her in any possible way. Lord Ilfracombe was hers—hersalone—thatwas the way she argued—and his wife had robbed her of him, and must take the consequences, whatever they might be. Her love for him was so deep, so passionate, so overwhelming, he could not resist nor stand against it. Had she only refused to let him leave England, his marriage would never have taken place. It had been a cheat, a robbery, a fraud, and such things never thrive. If they only met—if she could only meethim—heand his wife would both have to acknowledge the truth of what she said.
Meanwhile, however, she could gain no news of the Earl of Ilfracombe, her own act of supposed suicide having putthe possibility of hearing of him out of her reach. She could not come in contact with him again without her former position in his household being made known. For this reason, as long as she remained with her parents, Nell saw no chance of seeing him. And it was only at times that she desired it. At others, she felt as if the sight of her perfidious lover would kill her—as if she would run miles the other way sooner than encounter him; and these were the despairing moments, when she wept till she was nearly blind, and made her mother rather impatient, because she would not confess what ailed her, nor say what she wanted. The poor girl was passing through the gates of hell, through which most of us have to pass during our lifetime, in which whoever enters must leave Hope behind, for the portals are so dark and gloomy that Hope could not exist there. Some women will get over a disappointment like this in a reasonable time;some never get over it at all; and Nell Llewellyn was one of the latter. Her very soul had entered into her love for Lord Ilfracombe, and she could not disentangle it. It had not been an ordinary love with which she had regarded him, but an ardent worship—such worship as a devotee renders to the God of his religion. I do not say that such women never love again, but they never forget the first love, which is ready to revive at the first opportunity, and which lives with them all through the exercise of the second, glorifying it, as it were, by the halo thrown over it from the past.
Nell was still in a state of hopeless collapse. She had not got over the news of Ilfracombe’s marriage in the slightest degree. She was perfectly aware that he had shut the gates of Paradise between them for evermore; yet she often experienced this feverish anxiety to learn from his own lips in what light he regarded their separation.
Meanwhile her conscience occasionally accused her of not having behaved as kindly as she might to Hugh Owen—sometimes gave her a sickening qualm also, as she remembered she had parted with her cherished secret to a man who had apparently quarrelled with her ever since. He had assured her it was safe with him, but Nell felt that he despised her for the confession she had made, and might not his contempt lead him to forget his promise? She wanted further assurance that he would be faithful and true.
She went over to the Dale Farm far oftener than she had been wont to do (which Hetty accepted entirely as a compliment to her baby), in the hope of encountering him; but he always managed to slink away before she reached the house, or to have some excuse for leaving directly afterwards.
One afternoon, towards the end of May, however, as she distinctly saw him hurrying off through the fields at the back,with a book in his hand, Nell waited till he was well out of sight, and then, altering her course, turned also and followed him up.