VIIIA COTSWOLD BARMAIDIt seemed an odd name for an elderly woman, even when, as in this case, she happened to be a barmaid: but some one with an eye for likenesses christened her "Bobby" because of a really striking resemblance to the statesman at that time familiarly known as "Bobby Lowe." Anyway the name expressed her, and Bobby she remained to the end. Let it not be imagined that disrespect was so much as suggested by the title: she was the best respected woman in our town, and certainly one of the most influential.There was a college, of a sort, near the town where Bobby lived, and generations of students and the whole hunting youth of the countryside passed through her kind hands, and every man amongst them will acknowledge that he was the better for having known Bobby.It is to be supposed that at one time she was slim, instead of round-about, that her abundant white hair was once brown or golden, that she had a story of her own apart from the "Moonstone" and her "boys"; but we took her for granted none the less thankfully that we were apt to forget how unique she was, till we were far from Bobby and the Moonstone Bar.Youthful new-comers were her especial care. She not infrequently confiscated their money if she thought they were going to "play the giddy," only restoring it when she considered they were capable of using it with some discretion. And how carefully she looked after the digestions of such as were inexperienced in the matter of drinks! "What?" she would exclaim, "green chartreuse, sir, and you just bin 'avin' beer! You really mustn't, sir, you'd be that bad" ... and the best of it was that nobody was ever foolish enough to resent her interference."If a holdish man likes to take too much," she would say sorrowfully, "it isn't me that can stop 'im, but with these young chaps just fresh from school, I must do my best according to my lights."What becomes of the young chaps fresh from school where there is no Bobby to take care of them I wonder."As you know, sir," she continued, "I don't hold with drinkin' for drinkin's sake, but I do think that a gentleman should be able to take his glass sociable-like, and friendly. There don't seem no good fellowship in them there aereated waters, and I'm sure they ain't no good to a body's inside, by theirselves."She had a healthy crop of prejudices this Bobby of ours. Any sort of blasphemy or loose talk she could not away with. "It's sort of natural for a man to swear if he's a bit taken to or astonished," she would say in lenient mood, "but when they goes breaking the third commandment like as if it was a hold chipped plate, it gives me cold shivers down my back—that it do."She never expostulated, but her square, rosy face got less square and less rosy if, in her presence, the conversation waxed too forcible and free. At such times the offender would be warned by one of Bobby's old friends who respected what he probably called her "fads." If the new-comer profited by the warning all went well, but if he offended a second time he was forcibly ejected and found himself in the dark and draughty covered way leading to the Moonstone stables, with the explanation, "you can pile on the adjectives here, old chap, but she doesn't like it."Bobby was a sincere believer in good works, and many were the "boxes" benefited by winnings at billiards or otherwise: and every Sunday saw her slowly taking her decorous way to church, seemly and satin-clad, bearing the very portliest of prayer books.For man in the abstract, she had the greatest respect, but taken individually, she looked upon him as singularly gullible, and as requiring much maternal supervision, both digestively and morally. "Law! They may talk about their science and their chemistry and that, but bless you! Just let one of them minxes come along, and they're no better than imbeciles, that they're not."The one human creature for whom Bobby's kind heart could find no toleration, was a "minx." And by "minx" she meant such pretty girls of the shop and dressmaker class, as she imagined cherished hopes of "marrying a gentleman." The idea that one of her boys (anybody under thirty was a "boy" to Bobby) should get entangled in the meshes of a minx, or more dreadful still, "marry beneath him" roused Bobby as did nothing else. How she got her information no one could ever imagine, but she always knew when anything of the kind was afoot, and Machiavellian were her methods of preventing such a catastrophe. More than one "county family" has Bobby to thank that no undesirable daughter-in-law has been added to its ranks. People under twenty she considered her especial charge. She gave them much homely and excellent advice, and only such drinks as she deemed suitable to their tender years.When one of Bobby's old favourites came back from foreign parts the very first place he would hasten to was Bobby's bar. He would lounge in, after the fashion of a stranger, and ask, in a feigned voice, for what had been his favourite drink in the old days. But Bobby's ears were very quick, one sharp glance at the stranger, a little cry of recognition ... and over the counter he leaps and fast in his embrace is the old barmaid's stout, comfortable, little figure, and for a minute or two neither she nor the stranger can see each other very clearly. And then, what a talking over of old days there would be! What asking after old chums! At such times Bobby would even give us news of the minxes. Poor pretty minxes, did any of you ever marry gentlemen I wonder? They were really very nice those minxes! But we don't remember them as we remember Bobby—Bobby of the silver hair and little dumpy figure, who by sheer force of strong and kindly character held sway over several generations of hot-blooded young England. She was not beautiful; she was not, as the world accounts it, clever: but she was of the type of the eternal mother-woman. "Bless you," she would say with her broad, confident smile, "it's easy enough to manage 'em if only you lets 'em think as they're managin' you."IXFUZZY WUZZY'S WATCHHe was Billy's little brother, and we called him "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" because his abundant yellow hair stuck out straight and bushy all over his head. Moreover, at tennis parties he was sometimes allowed to "squeege" the soda water into the tall glasses held out for that purpose by thirsty friends; and they would say "Here's to you, Fuzzy Wuzzy!"This, however, is not a story of Fuzzy Wuzzy, but of a man to whom Fortune had not been kind, whereas Fuzzy Wuzzy was."He is the rowdiest chap in the college, he goes on the drunk for days together; and yet he's a perfect gentleman, even when he's drunk."We were all of us sitting on the lawn. Fuzzy's mother looked up as Mr. Calcraft spoke, asking, "Who is this unhappy person?""Oh, the 'Bookie' you know, that chap who's got Vereker's old rooms. Riddell is his name—the professor knows him."Mr. Calcraft waited for the professor to give further information, but he said nothing. Then a small voice remarked: "Iknow Mr. Riddell. He's got the beautifullest big dog, and he gave me a ride on its back—I like him."Fuzzy was sitting on my knee—after a moment's silence his mother asked, "Do you like him, Hugh? Is it true that he is so wild?"The professor took his pipe out of his mouth. He was not given to discussing the students, we all knew that—but this time he said, "I like Riddell. He's a very clever fellow, and most good-natured. I think his little weaknesses are much exaggerated.Ihave seen no sign of rowdiness."Mr. Calcraft laughed. "If you'd been at 'The Moonstone' the other evening, sir, you would have seen more than a sign. He broke every cue in the billiard room, and nearly threw the marker out of the window!""Did he frow a man out of the window?" exclaimed Fuzzy ecstatically. "Oh, Mr. Bookieisstrong."There was a horror-stricken pause. They had forgotten Fuzzy. His mother looked reproachfully at Mr. Calcraft, and somebody murmured something aboutvirginibus puerisque."If only the 'Bookie' could be kept sober," Mr. Calcraft remarked apologetically, "he would be a splendid chap. He is all right for weeks together, and is as hard as nails; then he goes off and makes an ass of himself down town, and it makes people cut him. He told me the other day that he doesn't know a lady in the place.""He is going to know one!" said Fuzzy's mother, "he's going to knowme. I think it is too bad. You all say he is foolish, yet not one of you has the courage to tell him so, I think it is a shame.""He would be an awkward chap to tackle," murmured Mr. Calcraft. "He'd throw you out of the window as soon as look at you.""He can't throw me out of the window," said Fuzzy's mother, "and I shall talk to him. You must ask him to lunch, Hugh!"Then we all went to eat gooseberries in the kitchen garden and played at horses with Fuzzy.The first day of the horse show Riddell was with Mrs. Ainger all the time. As usual he was untidy. His tie was over his collar, his collar frayed; he wore a terrible old cap, and the front of his coat was smothered in dust from Fuzzy's boots, for that gentleman spent the greater part of the afternoon perched on Riddell's shoulder."The Bookie" looked radiant, and carried off his lady to tea in the tent; I followed, sitting with friends at the next table. They looked a little surprised at Mrs. Ainger's cavalier, for that lady was known to be particular as to the men she admitted to intimacy.Afterwards I heard all about it. It seems that the professor had asked Riddell to lunch, and that he had behaved beautifully. He was a cultivated man, and talked well, in the softest, most musical voice in the world. His knowledge of swear-words was the widest and most far-reaching; when with men his conversation was so garnished with oaths, that one had to pick one's steps, as it were, to discover what he was talking about. But with ladies, he was the most courtly and careful of men. At the horse show he had discovered Mrs. Ainger trying to lift Fuzzy to see over the heads of some yokels who obstructed the view. In a moment Riddell had relieved her of her burden, and devoted himself to her for the rest of the day. The professor was counting marks and could not come.Then ensued a time of peace and quiet for the Bookie. He followed Mrs. Ainger like a big dog, constituted himself head nurse to Fuzzy, and he was sober, absolutely sober, for six months. When other ladies met him constantly at the Aingers', and found him to be not only harmless but charming, they also asked him to lunch and to dine. Thus "The Bookie" who had plenty of money, and was of unexceptional family, became something of a personage. He bought new clothes, and wore a clean straw hat. His linen was no longer frayed, and he shaved twice a day.Mrs. Ainger sang his praises wherever she went, and openly declared that she believed all the stories of his rowdiness to be slanders; she had not seen his bill for billiard cues from the "Moonstone."At the end of April came the "Point to Point" steeplechase, a day fatal to the Bookie, who was "well on" by five o'clock in the afternoon. Mrs. Ainger was not at the races, so she was spared the spectacle of her protégé, swaying gracefully on the seat of his dogcart as he drove off the course. He had not brought his man, and as he was, his friends considered, quite capable of getting home in safety, they preferred not to be seen with him. He pressed them courteously to accompany him, offering to stand them a dinner at the "Moonstone." But they stood in awe of Mrs. Ainger, and not considering themselves in any way called upon to act as keeper for the Bookie, they let him alone.Fuzzy's Nana was of a literary turn, spending a large proportion of the salary she received for her attentions to Fuzzy on the lighter kinds of fiction. On this particular afternoon, having wheeled him in his go-cart some distance along the high road, "she sat her down upon a green bank," and bidding him "Play about, there's a good boy, and pick some pretty flowers for mama!" she was soon immersed in a periodical, bearing a bloodcurdling device upon the cover.Fuzzy gathered a bunch of celandines, and with them clasped tightly in his hot, fat hand, set off at a run down the road, giggling delightedly when he discovered that Nana neither called him nor yet started in pursuit.Trotting gleefully along for some little distance he turned off into an inviting-looking lane. He kept close to the hedge for there was a sound of galloping hoofs, and Fuzzy was an extremely sensible small boy. Then there passed him a horse and dogcart, the horse going at a hand gallop, the dogcart empty. This struck Fuzzy as strange, but then strange things do happen when one sets forth to seek adventures. So he girded up his stocking which had become uncomfortably wrinkly and trudged on.Presently he saw a man lying by the side of the road. Now Fuzzy had a large acquaintance among road men, and for tramps he felt a real affection. Had they not sometimes got white rats in their pockets? Nay, those of a superior sort even carried ferrets! He and his mother were wont to bestow pence on tramps, and on the road men, boots and the professor's old coats. In fact the professor was often heard to complain that he met his favourite coat by a heap of stones every time he went out. Fuzzy advanced fearlessly to inspect this weary man, who was lying on his face, with one arm doubled up under him in the strangest fashion. The man did not move as Fuzzy came up, and the little boy went and stood by the prostrate form, saying, with a comical imitation of his father:—"Thirsty weather, eh?" but the usual "It be that, Master!" did not follow.The afternoon was very still. The sound of galloping hoofs and bumping wheels had died away in the distance. Suddenly Fuzzy gave a little cry—"Bookie! Bookie dear! are you hurted? Why do you lie in the road? gentlemens don't lie in the road—O Bookie! your foot is bad, it's all bleedy and dreadful!"The Bookie did not answer, "he kind of snored" as Fuzzy afterwards described it. The child tried to turn him over on his back, but the Bookie being six foot two, and proportionately broad, and Fuzzy by no means tall for his age, this proved an impossible feat."I'm afraid he's hurted very bad, his face is so red and dirty," said Fuzzy to himself. Then, with Herculean efforts, he succeeded in inserting his own legs under the Bookie's head, so that it rested on his clean holland smock. He stroked the tumbled hair, and laid his soft little face upon the Bookie's hot, prickly cheek. They remained thus for what seemed to Fuzzy an interminable time. He began to grow sleepy himself. His head nodded, and finally he too fell over on to his back sound asleep.When the Bookie came to himself he lay still for a few minutes collecting his thoughts. He discovered that his arm was certainly broken, that a wheel had gone over his ankle, that his face was resting on something soft, and that not ten inches from his face was a pair of small, dusty strap-shoes.This last discovery completely sobered him. He raised himself on his good arm and looked down at the something which had been supporting him. A golden head, resting on two plump arms crossed behind it; sturdy legs, crushed by his weight, which now drew themselves up stretching out again as if relieved ... and then the Bookie realised that Fuzzy had found him, and had stayed to keep guard."God help me for a drunken beast! and I can't carry him for my arm's broken," he ejaculated. He got up on to his knees feeling very giddy. The movement woke Fuzzy. He too was puzzled for a moment as to where he could be, then, he saw the Bookie, and, his brains not being muddled by various "drinks" and a heavy fall, he sat up, saying in his tender little voice: "Are you hurted much, my poor dear? I stayed with you till you woked up."The Bookie looked at Fuzzy and tried to speak, but somehow he couldn't. Fuzzy was on his feet in a moment and held out his grubby hands: "Shall I pull you up? I can pull dad up."The Bookie took one of the little hands and carried it to his lips, saying brokenly, "Why do you love me, Fuzzy? I'm not worth it."Fuzzy took no notice of this remark, it was just one of those foolish and irrelevant things that grown-up people have a habit of saying, so he said, "Aren't you tired of sitting in the road? Hadn't we better go home? I'm very hungry."The Bookie tried again to get up on to his feet, but something had gone wrong with his leg, as well as his arm, and after a few excruciating efforts he gave it up."I'm afraid it's no go, Fuzzy, I can't walk; you see I was pitched out of the dog-cart, and I'm all smashed up—whatever is to be done?""Shall you be very lonely if I go home and tell them?" asked Fuzzy with his arms round the Bookie's neck, "and then they could bring a carriage for you; you're too big to go in my mail cart, or I'd lend it to you. It's in a field wiv Nana.""How on earth I got into this lane I can't think, it's right off the high road. O Fuzzy Wuzzy, what an ass I've been!" The Bookie groaned, and Fuzzy clasped his arms tighter round his neck. Then he wiped his friend's dirty face with the crumpled smock, remarking: "Your poor face is so grubby, and you've lost your hat!""Where's yours?" asked the Bookie."I think it felled into the ditch!" Fuzzy answered composedly, "but there's no sun to sun-stroke us.""You must be got home, old chap; it's getting ever so late and they will be anxious; do you think you could go by yourself, and tell them where you left me?"—"a pretty tale, truly," thought the Bookie to himself.Fuzzy was torn by conflicting desires. He hated to leave his wounded friend, and he wanted his mother. Finally, having embraced the Bookie several times, he trotted off down the lane and into the high road once more. When he got home it was nearly eight o'clock. His father and mother, white-faced and anxious, were standing at the drive gate, straining their eyes in the twilight. Nana, having searched vainly herself, had only just come back to confess that Fuzzy was lost. He hardly waited to receive his mother's caresses, but seizing her by the hand, dragged her down the road, crying excitedly: "Come quick! the Bookie's hurted and he's all alone."By dint of much questioning, the Bookie's whereabouts and the extent of his misfortunes were arrived at. The dogcart and horse were captured in an adjacent village, and the Bookie spent a month indoors. Fuzzy went to see him every day, so did they all, but they never spoke of the accident. They played Poker and Nap round his sick-bed, and the beggar constantly won.The night before he went down he told them about Fuzzy. He forgot to swear at all during the narrative, but at the end he said: "And I'm damned if those dusty strap-shoes wouldn't get between me and too much of the best champagne ever bottled!"XTHE DARK LADYNobody knew her—that is to say, none of the other ladies knew her. She was staying at the "Moonstone" for the hunting, accompanied by a maid, a couple of grooms, and six horses. The hotel people called her "the Baroness." Billy always spoke of her as "that pretty lady"; but then it is possible that admiration for her daring horsemanship coloured Billy's views.On this particular afternoon Billy and the unknown lady found themselves at the same gate, in the gathering gloom of a November afternoon, six good miles from home. She was trying to lift a refractory latch with her hunting-crop when Billy rode up on his shaggy sheltie, dismounted cap in hand, and opened the gate for her."We seem to have lost the others, you and I. Shall we jog home together?" she asked, as Billy, having carefully fastened the gate, followed her down the rutty lane. "I'm not very sure where we are; but I suppose this lane leads somewhere," she continued."I know the way," answered the little boy cheerfully. "I shall be very glad of your company. Jackson—that's our man—lamed the cob early in the day and had to go home, and it's lonely riding by one's self.""I am often lonely," said the lady, more to herself than to Billy."Are you? So am I. I'm the only one who hunts, you see; but I'm going to school at Easter, then I shan't be lonely any more.""Are you glad to be going to school?""Oh, yes! I shall like being with the other chaps awfully; but, of course, I shall miss my people ... and the dogs, and the pony.""Your people don't hunt, do they?""No; we've only the cob and my pony. Mother doesn't hunt, she's too nervous; and father doesn't care for it. Mother drives to the near meets sometimes, but when it is a long way she likes Jackson to come with me for the day. Not that he's any mortal use," added Billy with a gleeful chuckle. "He's a potterer, and my brother is too little.""I wonder," the lady began, then stopped suddenly. Billy turned his rosy face towards her, but she did not speak. The child, because he knew one woman so well, divined that this woman was tired and sad. So he, too, was silent. The horses' hoofs went thud, swish, thud, swish, through the foot-deep decaying beech leaves. A delicate silver mist gathered round the roots of the great trees; like the bridal veil of a rosy girl, it spread itself over the stretches of ruddy space. They had turned into the grass-carpeted main avenue of the Earl's famous park, and Billy sniffed delightedly at what he called "the good smell of Christmas." Happy Billy! to whom the death of summer brought no sad thoughts."I'm afraid you are very tired!" he said suddenly, in his kind boyish voice. "Would you like to stop a bit?"The lady started. Not, indeed, that she had forgotten Billy; she was in a subconscious way basking in the warmth that radiates from all simple and kindly people. Her rebellious mood of the last weeks had passed. That mood in which she loved to assert her fascination for men; mentally snapping her fingers in the faces of her sister women so ready to think evil of her. Certain kinds of men come to heel easily and she felt her triumph to be but a poor one. This half-hour's companionship of a friendly little boy had altered everything; at the moment she no longer felt herself to be the sport of circumstance; but her heart ached and her voice was weariful as she said:—"No, we won't stop. I am tired, but we are only about three miles from home. You live just outside the town, don't you?""Yes! at that tall grey gabled house where the cross roads meet!""I have seen you go into the drive. Do you do lessons—who teaches you?""Partly Mother, partly Dad. I am not clever at lessons." Billy flushed as he spoke; he was fully aware that his small love for books was something of a reproach. People expect so much from the child of clever parents. He did not know that his strongly developed sporting instincts were the pride of his bookish father's heart; nor how cheerfully that father had forgone many a rare edition, that Billy might ride to hounds. "A modest lad, a good lad; let him play about in the sunshine—the rest will come." So Billy's father, who would relate with glee how successfully Billy had vetoed one topic of conversation. On an evening, not so very long ago, Billy had put his head round the drawing-room door, demanding, "Is Dad going to talk about 'The Dark Lady of the Sonnets?' 'cause, if he is, I'm not coming in. I've had enough of hearing about her."So Dad vowed he would talk of her no more, and discussed the habits of "Pug" with a learning that astonished and charmed Billy beyond telling.The much-vexed question of Mary Fitton's identity with the "Dark Lady of the Sonnets" had raged with violence in Billy's house. His father had written many articles upon the subject—articles appearing in those fat, uninteresting magazines which littered drawing-room and study; in whose closely printed pages Billy sought in vain for "pictures and conversations." He did wish that Dad wrote for theStrand.Curiously enough, as they rode home in the gathering eventide, the thought jumped into Billy's head that the dark lady of the sonnets must have been exactly like the Baroness. With the inconsequent aptness of childhood he proceeded to quote aloud lines learned to please his father:"For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."The lady pulled up short and, turning in her saddle, asked with a catch in her voice, "Why do you say that? What is it? Where is it from?""Oh, it's those sonnets, you know—I've learnt lots of 'em to please my dad.""But what made you quote that just then?" persisted the Baroness, her eyes dark and tragic with some nameless fear: "What made you quote it then? Were you thinking of me?"Billy blushed and took off his cap that he might rumple his hair, a thing he always did when perplexed."Iwasthinking of you," he said at last, "yet that has nothing to do with you. This has though"—and, blushing more than ever, Billy repeated:"Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,Knowing thy heart, torment me with disdain;Have put on black, and loving mourners be,Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain:And truly not the morning sun of heavenBetter becomes the grey cheeks of the east,Nor that full star that ushers in the even,Than those two mourning eyes become thy face.Billy stopped breathless, but confident that he had said the right thing this time."It is very pretty!" said the lady with a sigh—"but the other is true. What a queer little boy you are to repeat poetry like that! How old are you?""I shall be nine at Easter. Then I go to school. Where are you going when the hunting is over? It ends early here; we never kill a May fox—the crops, you know.""I don't know where I shall go, probably to London, or to Paris, or——" here she murmured something in a language Billy did not understand, then, turning to him, said dreamily:"'That is my home of love: if I have ranged,Like him that travels, I return again.'You see I know something of your poetry too! But, wherever I go, I shall be lonely—lonely and sad."There was a sound of tears in her voice. Billy, infinitely distressed, felt that this melancholy lady must be cheered and encouraged, so he said stoutly:"I've never seen you alone before. You've generally got Mr. Rigby Folaire, or Captain Garth, or Lord Edward, or all of them.""That's just it," said the Baroness, and Billy was more puzzled than ever. Feeling that he must get on to more comprehensible ground, he asked,"How did you lose the others?""Probably very much as you did. Anyhow, here we are together, and I am very glad. I have enjoyed your society extremely. I shall remember our afternoon."The Baroness was destined to remember, for at that moment Billy's pony put his foot in a rabbit hole and came down, throwing the child with some violence against the trunk of a tree. They were riding at the edge of the wood.The pony scrambled up and galloped off; but Billy lay quite still in a pathetic heap. The Baroness had pulled up her tall horse almost on to his haunches, for Billy had been thrown right in front of her. Now, with the reins over her arm, she was stooping over the prostrate Billy, while the nervous thoroughbred trembled and curvetted beside her.The Baroness was noted for the speed and grace with which she could mount or dismount.She lifted Billy in her arms. There was a big bruise on his temple, and he seemed stunned by the fall. His head rolled on to her shoulder, lying there heavily. Reaching for her flask from the pocket of her saddle, and with the reins still round her wrist, she sat down on the ground with Billy in her arms. She soaked her handkerchief in brandy, and dabbed his forehead, and, as if to aid her, there pattered down upon his upturned face the first drops of a cold November shower.The Baroness had faced many dangers in her time. To "scenes" of various kinds she was quite inured; but she trembled as Billy's face touched her neck, and there was a look in her eyes that neither Mr. Rigby Folaire nor Lord Edward had ever seen there. Presently Billy stirred and opened his eyes, saying eagerly, "I'm all right, mother! It wasn't Dalgo's fault I fell off. It's all right."Sitting up suddenly, he saw the Baroness, and knew where he was. But he had clung to her—she always remembered that.He scrambled to his feet, exclaiming, "I beg your pardon. Did I frighten you? I am so sorry"; then, turning very giddy, sat down again amongst the wet leaves."I wonder if I ought to give him brandy," murmured the Baroness. She put her free arm round him, while the tall horse sniffed inquiringly at them both.The white mist crept higher among the trees and the rain grew heavier. Billy shivered."We can't sit here," said the Baroness decidedly. "You'll have to ride Frivolity in front of me. I don't know where your pony is, and if he has galloped home they will be in a dreadful state. So we must hurry."How strong you are!" said Billy, admiringly, as she swung him up to the saddle in front of her—"and how kind!" He put his hand on hers that held the reins, her other arm was round him. Thus they rode home in the cold gloom of that November afternoon.* * * * *"Billy's late!" said his mother nervously as she poked the study fire. "I am always worried when he is out without Jackson; he is so reckless, and Jackson came home just before lunch, you know." Billy's father pushed his papers away from him, and came and stood beside her at the fire."There he is!" he said, "there's the drive gate.""That's a horse; besides, Billy always goes straight to the yard—Oh, can he be hurt? and some one has come to tell us. Go down quick and see."On no occasion did Billy ever go hunting but his mother pictured every possible mishap. Had the child ever realised her agony of apprehension he would never have gone; but she loved him too well to interfere with his pleasures. "He's such a manly little fellow," she would say when he came safely back, forgetting her dread in her pride of him—until next hunting day.She followed her husband into the fire-lit hall. The door stood open. The well-loved little figure was silhouetted against the gloom, and the kind young voice was persuading some one to come in. "Do come and have some tea," she heard him say; then, as he saw his mother: "It's the dark lady, dear; she has been so kind to me. Has Dalgo come home?"The mother went out on to the steps beside her husband. The unknown lady had already turned her horse preparatory to departure, but waited just to say in short, jerky sentences:"Your little boy was thrown, and the pony ran away. I thought it best to bring him home without looking for the pony. He fell with some force against a tree, but I don't think——!""Won't you come in?" asked Billy's mother, going down into the rain beside her guest. A great many considerations flashed into her mind, but—"and let me thank you."The soft voice was so like Billy's. For a moment the Baroness wavered. She looked somewhat wistfully into the hall where the ruddy firelight danced on the old oak furniture, but she gave a little wriggle on her saddle and said lightly and in the voice that jarred, "Thanks! but I'm far too wet. I must go home and change. The boy is wet. I hope the pony will turn up all right," and with that she rode out of the drive.Billy spent some days in bed with concussion of the brain. He talked constantly of his "dark lady" to the bewilderment of his mother, who had no idea how firmly he was imbued with the notion thathisdark lady wasthedark lady—"of the sonnets," as he always piously concluded.As for the lady—when Billy's father went down to the "Moonstone" that very evening in the pouring rain, to thank her for her kindness to his little son, she was declared to be engaged and would see no one.When Billy's mother went next morning she was told that the Baroness had gone to town the night before. Her servants and her horses followed her, and the hunt knew her no more. She left no address. Mr. Rigby Folaire and Lord Edward inquired her whereabouts in vain. But Billy knew she had "gone back into the sonnets"; for had she not said, as they rode home in the rain that afternoon,"That is my home of love: if I have rangedLike him that travels, I return again"?Billy was sure; and even Billy's father has given up talking about Mary Fitton.XIHER FIRST APPEARANCESomehow or other it got noised abroad in the town that Lady Valeria was coming to church the very next Sunday.The town was much interested. There are people who speak of our town as a "village." Such people are lacking in all sense of proportion. We pity them, and try to ignore the insult.But to return to Lady Valeria. For nearly four years we have had her in our midst. At first she was known as "the Earl's baby"; but her appearance and character were such that she speedily achieved a distinct entity, and now her doings are chronicled with extreme minuteness."Mammy dear! Mammy dear!" said Lady Valeria, "what does God do in church?"Her mother looked puzzled for a moment, then she said, "He listens to our prayers, and to the psalms and hymns we sing.""Will He speak to me, mammy dear? Will He want to kiss me?"Most people wanted to kiss Lady Valeria; she was quite used to it."We cannot see God," answered the Countess gravely."Why, mammy dear?" asked the persistent treble voice, "what does He hide for?"The Countess looked beseechingly at her husband, but he would not come to her assistance; he went and looked out of the window, and his shoulders shook. He gave her no help in these matters—no help at all—and, really, there never was a more inquiring child than Lady Valeria."I'd like to see God, mammy dear! why can't I?""We can none of us see God—yet," said her mother, gently; "we shall see Him some day if we are good. Now listen, sweetheart, you must be perfectly quiet in church, and not talk at all; you must do whatever I do. Remember, it is God's House, and we go there to thank Him for all He gives us, and to pray to Him for help to do right."Lady Valeria's face was very solemn, and she held it up to be kissed, and she made many protestations with regard to the extreme decorum of her conduct when Sunday should come. Then the head nurse appeared and carried her off to nursery tea.Her parents had misgivings as to the sobriety of her behaviour in church. The Countess felt nervous and said so; as for the Earl, he laughed and loved her, but he said that nothing would induce him to accompany his daughter to church next Sunday afternoon. Hers was a character of much originality. She acted with decision, and always unexpectedly; and the little Countess, who was only nineteen years older than her daughter, often felt that the baby girl was the stronger of the two.There was a pleasant flutter of expectation among the Sunday-school children, and, indeed, among the congregation generally, at the children's service on that memorable Sunday when Lady Valeria first came to church. Since her own christening, and that of her small brother, nothing so exciting had occurred. The Earl's seat was high up in the centre aisle, in full view of the congregation. As the young Countess walked in, leading her little daughter by the hand, she had to run the gauntlet of the kindly inquisitive eyes of the entire congregation, an unusually large one. She blushed very much, for she was a shy little lady, who loved to go her gracious way quietly and unobserved. Not so Lady Valeria—from her earliest infancy she had been taught to give pleasure by her pretty smiles, and that to "notice people" was one of the most binding of her obligations. Though certainly no Pharisee, she dearly loved "greetings in the market-place," and as she trotted up the aisle she nodded gaily to her acquaintances, who were there in large numbers. She waved her fat hand to the curate as he took his seat in the choir, much to his confusion.In the choir were two of the lodge-keeper's sons. Their white garments had for the nonce concealed their identity; but presently Lady Valeria recognised them, and, mounting a high hassock, she nodded and waved ecstatically—she felt so sure they would be delighted to see her in church. She wondered why they looked so red, and why they did not pull their front locks and grin, as they were wont to do when she passed them in the pony carriage. She felt chilled and disappointed at this lack of responsiveness on the part of so many of her friends.The service began. Lady Valeria carefully copied her mother and made no sound. That lady, who had not noticed "the nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles" which marked her daughter's entrance, felt her cheeks begin to cool and was conscious of a hope upspringing that her temerity in bringing Lady Valeria to church was to be triumphantly vindicated.Suddenly, however, in the middle of the psalms, which were read in alternate verses by vicar and congregation, she noticed that, in the congregation's verse, somebody was saying in a triumphant sing-song:"There was a lady loved a swine.'Honey!' said she,'Pighog, wilt thou be mine?''Hunc!' said he."The final "hunc" was a life-like imitation of one of the Earl's prize pigs. The verse in question happened to be shorter than Lady Valeria's, and she finished after the congregation.The curate turned purple, and the vicar's voice trembled. The Countess blushed redder than before, and, stooping down, whispered, "You mustn't sayanything, darling!"Lady Valeria looked up in pained surprise."Every one else is talking, mammy dear. I'm sure God wouldn't mind."Her mother shook her head again, and Lady Valeria relapsed into a wondering and somewhat injured silence. Why should those Sunday-school children be allowed to bawl out all sorts of seemingly irrelevant remarks, while she was checked for one little tiny rhyme? Truly, church was a puzzling place. She sighed, and pulled off her gloves, then she rolled them into a neat ball and played catch with them. But she was no hand at catch, and the gloves fell with a soft "plop" into the aisle. Her mother looked up at the little sound and again shook her head. Lady Valeria yawned.Then something happened. There was a scuffling at the back, and the vicar's wife, who is a strict disciplinarian, marched up the aisle propelling a small boy in front of her—the very small boy who was the cause of the disturbance. Lady Valeria nearly fell off her stool in her excitement. The procession of two, the pusher and the pushed, passed the Earl's pew, and reached the big brass bird, whose classification had been puzzling Lady Valeria for the last ten minutes. The vicar's wife left the small boy just beside the big bird, and marched down the aisle again. The hymn finished, the vicar went into the pulpit and gave out the text. Thomas Beames, the culprit, stuffed his fists into his eyes, and wept copiously, but silently. There he would have to stand, publicly disgraced, with his back in full view of the congregation for the rest of the service."I'll turn dissenter, I will!" vowed Thomas, in his miserable soul. "I'll vote yallow when I be growed a man. I won't cap she, when I do meet her in the street."The vicar's voice exhorting the children to industry, sobriety, and universal charity fell on deaf ears as far as Thomas was concerned. But what he did hear was the soft patter of little feet behind him, then came a pull at his arm by two small impatient hands. He took his fists out of his eyes, and looked down to see Lady Valeria standing beside him. Her blue eyes were full of pity, and she said very softly and distinctly, "Don't ky, little boy! there's plenty of room in our seat!" and before the astonished Thomas could demur, one of the imperative little hands had seized his, and pulled him into the Earl's pew, where he sat crimson and desperately uncomfortable for the rest of the service; but he was not quite so sure that he would vote "yallow when he were growed a man." The sermon was long. The vicar felt this flying in the face of law and order must be lived or preached down.Lady Valeria yawned again. Heedless of the precepts of St. Paul, she removed her hat. Then she leaned her head against her mother's shoulder and slept.She slept all through the sermon; even the singing of the closing hymn did not awake her.The school children, including the now repentant Thomas Beames, had clattered out, and still the Lady Valeria slept.Her mother kissed and woke her, and as they walked across the sunny market-place, Lady Valeria remarked cheerfully, "Mammy dear, mammy dear! I like church, you feels so nice and fresh when you comes out!"
VIII
A COTSWOLD BARMAID
It seemed an odd name for an elderly woman, even when, as in this case, she happened to be a barmaid: but some one with an eye for likenesses christened her "Bobby" because of a really striking resemblance to the statesman at that time familiarly known as "Bobby Lowe." Anyway the name expressed her, and Bobby she remained to the end. Let it not be imagined that disrespect was so much as suggested by the title: she was the best respected woman in our town, and certainly one of the most influential.
There was a college, of a sort, near the town where Bobby lived, and generations of students and the whole hunting youth of the countryside passed through her kind hands, and every man amongst them will acknowledge that he was the better for having known Bobby.
It is to be supposed that at one time she was slim, instead of round-about, that her abundant white hair was once brown or golden, that she had a story of her own apart from the "Moonstone" and her "boys"; but we took her for granted none the less thankfully that we were apt to forget how unique she was, till we were far from Bobby and the Moonstone Bar.
Youthful new-comers were her especial care. She not infrequently confiscated their money if she thought they were going to "play the giddy," only restoring it when she considered they were capable of using it with some discretion. And how carefully she looked after the digestions of such as were inexperienced in the matter of drinks! "What?" she would exclaim, "green chartreuse, sir, and you just bin 'avin' beer! You really mustn't, sir, you'd be that bad" ... and the best of it was that nobody was ever foolish enough to resent her interference.
"If a holdish man likes to take too much," she would say sorrowfully, "it isn't me that can stop 'im, but with these young chaps just fresh from school, I must do my best according to my lights."
What becomes of the young chaps fresh from school where there is no Bobby to take care of them I wonder.
"As you know, sir," she continued, "I don't hold with drinkin' for drinkin's sake, but I do think that a gentleman should be able to take his glass sociable-like, and friendly. There don't seem no good fellowship in them there aereated waters, and I'm sure they ain't no good to a body's inside, by theirselves."
She had a healthy crop of prejudices this Bobby of ours. Any sort of blasphemy or loose talk she could not away with. "It's sort of natural for a man to swear if he's a bit taken to or astonished," she would say in lenient mood, "but when they goes breaking the third commandment like as if it was a hold chipped plate, it gives me cold shivers down my back—that it do."
She never expostulated, but her square, rosy face got less square and less rosy if, in her presence, the conversation waxed too forcible and free. At such times the offender would be warned by one of Bobby's old friends who respected what he probably called her "fads." If the new-comer profited by the warning all went well, but if he offended a second time he was forcibly ejected and found himself in the dark and draughty covered way leading to the Moonstone stables, with the explanation, "you can pile on the adjectives here, old chap, but she doesn't like it."
Bobby was a sincere believer in good works, and many were the "boxes" benefited by winnings at billiards or otherwise: and every Sunday saw her slowly taking her decorous way to church, seemly and satin-clad, bearing the very portliest of prayer books.
For man in the abstract, she had the greatest respect, but taken individually, she looked upon him as singularly gullible, and as requiring much maternal supervision, both digestively and morally. "Law! They may talk about their science and their chemistry and that, but bless you! Just let one of them minxes come along, and they're no better than imbeciles, that they're not."
The one human creature for whom Bobby's kind heart could find no toleration, was a "minx." And by "minx" she meant such pretty girls of the shop and dressmaker class, as she imagined cherished hopes of "marrying a gentleman." The idea that one of her boys (anybody under thirty was a "boy" to Bobby) should get entangled in the meshes of a minx, or more dreadful still, "marry beneath him" roused Bobby as did nothing else. How she got her information no one could ever imagine, but she always knew when anything of the kind was afoot, and Machiavellian were her methods of preventing such a catastrophe. More than one "county family" has Bobby to thank that no undesirable daughter-in-law has been added to its ranks. People under twenty she considered her especial charge. She gave them much homely and excellent advice, and only such drinks as she deemed suitable to their tender years.
When one of Bobby's old favourites came back from foreign parts the very first place he would hasten to was Bobby's bar. He would lounge in, after the fashion of a stranger, and ask, in a feigned voice, for what had been his favourite drink in the old days. But Bobby's ears were very quick, one sharp glance at the stranger, a little cry of recognition ... and over the counter he leaps and fast in his embrace is the old barmaid's stout, comfortable, little figure, and for a minute or two neither she nor the stranger can see each other very clearly. And then, what a talking over of old days there would be! What asking after old chums! At such times Bobby would even give us news of the minxes. Poor pretty minxes, did any of you ever marry gentlemen I wonder? They were really very nice those minxes! But we don't remember them as we remember Bobby—Bobby of the silver hair and little dumpy figure, who by sheer force of strong and kindly character held sway over several generations of hot-blooded young England. She was not beautiful; she was not, as the world accounts it, clever: but she was of the type of the eternal mother-woman. "Bless you," she would say with her broad, confident smile, "it's easy enough to manage 'em if only you lets 'em think as they're managin' you."
IX
FUZZY WUZZY'S WATCH
He was Billy's little brother, and we called him "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" because his abundant yellow hair stuck out straight and bushy all over his head. Moreover, at tennis parties he was sometimes allowed to "squeege" the soda water into the tall glasses held out for that purpose by thirsty friends; and they would say "Here's to you, Fuzzy Wuzzy!"
This, however, is not a story of Fuzzy Wuzzy, but of a man to whom Fortune had not been kind, whereas Fuzzy Wuzzy was.
"He is the rowdiest chap in the college, he goes on the drunk for days together; and yet he's a perfect gentleman, even when he's drunk."
We were all of us sitting on the lawn. Fuzzy's mother looked up as Mr. Calcraft spoke, asking, "Who is this unhappy person?"
"Oh, the 'Bookie' you know, that chap who's got Vereker's old rooms. Riddell is his name—the professor knows him."
Mr. Calcraft waited for the professor to give further information, but he said nothing. Then a small voice remarked: "Iknow Mr. Riddell. He's got the beautifullest big dog, and he gave me a ride on its back—I like him."
Fuzzy was sitting on my knee—after a moment's silence his mother asked, "Do you like him, Hugh? Is it true that he is so wild?"
The professor took his pipe out of his mouth. He was not given to discussing the students, we all knew that—but this time he said, "I like Riddell. He's a very clever fellow, and most good-natured. I think his little weaknesses are much exaggerated.Ihave seen no sign of rowdiness."
Mr. Calcraft laughed. "If you'd been at 'The Moonstone' the other evening, sir, you would have seen more than a sign. He broke every cue in the billiard room, and nearly threw the marker out of the window!"
"Did he frow a man out of the window?" exclaimed Fuzzy ecstatically. "Oh, Mr. Bookieisstrong."
There was a horror-stricken pause. They had forgotten Fuzzy. His mother looked reproachfully at Mr. Calcraft, and somebody murmured something aboutvirginibus puerisque.
"If only the 'Bookie' could be kept sober," Mr. Calcraft remarked apologetically, "he would be a splendid chap. He is all right for weeks together, and is as hard as nails; then he goes off and makes an ass of himself down town, and it makes people cut him. He told me the other day that he doesn't know a lady in the place."
"He is going to know one!" said Fuzzy's mother, "he's going to knowme. I think it is too bad. You all say he is foolish, yet not one of you has the courage to tell him so, I think it is a shame."
"He would be an awkward chap to tackle," murmured Mr. Calcraft. "He'd throw you out of the window as soon as look at you."
"He can't throw me out of the window," said Fuzzy's mother, "and I shall talk to him. You must ask him to lunch, Hugh!"
Then we all went to eat gooseberries in the kitchen garden and played at horses with Fuzzy.
The first day of the horse show Riddell was with Mrs. Ainger all the time. As usual he was untidy. His tie was over his collar, his collar frayed; he wore a terrible old cap, and the front of his coat was smothered in dust from Fuzzy's boots, for that gentleman spent the greater part of the afternoon perched on Riddell's shoulder.
"The Bookie" looked radiant, and carried off his lady to tea in the tent; I followed, sitting with friends at the next table. They looked a little surprised at Mrs. Ainger's cavalier, for that lady was known to be particular as to the men she admitted to intimacy.
Afterwards I heard all about it. It seems that the professor had asked Riddell to lunch, and that he had behaved beautifully. He was a cultivated man, and talked well, in the softest, most musical voice in the world. His knowledge of swear-words was the widest and most far-reaching; when with men his conversation was so garnished with oaths, that one had to pick one's steps, as it were, to discover what he was talking about. But with ladies, he was the most courtly and careful of men. At the horse show he had discovered Mrs. Ainger trying to lift Fuzzy to see over the heads of some yokels who obstructed the view. In a moment Riddell had relieved her of her burden, and devoted himself to her for the rest of the day. The professor was counting marks and could not come.
Then ensued a time of peace and quiet for the Bookie. He followed Mrs. Ainger like a big dog, constituted himself head nurse to Fuzzy, and he was sober, absolutely sober, for six months. When other ladies met him constantly at the Aingers', and found him to be not only harmless but charming, they also asked him to lunch and to dine. Thus "The Bookie" who had plenty of money, and was of unexceptional family, became something of a personage. He bought new clothes, and wore a clean straw hat. His linen was no longer frayed, and he shaved twice a day.
Mrs. Ainger sang his praises wherever she went, and openly declared that she believed all the stories of his rowdiness to be slanders; she had not seen his bill for billiard cues from the "Moonstone."
At the end of April came the "Point to Point" steeplechase, a day fatal to the Bookie, who was "well on" by five o'clock in the afternoon. Mrs. Ainger was not at the races, so she was spared the spectacle of her protégé, swaying gracefully on the seat of his dogcart as he drove off the course. He had not brought his man, and as he was, his friends considered, quite capable of getting home in safety, they preferred not to be seen with him. He pressed them courteously to accompany him, offering to stand them a dinner at the "Moonstone." But they stood in awe of Mrs. Ainger, and not considering themselves in any way called upon to act as keeper for the Bookie, they let him alone.
Fuzzy's Nana was of a literary turn, spending a large proportion of the salary she received for her attentions to Fuzzy on the lighter kinds of fiction. On this particular afternoon, having wheeled him in his go-cart some distance along the high road, "she sat her down upon a green bank," and bidding him "Play about, there's a good boy, and pick some pretty flowers for mama!" she was soon immersed in a periodical, bearing a bloodcurdling device upon the cover.
Fuzzy gathered a bunch of celandines, and with them clasped tightly in his hot, fat hand, set off at a run down the road, giggling delightedly when he discovered that Nana neither called him nor yet started in pursuit.
Trotting gleefully along for some little distance he turned off into an inviting-looking lane. He kept close to the hedge for there was a sound of galloping hoofs, and Fuzzy was an extremely sensible small boy. Then there passed him a horse and dogcart, the horse going at a hand gallop, the dogcart empty. This struck Fuzzy as strange, but then strange things do happen when one sets forth to seek adventures. So he girded up his stocking which had become uncomfortably wrinkly and trudged on.
Presently he saw a man lying by the side of the road. Now Fuzzy had a large acquaintance among road men, and for tramps he felt a real affection. Had they not sometimes got white rats in their pockets? Nay, those of a superior sort even carried ferrets! He and his mother were wont to bestow pence on tramps, and on the road men, boots and the professor's old coats. In fact the professor was often heard to complain that he met his favourite coat by a heap of stones every time he went out. Fuzzy advanced fearlessly to inspect this weary man, who was lying on his face, with one arm doubled up under him in the strangest fashion. The man did not move as Fuzzy came up, and the little boy went and stood by the prostrate form, saying, with a comical imitation of his father:—"Thirsty weather, eh?" but the usual "It be that, Master!" did not follow.
The afternoon was very still. The sound of galloping hoofs and bumping wheels had died away in the distance. Suddenly Fuzzy gave a little cry—"Bookie! Bookie dear! are you hurted? Why do you lie in the road? gentlemens don't lie in the road—O Bookie! your foot is bad, it's all bleedy and dreadful!"
The Bookie did not answer, "he kind of snored" as Fuzzy afterwards described it. The child tried to turn him over on his back, but the Bookie being six foot two, and proportionately broad, and Fuzzy by no means tall for his age, this proved an impossible feat.
"I'm afraid he's hurted very bad, his face is so red and dirty," said Fuzzy to himself. Then, with Herculean efforts, he succeeded in inserting his own legs under the Bookie's head, so that it rested on his clean holland smock. He stroked the tumbled hair, and laid his soft little face upon the Bookie's hot, prickly cheek. They remained thus for what seemed to Fuzzy an interminable time. He began to grow sleepy himself. His head nodded, and finally he too fell over on to his back sound asleep.
When the Bookie came to himself he lay still for a few minutes collecting his thoughts. He discovered that his arm was certainly broken, that a wheel had gone over his ankle, that his face was resting on something soft, and that not ten inches from his face was a pair of small, dusty strap-shoes.
This last discovery completely sobered him. He raised himself on his good arm and looked down at the something which had been supporting him. A golden head, resting on two plump arms crossed behind it; sturdy legs, crushed by his weight, which now drew themselves up stretching out again as if relieved ... and then the Bookie realised that Fuzzy had found him, and had stayed to keep guard.
"God help me for a drunken beast! and I can't carry him for my arm's broken," he ejaculated. He got up on to his knees feeling very giddy. The movement woke Fuzzy. He too was puzzled for a moment as to where he could be, then, he saw the Bookie, and, his brains not being muddled by various "drinks" and a heavy fall, he sat up, saying in his tender little voice: "Are you hurted much, my poor dear? I stayed with you till you woked up."
The Bookie looked at Fuzzy and tried to speak, but somehow he couldn't. Fuzzy was on his feet in a moment and held out his grubby hands: "Shall I pull you up? I can pull dad up."
The Bookie took one of the little hands and carried it to his lips, saying brokenly, "Why do you love me, Fuzzy? I'm not worth it."
Fuzzy took no notice of this remark, it was just one of those foolish and irrelevant things that grown-up people have a habit of saying, so he said, "Aren't you tired of sitting in the road? Hadn't we better go home? I'm very hungry."
The Bookie tried again to get up on to his feet, but something had gone wrong with his leg, as well as his arm, and after a few excruciating efforts he gave it up.
"I'm afraid it's no go, Fuzzy, I can't walk; you see I was pitched out of the dog-cart, and I'm all smashed up—whatever is to be done?"
"Shall you be very lonely if I go home and tell them?" asked Fuzzy with his arms round the Bookie's neck, "and then they could bring a carriage for you; you're too big to go in my mail cart, or I'd lend it to you. It's in a field wiv Nana."
"How on earth I got into this lane I can't think, it's right off the high road. O Fuzzy Wuzzy, what an ass I've been!" The Bookie groaned, and Fuzzy clasped his arms tighter round his neck. Then he wiped his friend's dirty face with the crumpled smock, remarking: "Your poor face is so grubby, and you've lost your hat!"
"Where's yours?" asked the Bookie.
"I think it felled into the ditch!" Fuzzy answered composedly, "but there's no sun to sun-stroke us."
"You must be got home, old chap; it's getting ever so late and they will be anxious; do you think you could go by yourself, and tell them where you left me?"—"a pretty tale, truly," thought the Bookie to himself.
Fuzzy was torn by conflicting desires. He hated to leave his wounded friend, and he wanted his mother. Finally, having embraced the Bookie several times, he trotted off down the lane and into the high road once more. When he got home it was nearly eight o'clock. His father and mother, white-faced and anxious, were standing at the drive gate, straining their eyes in the twilight. Nana, having searched vainly herself, had only just come back to confess that Fuzzy was lost. He hardly waited to receive his mother's caresses, but seizing her by the hand, dragged her down the road, crying excitedly: "Come quick! the Bookie's hurted and he's all alone."
By dint of much questioning, the Bookie's whereabouts and the extent of his misfortunes were arrived at. The dogcart and horse were captured in an adjacent village, and the Bookie spent a month indoors. Fuzzy went to see him every day, so did they all, but they never spoke of the accident. They played Poker and Nap round his sick-bed, and the beggar constantly won.
The night before he went down he told them about Fuzzy. He forgot to swear at all during the narrative, but at the end he said: "And I'm damned if those dusty strap-shoes wouldn't get between me and too much of the best champagne ever bottled!"
X
THE DARK LADY
Nobody knew her—that is to say, none of the other ladies knew her. She was staying at the "Moonstone" for the hunting, accompanied by a maid, a couple of grooms, and six horses. The hotel people called her "the Baroness." Billy always spoke of her as "that pretty lady"; but then it is possible that admiration for her daring horsemanship coloured Billy's views.
On this particular afternoon Billy and the unknown lady found themselves at the same gate, in the gathering gloom of a November afternoon, six good miles from home. She was trying to lift a refractory latch with her hunting-crop when Billy rode up on his shaggy sheltie, dismounted cap in hand, and opened the gate for her.
"We seem to have lost the others, you and I. Shall we jog home together?" she asked, as Billy, having carefully fastened the gate, followed her down the rutty lane. "I'm not very sure where we are; but I suppose this lane leads somewhere," she continued.
"I know the way," answered the little boy cheerfully. "I shall be very glad of your company. Jackson—that's our man—lamed the cob early in the day and had to go home, and it's lonely riding by one's self."
"I am often lonely," said the lady, more to herself than to Billy.
"Are you? So am I. I'm the only one who hunts, you see; but I'm going to school at Easter, then I shan't be lonely any more."
"Are you glad to be going to school?"
"Oh, yes! I shall like being with the other chaps awfully; but, of course, I shall miss my people ... and the dogs, and the pony."
"Your people don't hunt, do they?"
"No; we've only the cob and my pony. Mother doesn't hunt, she's too nervous; and father doesn't care for it. Mother drives to the near meets sometimes, but when it is a long way she likes Jackson to come with me for the day. Not that he's any mortal use," added Billy with a gleeful chuckle. "He's a potterer, and my brother is too little."
"I wonder," the lady began, then stopped suddenly. Billy turned his rosy face towards her, but she did not speak. The child, because he knew one woman so well, divined that this woman was tired and sad. So he, too, was silent. The horses' hoofs went thud, swish, thud, swish, through the foot-deep decaying beech leaves. A delicate silver mist gathered round the roots of the great trees; like the bridal veil of a rosy girl, it spread itself over the stretches of ruddy space. They had turned into the grass-carpeted main avenue of the Earl's famous park, and Billy sniffed delightedly at what he called "the good smell of Christmas." Happy Billy! to whom the death of summer brought no sad thoughts.
"I'm afraid you are very tired!" he said suddenly, in his kind boyish voice. "Would you like to stop a bit?"
The lady started. Not, indeed, that she had forgotten Billy; she was in a subconscious way basking in the warmth that radiates from all simple and kindly people. Her rebellious mood of the last weeks had passed. That mood in which she loved to assert her fascination for men; mentally snapping her fingers in the faces of her sister women so ready to think evil of her. Certain kinds of men come to heel easily and she felt her triumph to be but a poor one. This half-hour's companionship of a friendly little boy had altered everything; at the moment she no longer felt herself to be the sport of circumstance; but her heart ached and her voice was weariful as she said:—"No, we won't stop. I am tired, but we are only about three miles from home. You live just outside the town, don't you?"
"Yes! at that tall grey gabled house where the cross roads meet!"
"I have seen you go into the drive. Do you do lessons—who teaches you?"
"Partly Mother, partly Dad. I am not clever at lessons." Billy flushed as he spoke; he was fully aware that his small love for books was something of a reproach. People expect so much from the child of clever parents. He did not know that his strongly developed sporting instincts were the pride of his bookish father's heart; nor how cheerfully that father had forgone many a rare edition, that Billy might ride to hounds. "A modest lad, a good lad; let him play about in the sunshine—the rest will come." So Billy's father, who would relate with glee how successfully Billy had vetoed one topic of conversation. On an evening, not so very long ago, Billy had put his head round the drawing-room door, demanding, "Is Dad going to talk about 'The Dark Lady of the Sonnets?' 'cause, if he is, I'm not coming in. I've had enough of hearing about her."
So Dad vowed he would talk of her no more, and discussed the habits of "Pug" with a learning that astonished and charmed Billy beyond telling.
The much-vexed question of Mary Fitton's identity with the "Dark Lady of the Sonnets" had raged with violence in Billy's house. His father had written many articles upon the subject—articles appearing in those fat, uninteresting magazines which littered drawing-room and study; in whose closely printed pages Billy sought in vain for "pictures and conversations." He did wish that Dad wrote for theStrand.
Curiously enough, as they rode home in the gathering eventide, the thought jumped into Billy's head that the dark lady of the sonnets must have been exactly like the Baroness. With the inconsequent aptness of childhood he proceeded to quote aloud lines learned to please his father:
"For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."
"For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."
"For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."
The lady pulled up short and, turning in her saddle, asked with a catch in her voice, "Why do you say that? What is it? Where is it from?"
"Oh, it's those sonnets, you know—I've learnt lots of 'em to please my dad."
"But what made you quote that just then?" persisted the Baroness, her eyes dark and tragic with some nameless fear: "What made you quote it then? Were you thinking of me?"
Billy blushed and took off his cap that he might rumple his hair, a thing he always did when perplexed.
"Iwasthinking of you," he said at last, "yet that has nothing to do with you. This has though"—and, blushing more than ever, Billy repeated:
"Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,Knowing thy heart, torment me with disdain;Have put on black, and loving mourners be,Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain:And truly not the morning sun of heavenBetter becomes the grey cheeks of the east,Nor that full star that ushers in the even,Than those two mourning eyes become thy face.
"Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,Knowing thy heart, torment me with disdain;Have put on black, and loving mourners be,Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain:And truly not the morning sun of heavenBetter becomes the grey cheeks of the east,Nor that full star that ushers in the even,Than those two mourning eyes become thy face.
"Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart, torment me with disdain;
Have put on black, and loving mourners be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain:
And truly not the morning sun of heaven
Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,
Nor that full star that ushers in the even,
Than those two mourning eyes become thy face.
Billy stopped breathless, but confident that he had said the right thing this time.
"It is very pretty!" said the lady with a sigh—"but the other is true. What a queer little boy you are to repeat poetry like that! How old are you?"
"I shall be nine at Easter. Then I go to school. Where are you going when the hunting is over? It ends early here; we never kill a May fox—the crops, you know."
"I don't know where I shall go, probably to London, or to Paris, or——" here she murmured something in a language Billy did not understand, then, turning to him, said dreamily:
"'That is my home of love: if I have ranged,Like him that travels, I return again.'
"'That is my home of love: if I have ranged,Like him that travels, I return again.'
"'That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
Like him that travels, I return again.'
You see I know something of your poetry too! But, wherever I go, I shall be lonely—lonely and sad."
There was a sound of tears in her voice. Billy, infinitely distressed, felt that this melancholy lady must be cheered and encouraged, so he said stoutly:
"I've never seen you alone before. You've generally got Mr. Rigby Folaire, or Captain Garth, or Lord Edward, or all of them."
"That's just it," said the Baroness, and Billy was more puzzled than ever. Feeling that he must get on to more comprehensible ground, he asked,
"How did you lose the others?"
"Probably very much as you did. Anyhow, here we are together, and I am very glad. I have enjoyed your society extremely. I shall remember our afternoon."
The Baroness was destined to remember, for at that moment Billy's pony put his foot in a rabbit hole and came down, throwing the child with some violence against the trunk of a tree. They were riding at the edge of the wood.
The pony scrambled up and galloped off; but Billy lay quite still in a pathetic heap. The Baroness had pulled up her tall horse almost on to his haunches, for Billy had been thrown right in front of her. Now, with the reins over her arm, she was stooping over the prostrate Billy, while the nervous thoroughbred trembled and curvetted beside her.
The Baroness was noted for the speed and grace with which she could mount or dismount.
She lifted Billy in her arms. There was a big bruise on his temple, and he seemed stunned by the fall. His head rolled on to her shoulder, lying there heavily. Reaching for her flask from the pocket of her saddle, and with the reins still round her wrist, she sat down on the ground with Billy in her arms. She soaked her handkerchief in brandy, and dabbed his forehead, and, as if to aid her, there pattered down upon his upturned face the first drops of a cold November shower.
The Baroness had faced many dangers in her time. To "scenes" of various kinds she was quite inured; but she trembled as Billy's face touched her neck, and there was a look in her eyes that neither Mr. Rigby Folaire nor Lord Edward had ever seen there. Presently Billy stirred and opened his eyes, saying eagerly, "I'm all right, mother! It wasn't Dalgo's fault I fell off. It's all right."
Sitting up suddenly, he saw the Baroness, and knew where he was. But he had clung to her—she always remembered that.
He scrambled to his feet, exclaiming, "I beg your pardon. Did I frighten you? I am so sorry"; then, turning very giddy, sat down again amongst the wet leaves.
"I wonder if I ought to give him brandy," murmured the Baroness. She put her free arm round him, while the tall horse sniffed inquiringly at them both.
The white mist crept higher among the trees and the rain grew heavier. Billy shivered.
"We can't sit here," said the Baroness decidedly. "You'll have to ride Frivolity in front of me. I don't know where your pony is, and if he has galloped home they will be in a dreadful state. So we must hurry.
"How strong you are!" said Billy, admiringly, as she swung him up to the saddle in front of her—"and how kind!" He put his hand on hers that held the reins, her other arm was round him. Thus they rode home in the cold gloom of that November afternoon.
* * * * *
"Billy's late!" said his mother nervously as she poked the study fire. "I am always worried when he is out without Jackson; he is so reckless, and Jackson came home just before lunch, you know." Billy's father pushed his papers away from him, and came and stood beside her at the fire.
"There he is!" he said, "there's the drive gate."
"That's a horse; besides, Billy always goes straight to the yard—Oh, can he be hurt? and some one has come to tell us. Go down quick and see."
On no occasion did Billy ever go hunting but his mother pictured every possible mishap. Had the child ever realised her agony of apprehension he would never have gone; but she loved him too well to interfere with his pleasures. "He's such a manly little fellow," she would say when he came safely back, forgetting her dread in her pride of him—until next hunting day.
She followed her husband into the fire-lit hall. The door stood open. The well-loved little figure was silhouetted against the gloom, and the kind young voice was persuading some one to come in. "Do come and have some tea," she heard him say; then, as he saw his mother: "It's the dark lady, dear; she has been so kind to me. Has Dalgo come home?"
The mother went out on to the steps beside her husband. The unknown lady had already turned her horse preparatory to departure, but waited just to say in short, jerky sentences:
"Your little boy was thrown, and the pony ran away. I thought it best to bring him home without looking for the pony. He fell with some force against a tree, but I don't think——!"
"Won't you come in?" asked Billy's mother, going down into the rain beside her guest. A great many considerations flashed into her mind, but—"and let me thank you."
The soft voice was so like Billy's. For a moment the Baroness wavered. She looked somewhat wistfully into the hall where the ruddy firelight danced on the old oak furniture, but she gave a little wriggle on her saddle and said lightly and in the voice that jarred, "Thanks! but I'm far too wet. I must go home and change. The boy is wet. I hope the pony will turn up all right," and with that she rode out of the drive.
Billy spent some days in bed with concussion of the brain. He talked constantly of his "dark lady" to the bewilderment of his mother, who had no idea how firmly he was imbued with the notion thathisdark lady wasthedark lady—"of the sonnets," as he always piously concluded.
As for the lady—when Billy's father went down to the "Moonstone" that very evening in the pouring rain, to thank her for her kindness to his little son, she was declared to be engaged and would see no one.
When Billy's mother went next morning she was told that the Baroness had gone to town the night before. Her servants and her horses followed her, and the hunt knew her no more. She left no address. Mr. Rigby Folaire and Lord Edward inquired her whereabouts in vain. But Billy knew she had "gone back into the sonnets"; for had she not said, as they rode home in the rain that afternoon,
"That is my home of love: if I have rangedLike him that travels, I return again"?
"That is my home of love: if I have rangedLike him that travels, I return again"?
"That is my home of love: if I have ranged
Like him that travels, I return again"?
Billy was sure; and even Billy's father has given up talking about Mary Fitton.
XI
HER FIRST APPEARANCE
Somehow or other it got noised abroad in the town that Lady Valeria was coming to church the very next Sunday.
The town was much interested. There are people who speak of our town as a "village." Such people are lacking in all sense of proportion. We pity them, and try to ignore the insult.
But to return to Lady Valeria. For nearly four years we have had her in our midst. At first she was known as "the Earl's baby"; but her appearance and character were such that she speedily achieved a distinct entity, and now her doings are chronicled with extreme minuteness.
"Mammy dear! Mammy dear!" said Lady Valeria, "what does God do in church?"
Her mother looked puzzled for a moment, then she said, "He listens to our prayers, and to the psalms and hymns we sing."
"Will He speak to me, mammy dear? Will He want to kiss me?"
Most people wanted to kiss Lady Valeria; she was quite used to it.
"We cannot see God," answered the Countess gravely.
"Why, mammy dear?" asked the persistent treble voice, "what does He hide for?"
The Countess looked beseechingly at her husband, but he would not come to her assistance; he went and looked out of the window, and his shoulders shook. He gave her no help in these matters—no help at all—and, really, there never was a more inquiring child than Lady Valeria.
"I'd like to see God, mammy dear! why can't I?"
"We can none of us see God—yet," said her mother, gently; "we shall see Him some day if we are good. Now listen, sweetheart, you must be perfectly quiet in church, and not talk at all; you must do whatever I do. Remember, it is God's House, and we go there to thank Him for all He gives us, and to pray to Him for help to do right."
Lady Valeria's face was very solemn, and she held it up to be kissed, and she made many protestations with regard to the extreme decorum of her conduct when Sunday should come. Then the head nurse appeared and carried her off to nursery tea.
Her parents had misgivings as to the sobriety of her behaviour in church. The Countess felt nervous and said so; as for the Earl, he laughed and loved her, but he said that nothing would induce him to accompany his daughter to church next Sunday afternoon. Hers was a character of much originality. She acted with decision, and always unexpectedly; and the little Countess, who was only nineteen years older than her daughter, often felt that the baby girl was the stronger of the two.
There was a pleasant flutter of expectation among the Sunday-school children, and, indeed, among the congregation generally, at the children's service on that memorable Sunday when Lady Valeria first came to church. Since her own christening, and that of her small brother, nothing so exciting had occurred. The Earl's seat was high up in the centre aisle, in full view of the congregation. As the young Countess walked in, leading her little daughter by the hand, she had to run the gauntlet of the kindly inquisitive eyes of the entire congregation, an unusually large one. She blushed very much, for she was a shy little lady, who loved to go her gracious way quietly and unobserved. Not so Lady Valeria—from her earliest infancy she had been taught to give pleasure by her pretty smiles, and that to "notice people" was one of the most binding of her obligations. Though certainly no Pharisee, she dearly loved "greetings in the market-place," and as she trotted up the aisle she nodded gaily to her acquaintances, who were there in large numbers. She waved her fat hand to the curate as he took his seat in the choir, much to his confusion.
In the choir were two of the lodge-keeper's sons. Their white garments had for the nonce concealed their identity; but presently Lady Valeria recognised them, and, mounting a high hassock, she nodded and waved ecstatically—she felt so sure they would be delighted to see her in church. She wondered why they looked so red, and why they did not pull their front locks and grin, as they were wont to do when she passed them in the pony carriage. She felt chilled and disappointed at this lack of responsiveness on the part of so many of her friends.
The service began. Lady Valeria carefully copied her mother and made no sound. That lady, who had not noticed "the nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles" which marked her daughter's entrance, felt her cheeks begin to cool and was conscious of a hope upspringing that her temerity in bringing Lady Valeria to church was to be triumphantly vindicated.
Suddenly, however, in the middle of the psalms, which were read in alternate verses by vicar and congregation, she noticed that, in the congregation's verse, somebody was saying in a triumphant sing-song:
"There was a lady loved a swine.'Honey!' said she,'Pighog, wilt thou be mine?''Hunc!' said he."
"There was a lady loved a swine.'Honey!' said she,'Pighog, wilt thou be mine?''Hunc!' said he."
"There was a lady loved a swine.
'Honey!' said she,
'Honey!' said she,
'Pighog, wilt thou be mine?'
'Hunc!' said he."
'Hunc!' said he."
The final "hunc" was a life-like imitation of one of the Earl's prize pigs. The verse in question happened to be shorter than Lady Valeria's, and she finished after the congregation.
The curate turned purple, and the vicar's voice trembled. The Countess blushed redder than before, and, stooping down, whispered, "You mustn't sayanything, darling!"
Lady Valeria looked up in pained surprise.
"Every one else is talking, mammy dear. I'm sure God wouldn't mind."
Her mother shook her head again, and Lady Valeria relapsed into a wondering and somewhat injured silence. Why should those Sunday-school children be allowed to bawl out all sorts of seemingly irrelevant remarks, while she was checked for one little tiny rhyme? Truly, church was a puzzling place. She sighed, and pulled off her gloves, then she rolled them into a neat ball and played catch with them. But she was no hand at catch, and the gloves fell with a soft "plop" into the aisle. Her mother looked up at the little sound and again shook her head. Lady Valeria yawned.
Then something happened. There was a scuffling at the back, and the vicar's wife, who is a strict disciplinarian, marched up the aisle propelling a small boy in front of her—the very small boy who was the cause of the disturbance. Lady Valeria nearly fell off her stool in her excitement. The procession of two, the pusher and the pushed, passed the Earl's pew, and reached the big brass bird, whose classification had been puzzling Lady Valeria for the last ten minutes. The vicar's wife left the small boy just beside the big bird, and marched down the aisle again. The hymn finished, the vicar went into the pulpit and gave out the text. Thomas Beames, the culprit, stuffed his fists into his eyes, and wept copiously, but silently. There he would have to stand, publicly disgraced, with his back in full view of the congregation for the rest of the service.
"I'll turn dissenter, I will!" vowed Thomas, in his miserable soul. "I'll vote yallow when I be growed a man. I won't cap she, when I do meet her in the street."
The vicar's voice exhorting the children to industry, sobriety, and universal charity fell on deaf ears as far as Thomas was concerned. But what he did hear was the soft patter of little feet behind him, then came a pull at his arm by two small impatient hands. He took his fists out of his eyes, and looked down to see Lady Valeria standing beside him. Her blue eyes were full of pity, and she said very softly and distinctly, "Don't ky, little boy! there's plenty of room in our seat!" and before the astonished Thomas could demur, one of the imperative little hands had seized his, and pulled him into the Earl's pew, where he sat crimson and desperately uncomfortable for the rest of the service; but he was not quite so sure that he would vote "yallow when he were growed a man." The sermon was long. The vicar felt this flying in the face of law and order must be lived or preached down.
Lady Valeria yawned again. Heedless of the precepts of St. Paul, she removed her hat. Then she leaned her head against her mother's shoulder and slept.
She slept all through the sermon; even the singing of the closing hymn did not awake her.
The school children, including the now repentant Thomas Beames, had clattered out, and still the Lady Valeria slept.
Her mother kissed and woke her, and as they walked across the sunny market-place, Lady Valeria remarked cheerfully, "Mammy dear, mammy dear! I like church, you feels so nice and fresh when you comes out!"