CHAPTERIV.
Hugh Owenwas in a burning rage. From the high road he had witnessed Nell’s meeting with the Earl of Ilfracombe, and he put the worst construction upon what he saw. Because this young man was a minister, it must not be supposed that he was naturally amiable and good. On the contrary, he possessed a very high temper, and at times an ungovernable one, and it was raging now. He had perceived a marked difference in Nell lately. She was not the same girl who had confessed her grievous fault to him in Panty-cuckoo Farm, nor promised so sweetly to follow his fortunes to South Africa in the Long Meadow subsequently. For a little while after the latter event, she had been very subdued and gentle with him, as thoughshe were contemplating the serious step to which she had conditionally pledged herself; but since the folks had returned to Usk Hall, she had declined either to walk with him or talk with him. Her old feverish, excitable manner had seemed to return, though Hugh had not liked to connect it with the fact of the Hall being occupied until the fatal moment when he was passing by Sir Archibald’s field and witnessed Nell and the earl in close conversation. Who could she be talking with? What could she have to say to him? Why were their faces so close together? These were the questions that haunted poor Hugh for hours afterwards, and to which he could find no satisfactory solution. He could not trust himself to confront Nell as she went back to the farm—he was afraid of what he might say to her—so he resolved to sleep over it, if the restless, miserable, disturbed slumbers which followed his discovery could be called sleep. But on the next day he felt he must know thereason of what he had seen. The remembrance of it came between him and his duties. He would not be able to preach and pray with an earnest and single heart until it had been relieved of the awful doubt that assailed it. So, the day after, he set forth for the farm, and found Nell, for a wonder, alone and free to receive him. The fact is, she did not dare go out, as she had been used to do lately, for fear of encountering Lord Ilfracombe in the company of his wife or friends. She felt as if she could not bear the sight—as if she should proclaim her right to him before all the world. And that would make him angry—he, who loved her still above all other things; for so had she interpreted his words of the night before. She had been in a state of beatification ever since, and her mother knew no more what to make of her present mood than she had done of her previous one. It would be difficult to say what Nell expected or believed would comeof the interview which had made her so happy. Apparently she had given herself no time to think. She knew perfectly well that her intimacy with Ilfracombe was over and done with, and that thenceforward she could have no part nor lot in him or his affairs. She knew she should never enter his house again, nor associate with his acquaintances, nor enjoy any of his good things. Yet she felt supremely happy. To understand her feelings, one must not only be a woman—one must be a woman who has loved and lost, and found that whatever the loss, the love remained as it was. Women have greater faith than men, as a rule, in the unseen and the compensation of an after life. They think more of the heart than of the body of the creature they love, and give them the hope of a reunion in another world—of retaining the eternal affections of the man they care for; and they will try and content themselves with the thought of the future. Far better that,they say, than his companionship on earth, whilst his heart is the property of some other woman. The earl had managed to deceive Nell so well without intending to deceive her, that she was already disposed to pity Lady Ilfracombe, who could only lay claim to his worldly goods. As she had told him, ‘Say you love me best of all the world, and the other woman can have your title and your money.’ She had sat indoors all day dreaming over the unexpected happiness that had come to her—recalling in fancy every word he had uttered, every look he had given, every kiss he had pressed upon her happy mouth. The wretched interval that lay between them had vanished like a dream. She had forgotten the abject misery with which she had received the news of his marriage, the despairing attempt at suicide that followed it, her return home, and the apathetic existence she had led since—all had disappeared under the magic touch oflove. She was no longer Nell o’ Panty-cuckoo Farm, as the neighbourhood called her; she was Lord Ilfracombe’s housekeeper, the woman he had chosen to be the mistress of his home. She was his love, his lady, his daily companion. She looked with a kind of pathetic curiosity at the print dress she wore, at the simple arrangement of her chesnut hair, at her ringless fingers and wrists unadorned by bangles. They had all gone—the silks and satins, the golden combs and hairpins, the jewels and laces; butheremained, the pride and jewel of her life. ‘Vernie’ loved her.
It was so wonderful, so delightful, so unexpected, that her head swam when she thought of it. She was just considering whether she might not venture to stroll up the long fields again that evening—whether ‘Vernie’ might not come out as he had done the evening before in hopes of meeting her, when Hugh Owen raised the latch of the farmhouse door and walked unceremoniouslyin. His entrance annoyed Nell. It disturbed her beautiful reverie, put to flight all her golden dreams, and made her fear lest his visit might be prolonged so as to interfere with her plans. The welcome he received, therefore, was not, to say the least of it, cordial.
‘Neither father nor mother are at home, Hugh,’ she said, as she caught sight of him, ‘and I’m just going out. You’ve come at an unlucky moment.’
‘So I always seem to come now,’ he answered; ‘but I have a word or two to you, Nell, that can’t be put off; so I must ask you to listen to me for a few minutes first.’
‘They must be very few, then, for I’ve got work of my own to do,’ she replied.
‘It’s the work you do that I’ve come to speak to you about,’ said the young man, ‘and I claim the right to do so. I was sauntering up and down the road last night, Nell, in the hope of catching sight of you, when I saw you cross the meadow over there and meet a man andtalk to him for better than half an hour. Who was he?’
Nell flared up in her impetuous manner at once.
‘And what business is that of yours?’ she exclaimed.
‘Why, every business in the world! Whose should it be but mine? Haven’t you promised to be my wife?’
‘No!’ cried the girl boldly.
‘No? What! not in the Long Meadow behind father’s house?’ he returned in astonishment.
‘I said if my people ever emigrated—which they never will do—that I would go with them as your wife; but that was only a conditional promise, and I’ve altered my mind since then. I shall never be anybody’s wife now.’
‘If I saw rightly last night, Nell, perhaps it will be as well. Who was the gentleman you met and talked with for so long? What is he to you? Where have you met him before? What had you to say to him?’
‘Which of your questions will you have answered first?’ asked Nell. ‘And what is it to you who I choose to talk to? Are you my master, or am I a child to be catechised after this fashion? I shall see and speak to whom I like, and I refuse to say anything more about it.’
‘Nell,’ said Hugh in a sorrowful voice, ‘when you told me your history I was truly sorry for you. I thought what a terrible thing it was that such a respectable girl should lower herself to the level of the lowest of her sex; but I believed it was a misfortune—a step into which you had been led with your eyes shut—and that you regarded it with horror and loathing. I must have thought so, you know, or I should never have proposed to make you my wife.’
‘Well, and what is all this tirade leading to?’ said Nell.
She felt sorry for Hugh, but not a bit ashamed of herself, and the impossibility of explaining the matter to him made her irritable and pert.
‘To a very sorrowful conclusion, Nell. I have seen, ever since this party of gentlemen and ladies came to the Hall, that you are altered. You have become restless and uneasy; you have refused to walk out with me any more; and you have avoided my company. I can only put two and two together, and draw my conclusions from that. I have often heard it said that if once a woman is led astray to lead what people call a “gay life,†she is never contented with a quiet, domestic existence again, but I was loath to believe it of you, who seemed so truly sorry for the past and all the shame and disgrace it had brought you. But what am I to think now? I see you with my own eyes meet a man who looked to me in the gloaming like a gentleman, and talk familiarly with him, and yet you won’t tell me his name, nor what your business was with him.’
‘No, I won’t,’ she replied determinedly, ‘because it is no concern of yours.’
‘But I say itismy concern, and the concern of everybody that has an interestin you, Nell. Where there is deceit there must be wrong. Do your father and mother know this gentleman, and of your meeting him? Did you tell them?’
‘I did not, and I shall not. It is my private affair, and I shall keep it entirely to myself.’
The young man rose indignantly.
‘Then I’ll tell you now what I didn’t like to mention before, and that is that I saw him kiss you. I am sure of it from the closeness with which he held you. Oh, for shame, Nell, for shame!’
‘And what if he did?’ cried Nell, with crimson cheeks; ‘that also is my business and not yours.’
‘Your business, yes, and you may keep it so!’ exclaimed Hugh Owen hotly, as his eyes blazed with anger. ‘I see you now, Nell Llewellyn, in your true colours, and would to God I had known you from the first. Your penitence was all assumed, put on to catch an unwary fool like myself, because there was no one better within reach. Your sorrow, too, for the loss of your loverwas another sham, easily consoled by the kisses of a stranger. You are not a true woman, Nell. You are unfit for the love or consideration of any honest man. You are an outcast and a wanton, and I will never willingly speak to you again.’
‘I will take good care you don’t,’ cried Nell in her turn. ‘I have more powerful friends than you think of—friends who will not see me insulted by a common farmer’s son. I know I promised conditionally to be your wife, but I did it for your sake, not my own. I should have hated the life—the very thought is distasteful to me. So never think of me in that light or any light again. I break off with you from this moment. The man I met last night is worth ten thousand of you. I value his little finger more than your whole body. I would rather beg my bread with a gentleman than sit on a throne with a clod like you. Now you have the whole truth. Make what you like of it.’
‘Oh, stop, stop. In mercy to yourself,stop,’ cried the young man, as with both hands clapped to his ears he ran out of the house.
Nell felt rather subdued when left to herself. She was not quite sure how far she had betrayed her secret, or if she had said anything in her wrath to lead to Lord Ilfracombe’s identity. But on revision she thought not. Hugh did not know the name of her former lover—he had not heard those of the guests at the Hall. There was no chance of his gaining a knowledge of the truth. And, as for the rest, it was just as well he had seen for himself that they could never be more to each other than they were at present. And then she resolved into another of the pleasing day-dreams from which his entrance had disturbed her. Her father and mother came bustling in after a little while full of complaints and anxiety. One of their best cows had shown symptoms of dangerous illness, and every remedy that the farm could boast of was set in motion at once.
‘Come, my lass,’ cried Mrs Llewellyn, as she entered the parlour, ‘you must bestir yourself and help me. Father and I are in sad trouble. Bonnie is as bad as she can be, and if we can’t stop the symptoms she’ll be dead before the morning. Ay, but misfortunes never seem to come single, what with the raising of the rent and other troubles. I’ve set Betty to put on all the hot water she can, and we must choose the oldest blankets we have for fomentations. Bring the lamp with you, Nell, I want to find the proper medicines in father’s chest.’
The girl snatched up the light, and followed her mother to where Mr Llewellyn kept a chest full of veterinary drugs.
‘That ain’t it, and that ain’t it,’ the old woman kept on saying as she pulled bottle after bottle to the light. ‘Ah, I think this is the stuff that cured Daisy last year.
She pulled out the cork with her teeth, and tasted a little of the brown, nauseous-lookingmixture, but spat it out immediately on the floor. ‘God save us, that’s the lotion for the sheep’s backs, deadly poison. Don’t you ever touch that, my girl. It’ll take the skin off your tongue in no time.’
‘Am I likely?’ remonstrated Nell seriously; ‘but suppose you had given it to the poor cow by mistake? Why don’t you label it plainly “Poison,†mother, and then there would be no fear of an accident?’
‘Ay, my lass, that’s a good thought. Don’t put it back, Nell, but carry it to your bedroom and put it a-top of the wardrobe. It will be safe enough there, and when we’re a bit less busy you shall write a label for it. It’s arsenic, I believe. I know last year father gave a drop or two by mistake to one of the cats that was bad in its inside, and the poor beast was dead in a few minutes.Thisis the cows’ mixture,’ said Mrs Llewellyn, pulling out a second bottle from the recesses of the old trunk. ‘Not dissimilar looking, are they? but, Lor’, what a difference in theireffects. This is some of the finest stuff we ever had, made from a receipt of farmer Owen’s. Take it down to father at once, Nell, for he’s in a hurry for it. and I’ll fetch the blanket. And don’t forget to put the other a-top of your wardrobe,’ she called out after her daughter.
The poor cow was very bad, and for some hours the whole household was occupied in providing remedies and applying them. When ten o’clock struck, and the animal was pronounced to be out of danger, Nell was regularly tired out, and hardly inclined to sit down to supper with her parents, but the farmer would not hear of her leaving them.
‘Come on, lass,’ he said; ‘I’ve news for you, only this bothering cow put it clean out of my head. Grand news, Nelly. You’ll never guess it, not if you tried for a twelvemonth.’
Nell returned to the table, white and scared looking.
‘News aboutme, father?’ she said.
‘Well, not about you exactly, but thatconcerns you all the same. Now, who do you suppose has come to the Hall, and is staying along of Sir Archibald?’
Then she knew he had heard of Lord Ilfracombe’s arrival, and set her teeth, lest she should betray herself.
‘How should I know, father?’ she said tremblingly. ‘I haven’t been near Mrs Hody for the last week. Is it the prince whom they expected?’
‘The prince, be d—d!’ exclaimed the farmer. ‘What’s the value of a foreign prince beside one of our own English noblemen? I wouldn’t give youthatfor the prince,’ snapping his fingers. ‘No; it is somebody much better and higher. It’s your old master, the Earl of Ilfracombe, and his lady. What do you think of that?’
‘The Earl of Ilfracombe!’ echoed Nell, in order to gain time. ‘But who told you, father?’
‘Jackson, the coachman, to be sure, who drove them both home from therailway station, and who should know better than he? He says the earl is a fine-looking young man, as fair as daylight, and his lady is a nice, pretty creature too. I thought I should surprise you, Nell. You’ll be wanting to go up to the Hall to see ’em both, now, won’t you?’
‘Oh, father, why should I go to see them? His lordship won’t want to see me. Most likely he’s forgotten my very name.’
‘Well, Nell, Iamsurprised to hear you talk so!’ exclaimed her mother. ‘It don’t look as if you knew much about the gentry, who are always glad to see servants as have behaved themselves whilst in their service. But perhaps you’re afraid the earl is annoyed with you for leaving him so suddenly, and just as he was bringing home his bride. Is that it?’
‘Perhaps so, mother,’ said the girl, looking very much confused.
‘Ah, I was always doubtful if therewasn’t something queer about your coming back so suddenly, and so I’ve told your mother,’ remarked Mr Llewellyn dubiously. ‘But if it was so, why, you must go over to the Hall to-morrow morning and ask his lordship’s pardon; and perhaps mother, here, can find some little thing as you could take up as an offering for his lady. Can you, mother?’
‘Oh, I daresay,’ replied Mrs Llewellyn, ‘she might fancy a pen of our Minorca fowls or Cochins. I suppose they’ve a fine farm down at Thistlemere, Nell?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. But, mother, I cannot go and see them, or take Lady Ilfracombe any presents. It will seem like intrusion. They’ve not asked to see me, and I’m only a discharged servant, after all.’
‘Rubbish! Nonsense! What are you talking about?’ exclaimed the old farmer angrily. ‘A discharged servant! Why, didn’t you tell mother and me that you gave his lordship warning yourself?Haven’t you told the truth about your leaving? Is there anything hid under it all as we know nothing about? Come, now, no more secrets, if you please; let us have the plain truth at once, or I will go up the first thing in the morning and see his lordship myself.’
‘Lor’, father, don’t be so hard on the lass!’ exclaimed his wife. ‘You’ve turned her as white as a lily with your noise. What should be under it, except that the maid wanted to come home? And time enough, too, after being three years away. Don’t you mind him, Nell, my girl. He’s just put out and cranky about the cow. If you don’t want to see his lordship, why, no more you shall. Here, sup up your beer and get to bed. I don’t half like the way in which you flushes on and off. It’s just how my sister’s girl went off in a waste. You sha’n’t be worried to do anything as you don’t wish to, take my word for it.’
‘That’s how you fools of women go ontogether, without a thought of the business, and how it’s going to the devil,’ grumbled her husband. ‘Here’s Lord Ilfracombe come here, as you may say, in the very nick o’ time, and Nell the very one to ask a favour of him, and you cram her head with a pack o’ nonsense about not going near him. Sir Archibald is going to raise the rent, and send us all to the workhouse, when a word from his lordship might turn his mind the other way, especially if Nell put it to him, on account of her long service and good character, and you tell her not to do it. Bah! I’ve no patience with you.’
‘Oh, that’s a different thing,’ quoth the old woman. ‘If Nell can get Lord Ilfracombe to plead with Sir Archibald on our account, why, of course, she’ll do it, for her own sake as well as for ours; won’t you, my lass?’
‘Plead with Lord Ilfracombe!’ cried Nell hysterically. ‘No, no, indeed, I cannot. What has he to do with Sir Archibald’s rents? He is only a guestin the house. It would be too much to ask. It would place him in an unpleasant position. I would not presume to do such a thing.’
Both her parents rounded on her at once.
‘Well, of all the ungrateful hussies as I ever saw,’ said her father, ‘you’re the worst. You come home to see your poor parents toiling and moiling to keep a roof above their heads, and nigh breaking their hearts over the raising of the rent and the idea of having to leave the old homestead, and you refuse even to speak a word to save them from starvation.’
‘Well, I never did!’ cried her mother. ‘Here you’ve been home for nearly a year, and no more use than a baby, what with your London training and your illness, and your fid-fads and the first thing as your poor father asks you to do for him you downright refuse. I didn’t think it of you, Nell, and I begin to fear, like father, that there must besomething under it all as you’re afraid to let us know.’
‘But I shall know it for all that,’ said the farmer; ‘for I’ll see this fine lord with the break of day, and ask him downright under what circumstances you left his service. If he’s a gentleman, he’ll answer the question, and give me some sort of satisfaction. I won’t put up with this sort of treatment from you no longer, my lass, and so I give you plain notice.’
‘Very well. Do as you like. It’s all the same to me,’ cried Nell, as she rose from the table and rushed from the room.
Her sleeping apartment was over the lodgers’ rooms, and as she reached it she locked the door and flung herself on the bed, face downwards, in an agony of apprehension. What was going to happen next? she asked herself. What was to be the next scene in her life’s tragedy? Would her irate father force the truth from the earl, or would he guess it from his embarrassment? Would the story cometo the ears of the countess, and make mischief between her husband and herself? There seemed to be no end to the horrors that might happen from her father having gained knowledge of the proximity of her former employer. And if he confided his doubts to Hugh Owen, or any of the Dale Farm party, might not he add his quota to the chapter of horrors by relating what he had witnessed in the field the night before?
Poor Nell could get no rest that night for thinking of these things, and wondering how she should come out of them all.
She rose after a while and bathed her burning and swollen eyelids in cold water, and took a seat by the open casement and out-gazed into the calm, peaceful night. The air was warm and balmy, but there were few stars, and the moon was in her first quarter.
How long she had sat there she did not know, till she heard the church clock chiming the hour of twelve, and thoughtto herself that it was time she lay down on her bed. But just as she was about to do so, her attention was arrested by the figure of a woman walking slowly and furtively over the grass beneath the window.
Nell did not know who she was, nor what she came for; but not unnaturally supposing that she would not be there at that time of night unless she needed the assistance of her mother or herself in some sudden emergency, she waited quietly until the stranger should knock or call out in order to summons her. To her surprise, however, the woman did not go round to the principal entrance to the farmhouse, but lingered about the grass-plat, walking backwards and forwards, and occasionally glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the Hall.
Nell’s curiosity was now fully aroused, but she made no sign to arrest the attention of the visitor. On the contrary, she drew further back from the window, so as to be entirely concealed by the dimitycurtain that shaded it. From this vantage-ground she presently saw the woman joined by a man, who she at once recognised as Mr Portland. Nell’s first feeling was indignation that he should presume to make her mother’s house a place of assignation; but when he commenced to talk, she could only listen, spellbound.