CHAPTER XIVTHE USES OF A CAST SHOEMISSISOLINERIDGEWAYwas standing before an object which usually took up a good deal of her time and attention, namely, the looking-glass. As it was placed at right angles to her bedroom window, there could be seen beyond her left shoulder as she arranged her hair, the great yew in the churchyard and a piece of the church-path framed in by the sash. Behind it was a background of sky turning into a frosty gold.Crishowell Vicarage was a small, old, whitewashed house which had once been a farm-house, with gabled windows looking westward; between it and the lane dividing it from the churchyard was a duck-pond that, in wet seasons, overflowed into the Digedi brook, which ran round the Vicar’s orchard at the back.Isoline had just come in, and her hat and walking-things lay upon the bed where she had thrown them. As the room was low, and the early winter sunset hardly penetrated into the house by reason of the rising ground opposite on which the church stood, she had lit a candle, whose spot of feeble light only served to accentuate the dark around her; a rat was scraping in the wainscot, and she shuddered as she looked towards the place from which the noise came. She yawned, and wondered what she could do to amuse herself until supper-time, for it was only half-past four, and the Vicar kept old-fashioned hours—breakfast at nine, a substantial dinner at three, supper at eight, prayers at eight-thirty, and bed at ten o’clock. Since she had arrived at Crishowell the days seemed to have lengthened into weeks and the weeks into months.The old man was all kindness, but there was no one of her own age with whom she could associate, and the few visits she had made at his suggestion to the poor folks living round them had resulted in boredom to herself and constraint to them. She had a true, though rather thin voice, and she would gladly have practised her singing had there been some instrument on which to accompany herself, but unfortunately there was nothing of the sort in the house. Time hung heavy on her hands, for Mr. Lewis’s library was mainly theological, and contained nothing which could amuse a girl. It was dull indeed.A knock at the door drew her attention from the glass. “Who is there?” she called, as she laid down the comb.“Oi,” was the reply, which came from suspiciously near the keyhole.“What do you want?” she asked impatiently, opening the door on Howlie Seaborne.“Yew’re to come down,” he announced baldly.“I am not ready,” said she, with a haughty look. “Who sent you up here, I should like to know?”“Parson says yew be to come down,” he repeated.“Howell!” she exclaimed sharply, using the name by which he was known to his superiors, “how often have I told you that that is not the way to speak of Mr. Lewis; I never heard of such impertinence!”“An’ if a bain’t a parson, wot be he? Ye moight call ’im even worse nor that too, oi suppose,” replied Howlie with a snort.Mr. Lewis’s requirements were modest, so he kept only one indoor servant, who cooked for him and waited on his simple necessities, but since his niece had arrived at the Vicarage and there was consequently more work, Howlie had been brought in to help domestic matters forward. He carried coals, pumped water, cleaned knives, and, had it been possible to teach him the rudiments of good manners, would have been a really valuable member of the household.But those who associated with him had either to take him as they found him or to leave him altogether. Isoline would have preferred to do the latter, for there was in her an antagonism to the boy which had begun the moment she climbed into her uncle’s crazy vehicle on the Brecon road. She detested boys of every sort, and this one was decidedly the most horrible specimen of that generation of vipers she had ever come across.Howlie Seaborne had never before been at close quarters with a young lady, the nearest approach to the species having been those little village girls whose hair he had pulled, and upon whom he had sprung out from dark corners by way of showing his lofty contempt, ever since he could remember. Miss Ridgeway interested him a great deal, and after the few days of close observation which it had taken him to find her a place in his experience, he persisted in regarding her with the indulgence due to a purely comic character.“There be a gentleman down below,” he remarked, when he had finished snorting.“A gentleman? What gentleman?”“Moy! Just about as smart as a lord. Oi know ’im too. ’Im as was general o’ the soldjers the noight they was foightin’ Rebecca. Oi moind ’im, for ’e shook me crewel ’ard by the shoulder.” He rubbed the ill-used part.Isoline shut the door in his face with a bang. The sudden draught put out the candle, and she was obliged to light it again to make the additional survey of her face which the situation below-stairs demanded. She took a hand-glass from the drawer, and assured herself that every view of it was satisfactory; then she hurried down the wooden staircase which creaked under her foot, and stood a moment with beating heart to collect herself at the door of her uncle’s study.Mr. Lewis was standing by the round table in the middle of the room, and before him, with his hand on the mantelpiece, was Harry Fenton. The younger man had one foot on the fender, and from his boots went up a lively steam which showedthat he had ridden over some heavy bits of ground; his spurs, too, were coated with mud, and he seemed to be appreciating the blaze that leaped gallantly in the chimney. He wore a long cloth coat, which made him look about twice his natural size.“Mr. Fenton has come over from Waterchurch on business,” said Mr. Lewis, turning to her as she entered, “and I am sorry to say that his horse has cast a shoe on the way, and it has delayed his arrival till now. But I have persuaded him to stay here for the night, which is very pleasant.”“It is most kind of you, sir,” interrupted Harry.“My dear boy,” exclaimed the Vicar, “it is impossible to think of taking the road again at such an hour, and with such a distance before you as Waterchurch. I am sorry,” he went on, taking up a knitted comforter and beginning to put it round his neck, “that I have just been urgently sent for by a parishioner, and shall have to leave you for an hour, but my niece will see that all is made ready for you. Isoline, my dear, I will trust to you to look after Mr. Fenton till I come back.”Harry had started from his home that morning with a couple of instruments in his pockets not generally carried about by riders. They bulged rather inside his coat, and he took great care, as he mounted, that Llewellyn, who was leaning against the stable-wall watching him depart, should not see them; they were a smith’s buffer and a small-sized pair of pincers for drawing nails out of horses’ shoes.His father, with some other county men, was bestirring himself about the putting-up of a stone at Crishowell to the toll-keeper, and had remarked at breakfast that he wanted to consult Mr. Lewis about the inscription. Harry pricked up his ears.“I suppose I shall have to write another couple of sheets,” growled the Squire. “Really, with all the writing I have had to do of late, I am beginning to curse the inventor of the alphabet.”“Can’t I help you, sir?” inquired Llewellyn. “I have nothing particular to do this morning.”“Nothing particular to do! What is the use of my keeping an agent, I should like to know, who has ‘nothing particular to do’? Eh, sir?”Llewellyn held his peace.“I can go to Crishowell, and give your message; I was thinking of riding out that way in any case,” said Harry boldly.The Squire had forgotten the existence of Isoline Ridgeway a couple of days after the ball, and he really wanted to get the business of the gravestone settled. “Very well,” he assented, rather mollified, most of his wrath having evaporated upon his youngest son, “but you will have to start soon if you mean to get home again before dark. The roads are pretty bad in this thaw.”So Harry had departed, nothing loth, and Llewellyn again held his peace, though he thought a good deal. He had not forgotten Isoline, but he had sense enough to know how useless speech can be.The roads were no better than the old Squire had supposed, nevertheless Harry did not seem inclined to get over them very quickly, for he did not once let his horse go out of a sober walk. He had delayed his start till after mid-day in spite of his father’s advice, so by the time he reached a secluded bit of lane about half-a-mile from Crishowell village, the afternoon light was wearing itself out beyond the fields and coppices lying westward. Here he dismounted, and leading the animal into a clump of bushes, he took the buffer out of his pocket and began to cut the clinches out of the shoe on the near fore. Then he wrenched it gradually off with the pincers. When this was done, he drew the reins over his arm and tramped sturdily through the mud, carrying it in his hand. In this plight he arrived at the Vicar of Crishowell’s door.When the sound of her uncle’s steps had died away downthe flagged path that led through the garden, and Isoline had ordered the spare room to be made ready for the guest, she and Harry drew their chairs up to the hearth.“You see, I have come as I said I should,” he remarked, contemplating the pattern of the hearthrug; “are you glad to see me, Miss Ridgeway?”“Oh, yes,” she replied truthfully.“Shall I tell you a secret?” said the young man, wearing an expression of great guile. “When the shoe came off I was rather pleased, for I ventured to hope that Mr. Lewis might let me stay to supper while it was being put on. I never expected such luck as being asked to stay the night.”“It would be dreadfully lonely to ride back to Waterchurch Court in the dark.Ishould not like it, I know; I suppose gentlemen do not mind these things.”“I prefer sitting here with you, certainly,” answered Harry, looking into the coals.“What do you see in the fire?” she asked presently. “Are you looking for pictures in it? I often do.”“I think I see—you.”“That is not very flattering,” said Isoline, seeing a compliment floating on the horizon, a little compliment, no bigger than a man’s thought, but capable of being worked up into something. “Coals are ugly things, I think, don’t you?”“No, I don’t, or I should not have looked for you among them.”She sat quite still in her chair, hoping there was more to follow, but she was disappointed.“How do you amuse yourself here?” Harry inquired, after a pause.“There is nothing to amuse me,” she replied in her most sophisticated manner. “This is a dull little place for any one who has seen anything of society. It is dreadful never to be able to speak to a lady or gentleman.”“But there’s your uncle; my mother always says that Mr. Lewis is the finest gentleman she knows.”This was a new idea, and the girl opened her eyes. “Oh, but he is only an old man,” she rejoined.“What an age it seems since the ball,” he said, sighing. “I wish there was another coming.”“So do I.”“When you had gone I found something of yours—something that I shall not give you back unless you insist upon it.”“Something of mine? I do not remember losing anything.”He took a small pocket-book from his coat, and turned over the leaves until he came to a little crushed blue object lying between them.“Do you know this?” he asked, holding out the book.She took it with all the pleasure a woman feels in handling the possessions of a man in whom she is interested.“Ah, yes, that is mine,” she exclaimed, flushing as she recognized the flower.“It was,” said Harry, “but it is mine now.”“Well, really!”“But may I keep it?”She turned away her head. “You are very foolish, Mr. Fenton.”“I do not mind that.”Isoline took the forget-me-not up between her finger and thumb and twirled it round; then she leaned forward, holding it out above the flame, and looking over her shoulder at her companion.“Shall I drop it into the fire?” she asked, with a half-smile.The young man sprang up. “No! no!” he cried, “surely you won’t do that! Oh! how very unkind of you!”She laughed outright. “Well, take it then,” she said, tossing it to him.He replaced it hastily, and put the book back in the pocket of his coat.“You are afraid I shall change my mind,” said Isoline.“Yes, I am.”She looked at him very softly. “But I shall not,” she said.At this moment the door opened, and Howlie Seaborne came in carrying an armful of wood which he cast unceremoniously into a corner; when he had done this he addressed Harry. “Shall oi give yew one o’ Parson’s noightshirts?” he inquired, stopping a few paces from him and shouting as though a precipice lay between them.“What?” said Harry, unable to assimilate his thoughts to the suddenness of the question.“Be oi to give yew one o’ Parson’s noightshirts? The cook do say yew’re to sleep here, an’ yew haven’t got one roidin’ along o’ yew, have yew?”“Oh, yes, do,” replied the young man, smiling, “if Mr. Lewis does not mind.”“Howell,” said Isoline with a face of horror, “go away at once, and do not come back unless you are sent for. He is a dreadful creature,” she said, as the door closed behind him. “I cannot think how my uncle can employ such an odious boy.”“But he is very amusing.”“Oh, I do not think so.”“Surely I know him,” continued Harry. “Isn’t he the boy who ran to Llangarth on the night of the riot and brought us the news at the Bull Inn? Of course! He must have something in him or he would not have done that. I must talk to him after.”“You had better not,” said she. “He is sure to say something rude.”“I suppose no one has ever heard anything more about Walters,” said he; “I hear they have almost given up searching for him. What does your uncle think about it, I wonder?”“He says he must be half-way to Australia by this time.”“I am afraid he is right,” said Harry, the wound Rhys had dealt his vanity smarting, as it always did, at the sound of his name.“I do believe, if you had three wishes given you, like the people in story-books, one of them would be to catch that man.”“Certainly it would.”“Oh, but there is no use in wishing,” said Isoline, shaking her head and feeling quite original.“Sometimes there is,” said Harry, looking at her. “I wished at the ball to be introduced to you, and I was, you see.”“Yes, but if you had wished and done nothing else, it would not have happened,” she observed, feeling more original still.“That is quite true, but, in your case, I was able to do something; I did everything I could in this one, and it was no use. Heavens! how I galloped up those lanes—just a few fields off behind this house too.”The dark had closed in by this time and the dull flash of the Vicar’s lantern could be seen as he passed the window; he came into the study and stood warming his cold hands at the blaze. Harry rose deferentially.“Do not move,” said the old man, pushing him back into his seat. “In a few minutes we will go into the other room and you shall explain your father’s business to me. It will not interest you, my dear, so you will excuse us,” he added, with a courtesy which was enhanced by his grey hair.When they had left her, Isoline remained with her toes upon the fender in a brown study. She also was looking at pictures in the fire, but, whereas Fenton saw people, she only saw things.Harry never enjoyed a meal much more than the supper he partook of that evening, though Isoline suffered many pangs as she cast her eyes over the plain fare before them; it must look so mean, she reflected, after the superior glories of the establishment presided over by Lady Harriet Fenton. She saw with satisfaction, however, that the guest ate heartily, and, with slight surprise, that he seemed to like her uncle’s company.That the refinement of atmosphere surrounding one elderly person might blind the eyes to a darned tablecloth was one of those things the society to which she was fond of alluding had not taught her. That the glamour of a lovely face might turn the attention away from it, she had allowed herself to hope.When the table was cleared and the large Prayer-book placed where the mince and poached eggs had stood, the cook and Howlie Seaborne, who was kept on till bed-time to look after Harry, came in and took their seats in the background. Isoline glanced flippantly across the room at the young man to see whether the homely ceremony would bring a smile to his lips. He caught her look, but the grave simplicity on his face made her avert her eyes and pretend that she had been examining the clock which stood behind him.As she lay in bed that night thinking over the unlooked-for event of the afternoon, she admitted to herself that he was a much more puzzling person than she had supposed. When he left next morning two pairs of eyes followed him as he disappeared behind the church; one pair belonged to Miss Ridgeway, who was smiling at him from a window, and one to Howlie, who had, for the first time in his life, received a real shock. The shock was a pleasant one, for it had been occasioned by the silver half-crown which lay in his palm.Llewellyn was the only person in the Waterchurch household who did not accept the episode of the cast shoe without misgiving, for Harry’s non-appearance had produced no surprise, the roads being bad and the Vicar of Crishowell hospitable. His vague dislike to Isoline Ridgeway had lately grown more positive, for a little rift had sprung between the two brothers since she had brought her disturbing presence across their way, and the fact that it was there proved to the younger one how great an influence he had over Harry’s thoughts. She was the first person who had ever thrust herself through the strong web of friendship which had held them for so many years. They had not exchanged a word about her since they had parted from her at the toll, which was in itself significant, but they knew each other too well to need words. There is no friend so close as the friend to whom one does not tell everything.Llewellyn had a cooler head than Harry and a finer insight into people, and the want of breeding in Miss Ridgeway was as plain to him as possible. If she had been vulgarly pretty,with a strident voice and loud manner, he might even have disliked her less, but, as it was, he knew that her soul was vulgar, not her exterior; unlike most people, he could distinguish between the two. It was no jealousy of a possible wife who would take the first place in his brother’s mind which possessed him, for he had always foreseen the day when Harry would marry, and he himself have to take a modest place in the background, and he meant to do it gracefully. But not for Isoline, nor for one like her; that was beyond him. He cut savagely with the stick he carried at the things in the hedge.The two young men had avoided each other all day, talking with almost boisterous cheerfulness when a third person was present, and finding urgent occupation in different directions the moment they were left alone. And now, as Llewellyn rounded a corner of the gardener’s cottage, they came face to face. An insane desire for action took him.“For God’s sake don’t avoid me, Harry,” he exclaimed, running his arm through his brother’s. Harry turned red.“I’m not avoiding you, Loo, but I don’t know what is the matter with you to-day. Is there anything wrong?”Llewellyn hated fencing.“I wish you wouldn’t go to Crishowell, Harry.”The elder flared up like a match held over a lamp-chimney.“Why shouldn’t I go, if I choose? What the devil has it got to do with you? Am I to get permission before I take my father’s messages?—‘Yes, sir, I will go if I can, but I must ask Llewellyn first.’—That would be splendid, wouldn’t it? Because I always forgot you were my younger brother, you’ve forgotten it too. It’s my fault, I know!”Llewellyn dropped his arm as though the words had made it red-hot. His pride in Harry’s affection had always been so great that they were like a blow, and he had not the faintest consciousness of superiority to his brother to dull their effect.“That’s true,” he said, with a quietness so false that it sobered Harry, “but it need never trouble you again—it can’t, for nothing will ever be the same now.”And he opened the door of the kitchen-garden, and was through it and was hurrying along between the box-borders before the other had realized what had happened.He stood for a moment looking after his brother, and then rushed to the door, knowing that every instant that kept them apart would widen the gulf that had opened between them. But it had slammed to, and, as there was something wrong with the latch, it had the habit of sticking tight and refusing to move when roughly handled. His pull had no more effect upon it than if it had been locked, and he tore and shook at the stubborn thing, feeling like a person in a nightmare whom inanimate objects conspire together to undo. Seeing that his fight with the latch was useless, he set off running round the garden wall to the entrance at its opposite end; it was open when he reached it, for Llewellyn had come through and was standing by a bed of Christmas roses whose draggled petals had evidently not recovered from the recent thaw.“Loo! Loo! don’t go!” he cried as he saw him turn away. “Oh, Llewellyn! I didn’t mean that, I didn’t mean it!”The younger brother’s face was white, and he looked dumbly at the other.“What a cur I am!” cried Harry, seizing his hand. “Don’t stare at me, Llewellyn—say something, for Heaven’s sake!”“I should not have spoken,” said Llewellyn hoarsely.“Say anything you like—anything, only forgive me! forgive me!” cried generous Harry.Llewellyn’s hand, which had lain passive in his brother’s, began to tighten. “Don’t, Harry,” he said. “It’s all right. I will never say anything about it again. I had no right to interfere.”“But that’s worse. It is terrible to think we can’t talk to each other. Just say out what you think, Loo, and I’ll listen; I haven’t been able to speak a word to you of late, but I wish we could have it out now.”They were walking down the laurel shrubbery leading fromthe garden to the home farm, Llewellyn’s chief anxiety and the Squire’s dearest toy. The old wall which ran outside it smelt damp, a background of sodden red to the rank, shining leaves. A cock robin, whose figure had filled out considerably since the thaw, was sending forth his shrill, cold voice in recognition of this crowning mercy. The breath of rotting chrysanthemums came from the beds by the tool-house.“How much do you really care for her?” asked Llewellyn after a pause.“A lot!”“But how much? More than Laura? More than Kitty Foster?”“Oh, Laura! that was nothing. And Kitty Foster, that was different too.”“But you were half mad about her once. Don’t you remember when she went away, what a state you were in and how you raged?”“Ah, I was younger then,” replied Harry, with all the wisdom of his twenty-five years strong upon him.“Is it because she is so pretty that you like Miss Ridgeway?” asked Llewellyn.“That and heaps of other things.”“Do you think she likes you?”“Yes, I am nearly sure of it.”“Well, then, I’m not,” said his brother shortly.“But, my good man, how can you tell?” exclaimed Harry, rather nettled.“She does not care for anything—at least, for nothing but herself.”Harry was on the verge of flying out again, but he remembered the latch of the garden-door, and refrained.“I know you are mistaken,” he said, “you can’t think how glad she was to see me yesterday.”“I don’t doubt that,” replied the other dryly.“But why do you doubt her liking me? I am not such a brute that no girl could look at me; I dare say I am no beauty,but, after all, I am neither lame nor a fright, nor hump-backed, nor crooked, nor squint-eyed, am I?”Llewellyn laughed outright. “Hardly. But she’s a nobody, and you’re somebody, d’you see, Harry.”“I did not know you cared about those sort of things,” remarked his brother scornfully.“I’m not sure that I should if she were the right kind of girl. But I’m sure she isn’t. She thinks it would be a fine thing to be Mrs. Fenton, and I have no doubt she fancies you have lots of money, because you look smart and all that—she doesn’t understand how hard-up we are. I could guess that she was thinking about it that day on the coach.”Harry was rather impressed.“Of course it’s a grand thing for her having you dangling about; girls like that sort of thing, I know. But I wouldn’t if I were you.”“One can’t look at any one else when she’s there,” sighed the other.“Then don’t go there. I wish you could keep away from that place for a little bit, then you might forget her. And if you couldn’t,” added the astute Llewellyn, “after all, she will be there for ever so long and you will have plenty of chances of going to Hereford when she returns to her aunt. Try, Harry.”The younger brother’s influence had always been so strong that the elder was never entirely free from it; he had looked at things for so many years of boyhood through Llewellyn’s eyes, that he had never quite lost the habit, though the separation which manhood brought them had weakened it a little.“Well, I shan’t have any pretext for going to Crishowell for some time,” he said slowly. “You’ve made me rather miserable.”Llewellyn said no more, but he felt that he had gained something.
MISSISOLINERIDGEWAYwas standing before an object which usually took up a good deal of her time and attention, namely, the looking-glass. As it was placed at right angles to her bedroom window, there could be seen beyond her left shoulder as she arranged her hair, the great yew in the churchyard and a piece of the church-path framed in by the sash. Behind it was a background of sky turning into a frosty gold.
Crishowell Vicarage was a small, old, whitewashed house which had once been a farm-house, with gabled windows looking westward; between it and the lane dividing it from the churchyard was a duck-pond that, in wet seasons, overflowed into the Digedi brook, which ran round the Vicar’s orchard at the back.
Isoline had just come in, and her hat and walking-things lay upon the bed where she had thrown them. As the room was low, and the early winter sunset hardly penetrated into the house by reason of the rising ground opposite on which the church stood, she had lit a candle, whose spot of feeble light only served to accentuate the dark around her; a rat was scraping in the wainscot, and she shuddered as she looked towards the place from which the noise came. She yawned, and wondered what she could do to amuse herself until supper-time, for it was only half-past four, and the Vicar kept old-fashioned hours—breakfast at nine, a substantial dinner at three, supper at eight, prayers at eight-thirty, and bed at ten o’clock. Since she had arrived at Crishowell the days seemed to have lengthened into weeks and the weeks into months.The old man was all kindness, but there was no one of her own age with whom she could associate, and the few visits she had made at his suggestion to the poor folks living round them had resulted in boredom to herself and constraint to them. She had a true, though rather thin voice, and she would gladly have practised her singing had there been some instrument on which to accompany herself, but unfortunately there was nothing of the sort in the house. Time hung heavy on her hands, for Mr. Lewis’s library was mainly theological, and contained nothing which could amuse a girl. It was dull indeed.
A knock at the door drew her attention from the glass. “Who is there?” she called, as she laid down the comb.
“Oi,” was the reply, which came from suspiciously near the keyhole.
“What do you want?” she asked impatiently, opening the door on Howlie Seaborne.
“Yew’re to come down,” he announced baldly.
“I am not ready,” said she, with a haughty look. “Who sent you up here, I should like to know?”
“Parson says yew be to come down,” he repeated.
“Howell!” she exclaimed sharply, using the name by which he was known to his superiors, “how often have I told you that that is not the way to speak of Mr. Lewis; I never heard of such impertinence!”
“An’ if a bain’t a parson, wot be he? Ye moight call ’im even worse nor that too, oi suppose,” replied Howlie with a snort.
Mr. Lewis’s requirements were modest, so he kept only one indoor servant, who cooked for him and waited on his simple necessities, but since his niece had arrived at the Vicarage and there was consequently more work, Howlie had been brought in to help domestic matters forward. He carried coals, pumped water, cleaned knives, and, had it been possible to teach him the rudiments of good manners, would have been a really valuable member of the household.
But those who associated with him had either to take him as they found him or to leave him altogether. Isoline would have preferred to do the latter, for there was in her an antagonism to the boy which had begun the moment she climbed into her uncle’s crazy vehicle on the Brecon road. She detested boys of every sort, and this one was decidedly the most horrible specimen of that generation of vipers she had ever come across.
Howlie Seaborne had never before been at close quarters with a young lady, the nearest approach to the species having been those little village girls whose hair he had pulled, and upon whom he had sprung out from dark corners by way of showing his lofty contempt, ever since he could remember. Miss Ridgeway interested him a great deal, and after the few days of close observation which it had taken him to find her a place in his experience, he persisted in regarding her with the indulgence due to a purely comic character.
“There be a gentleman down below,” he remarked, when he had finished snorting.
“A gentleman? What gentleman?”
“Moy! Just about as smart as a lord. Oi know ’im too. ’Im as was general o’ the soldjers the noight they was foightin’ Rebecca. Oi moind ’im, for ’e shook me crewel ’ard by the shoulder.” He rubbed the ill-used part.
Isoline shut the door in his face with a bang. The sudden draught put out the candle, and she was obliged to light it again to make the additional survey of her face which the situation below-stairs demanded. She took a hand-glass from the drawer, and assured herself that every view of it was satisfactory; then she hurried down the wooden staircase which creaked under her foot, and stood a moment with beating heart to collect herself at the door of her uncle’s study.
Mr. Lewis was standing by the round table in the middle of the room, and before him, with his hand on the mantelpiece, was Harry Fenton. The younger man had one foot on the fender, and from his boots went up a lively steam which showedthat he had ridden over some heavy bits of ground; his spurs, too, were coated with mud, and he seemed to be appreciating the blaze that leaped gallantly in the chimney. He wore a long cloth coat, which made him look about twice his natural size.
“Mr. Fenton has come over from Waterchurch on business,” said Mr. Lewis, turning to her as she entered, “and I am sorry to say that his horse has cast a shoe on the way, and it has delayed his arrival till now. But I have persuaded him to stay here for the night, which is very pleasant.”
“It is most kind of you, sir,” interrupted Harry.
“My dear boy,” exclaimed the Vicar, “it is impossible to think of taking the road again at such an hour, and with such a distance before you as Waterchurch. I am sorry,” he went on, taking up a knitted comforter and beginning to put it round his neck, “that I have just been urgently sent for by a parishioner, and shall have to leave you for an hour, but my niece will see that all is made ready for you. Isoline, my dear, I will trust to you to look after Mr. Fenton till I come back.”
Harry had started from his home that morning with a couple of instruments in his pockets not generally carried about by riders. They bulged rather inside his coat, and he took great care, as he mounted, that Llewellyn, who was leaning against the stable-wall watching him depart, should not see them; they were a smith’s buffer and a small-sized pair of pincers for drawing nails out of horses’ shoes.
His father, with some other county men, was bestirring himself about the putting-up of a stone at Crishowell to the toll-keeper, and had remarked at breakfast that he wanted to consult Mr. Lewis about the inscription. Harry pricked up his ears.
“I suppose I shall have to write another couple of sheets,” growled the Squire. “Really, with all the writing I have had to do of late, I am beginning to curse the inventor of the alphabet.”
“Can’t I help you, sir?” inquired Llewellyn. “I have nothing particular to do this morning.”
“Nothing particular to do! What is the use of my keeping an agent, I should like to know, who has ‘nothing particular to do’? Eh, sir?”
Llewellyn held his peace.
“I can go to Crishowell, and give your message; I was thinking of riding out that way in any case,” said Harry boldly.
The Squire had forgotten the existence of Isoline Ridgeway a couple of days after the ball, and he really wanted to get the business of the gravestone settled. “Very well,” he assented, rather mollified, most of his wrath having evaporated upon his youngest son, “but you will have to start soon if you mean to get home again before dark. The roads are pretty bad in this thaw.”
So Harry had departed, nothing loth, and Llewellyn again held his peace, though he thought a good deal. He had not forgotten Isoline, but he had sense enough to know how useless speech can be.
The roads were no better than the old Squire had supposed, nevertheless Harry did not seem inclined to get over them very quickly, for he did not once let his horse go out of a sober walk. He had delayed his start till after mid-day in spite of his father’s advice, so by the time he reached a secluded bit of lane about half-a-mile from Crishowell village, the afternoon light was wearing itself out beyond the fields and coppices lying westward. Here he dismounted, and leading the animal into a clump of bushes, he took the buffer out of his pocket and began to cut the clinches out of the shoe on the near fore. Then he wrenched it gradually off with the pincers. When this was done, he drew the reins over his arm and tramped sturdily through the mud, carrying it in his hand. In this plight he arrived at the Vicar of Crishowell’s door.
When the sound of her uncle’s steps had died away downthe flagged path that led through the garden, and Isoline had ordered the spare room to be made ready for the guest, she and Harry drew their chairs up to the hearth.
“You see, I have come as I said I should,” he remarked, contemplating the pattern of the hearthrug; “are you glad to see me, Miss Ridgeway?”
“Oh, yes,” she replied truthfully.
“Shall I tell you a secret?” said the young man, wearing an expression of great guile. “When the shoe came off I was rather pleased, for I ventured to hope that Mr. Lewis might let me stay to supper while it was being put on. I never expected such luck as being asked to stay the night.”
“It would be dreadfully lonely to ride back to Waterchurch Court in the dark.Ishould not like it, I know; I suppose gentlemen do not mind these things.”
“I prefer sitting here with you, certainly,” answered Harry, looking into the coals.
“What do you see in the fire?” she asked presently. “Are you looking for pictures in it? I often do.”
“I think I see—you.”
“That is not very flattering,” said Isoline, seeing a compliment floating on the horizon, a little compliment, no bigger than a man’s thought, but capable of being worked up into something. “Coals are ugly things, I think, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t, or I should not have looked for you among them.”
She sat quite still in her chair, hoping there was more to follow, but she was disappointed.
“How do you amuse yourself here?” Harry inquired, after a pause.
“There is nothing to amuse me,” she replied in her most sophisticated manner. “This is a dull little place for any one who has seen anything of society. It is dreadful never to be able to speak to a lady or gentleman.”
“But there’s your uncle; my mother always says that Mr. Lewis is the finest gentleman she knows.”
This was a new idea, and the girl opened her eyes. “Oh, but he is only an old man,” she rejoined.
“What an age it seems since the ball,” he said, sighing. “I wish there was another coming.”
“So do I.”
“When you had gone I found something of yours—something that I shall not give you back unless you insist upon it.”
“Something of mine? I do not remember losing anything.”
He took a small pocket-book from his coat, and turned over the leaves until he came to a little crushed blue object lying between them.
“Do you know this?” he asked, holding out the book.
She took it with all the pleasure a woman feels in handling the possessions of a man in whom she is interested.
“Ah, yes, that is mine,” she exclaimed, flushing as she recognized the flower.
“It was,” said Harry, “but it is mine now.”
“Well, really!”
“But may I keep it?”
She turned away her head. “You are very foolish, Mr. Fenton.”
“I do not mind that.”
Isoline took the forget-me-not up between her finger and thumb and twirled it round; then she leaned forward, holding it out above the flame, and looking over her shoulder at her companion.
“Shall I drop it into the fire?” she asked, with a half-smile.
The young man sprang up. “No! no!” he cried, “surely you won’t do that! Oh! how very unkind of you!”
She laughed outright. “Well, take it then,” she said, tossing it to him.
He replaced it hastily, and put the book back in the pocket of his coat.
“You are afraid I shall change my mind,” said Isoline.
“Yes, I am.”
She looked at him very softly. “But I shall not,” she said.
At this moment the door opened, and Howlie Seaborne came in carrying an armful of wood which he cast unceremoniously into a corner; when he had done this he addressed Harry. “Shall oi give yew one o’ Parson’s noightshirts?” he inquired, stopping a few paces from him and shouting as though a precipice lay between them.
“What?” said Harry, unable to assimilate his thoughts to the suddenness of the question.
“Be oi to give yew one o’ Parson’s noightshirts? The cook do say yew’re to sleep here, an’ yew haven’t got one roidin’ along o’ yew, have yew?”
“Oh, yes, do,” replied the young man, smiling, “if Mr. Lewis does not mind.”
“Howell,” said Isoline with a face of horror, “go away at once, and do not come back unless you are sent for. He is a dreadful creature,” she said, as the door closed behind him. “I cannot think how my uncle can employ such an odious boy.”
“But he is very amusing.”
“Oh, I do not think so.”
“Surely I know him,” continued Harry. “Isn’t he the boy who ran to Llangarth on the night of the riot and brought us the news at the Bull Inn? Of course! He must have something in him or he would not have done that. I must talk to him after.”
“You had better not,” said she. “He is sure to say something rude.”
“I suppose no one has ever heard anything more about Walters,” said he; “I hear they have almost given up searching for him. What does your uncle think about it, I wonder?”
“He says he must be half-way to Australia by this time.”
“I am afraid he is right,” said Harry, the wound Rhys had dealt his vanity smarting, as it always did, at the sound of his name.
“I do believe, if you had three wishes given you, like the people in story-books, one of them would be to catch that man.”
“Certainly it would.”
“Oh, but there is no use in wishing,” said Isoline, shaking her head and feeling quite original.
“Sometimes there is,” said Harry, looking at her. “I wished at the ball to be introduced to you, and I was, you see.”
“Yes, but if you had wished and done nothing else, it would not have happened,” she observed, feeling more original still.
“That is quite true, but, in your case, I was able to do something; I did everything I could in this one, and it was no use. Heavens! how I galloped up those lanes—just a few fields off behind this house too.”
The dark had closed in by this time and the dull flash of the Vicar’s lantern could be seen as he passed the window; he came into the study and stood warming his cold hands at the blaze. Harry rose deferentially.
“Do not move,” said the old man, pushing him back into his seat. “In a few minutes we will go into the other room and you shall explain your father’s business to me. It will not interest you, my dear, so you will excuse us,” he added, with a courtesy which was enhanced by his grey hair.
When they had left her, Isoline remained with her toes upon the fender in a brown study. She also was looking at pictures in the fire, but, whereas Fenton saw people, she only saw things.
Harry never enjoyed a meal much more than the supper he partook of that evening, though Isoline suffered many pangs as she cast her eyes over the plain fare before them; it must look so mean, she reflected, after the superior glories of the establishment presided over by Lady Harriet Fenton. She saw with satisfaction, however, that the guest ate heartily, and, with slight surprise, that he seemed to like her uncle’s company.
That the refinement of atmosphere surrounding one elderly person might blind the eyes to a darned tablecloth was one of those things the society to which she was fond of alluding had not taught her. That the glamour of a lovely face might turn the attention away from it, she had allowed herself to hope.
When the table was cleared and the large Prayer-book placed where the mince and poached eggs had stood, the cook and Howlie Seaborne, who was kept on till bed-time to look after Harry, came in and took their seats in the background. Isoline glanced flippantly across the room at the young man to see whether the homely ceremony would bring a smile to his lips. He caught her look, but the grave simplicity on his face made her avert her eyes and pretend that she had been examining the clock which stood behind him.
As she lay in bed that night thinking over the unlooked-for event of the afternoon, she admitted to herself that he was a much more puzzling person than she had supposed. When he left next morning two pairs of eyes followed him as he disappeared behind the church; one pair belonged to Miss Ridgeway, who was smiling at him from a window, and one to Howlie, who had, for the first time in his life, received a real shock. The shock was a pleasant one, for it had been occasioned by the silver half-crown which lay in his palm.
Llewellyn was the only person in the Waterchurch household who did not accept the episode of the cast shoe without misgiving, for Harry’s non-appearance had produced no surprise, the roads being bad and the Vicar of Crishowell hospitable. His vague dislike to Isoline Ridgeway had lately grown more positive, for a little rift had sprung between the two brothers since she had brought her disturbing presence across their way, and the fact that it was there proved to the younger one how great an influence he had over Harry’s thoughts. She was the first person who had ever thrust herself through the strong web of friendship which had held them for so many years. They had not exchanged a word about her since they had parted from her at the toll, which was in itself significant, but they knew each other too well to need words. There is no friend so close as the friend to whom one does not tell everything.
Llewellyn had a cooler head than Harry and a finer insight into people, and the want of breeding in Miss Ridgeway was as plain to him as possible. If she had been vulgarly pretty,with a strident voice and loud manner, he might even have disliked her less, but, as it was, he knew that her soul was vulgar, not her exterior; unlike most people, he could distinguish between the two. It was no jealousy of a possible wife who would take the first place in his brother’s mind which possessed him, for he had always foreseen the day when Harry would marry, and he himself have to take a modest place in the background, and he meant to do it gracefully. But not for Isoline, nor for one like her; that was beyond him. He cut savagely with the stick he carried at the things in the hedge.
The two young men had avoided each other all day, talking with almost boisterous cheerfulness when a third person was present, and finding urgent occupation in different directions the moment they were left alone. And now, as Llewellyn rounded a corner of the gardener’s cottage, they came face to face. An insane desire for action took him.
“For God’s sake don’t avoid me, Harry,” he exclaimed, running his arm through his brother’s. Harry turned red.
“I’m not avoiding you, Loo, but I don’t know what is the matter with you to-day. Is there anything wrong?”
Llewellyn hated fencing.
“I wish you wouldn’t go to Crishowell, Harry.”
The elder flared up like a match held over a lamp-chimney.
“Why shouldn’t I go, if I choose? What the devil has it got to do with you? Am I to get permission before I take my father’s messages?—‘Yes, sir, I will go if I can, but I must ask Llewellyn first.’—That would be splendid, wouldn’t it? Because I always forgot you were my younger brother, you’ve forgotten it too. It’s my fault, I know!”
Llewellyn dropped his arm as though the words had made it red-hot. His pride in Harry’s affection had always been so great that they were like a blow, and he had not the faintest consciousness of superiority to his brother to dull their effect.
“That’s true,” he said, with a quietness so false that it sobered Harry, “but it need never trouble you again—it can’t, for nothing will ever be the same now.”
And he opened the door of the kitchen-garden, and was through it and was hurrying along between the box-borders before the other had realized what had happened.
He stood for a moment looking after his brother, and then rushed to the door, knowing that every instant that kept them apart would widen the gulf that had opened between them. But it had slammed to, and, as there was something wrong with the latch, it had the habit of sticking tight and refusing to move when roughly handled. His pull had no more effect upon it than if it had been locked, and he tore and shook at the stubborn thing, feeling like a person in a nightmare whom inanimate objects conspire together to undo. Seeing that his fight with the latch was useless, he set off running round the garden wall to the entrance at its opposite end; it was open when he reached it, for Llewellyn had come through and was standing by a bed of Christmas roses whose draggled petals had evidently not recovered from the recent thaw.
“Loo! Loo! don’t go!” he cried as he saw him turn away. “Oh, Llewellyn! I didn’t mean that, I didn’t mean it!”
The younger brother’s face was white, and he looked dumbly at the other.
“What a cur I am!” cried Harry, seizing his hand. “Don’t stare at me, Llewellyn—say something, for Heaven’s sake!”
“I should not have spoken,” said Llewellyn hoarsely.
“Say anything you like—anything, only forgive me! forgive me!” cried generous Harry.
Llewellyn’s hand, which had lain passive in his brother’s, began to tighten. “Don’t, Harry,” he said. “It’s all right. I will never say anything about it again. I had no right to interfere.”
“But that’s worse. It is terrible to think we can’t talk to each other. Just say out what you think, Loo, and I’ll listen; I haven’t been able to speak a word to you of late, but I wish we could have it out now.”
They were walking down the laurel shrubbery leading fromthe garden to the home farm, Llewellyn’s chief anxiety and the Squire’s dearest toy. The old wall which ran outside it smelt damp, a background of sodden red to the rank, shining leaves. A cock robin, whose figure had filled out considerably since the thaw, was sending forth his shrill, cold voice in recognition of this crowning mercy. The breath of rotting chrysanthemums came from the beds by the tool-house.
“How much do you really care for her?” asked Llewellyn after a pause.
“A lot!”
“But how much? More than Laura? More than Kitty Foster?”
“Oh, Laura! that was nothing. And Kitty Foster, that was different too.”
“But you were half mad about her once. Don’t you remember when she went away, what a state you were in and how you raged?”
“Ah, I was younger then,” replied Harry, with all the wisdom of his twenty-five years strong upon him.
“Is it because she is so pretty that you like Miss Ridgeway?” asked Llewellyn.
“That and heaps of other things.”
“Do you think she likes you?”
“Yes, I am nearly sure of it.”
“Well, then, I’m not,” said his brother shortly.
“But, my good man, how can you tell?” exclaimed Harry, rather nettled.
“She does not care for anything—at least, for nothing but herself.”
Harry was on the verge of flying out again, but he remembered the latch of the garden-door, and refrained.
“I know you are mistaken,” he said, “you can’t think how glad she was to see me yesterday.”
“I don’t doubt that,” replied the other dryly.
“But why do you doubt her liking me? I am not such a brute that no girl could look at me; I dare say I am no beauty,but, after all, I am neither lame nor a fright, nor hump-backed, nor crooked, nor squint-eyed, am I?”
Llewellyn laughed outright. “Hardly. But she’s a nobody, and you’re somebody, d’you see, Harry.”
“I did not know you cared about those sort of things,” remarked his brother scornfully.
“I’m not sure that I should if she were the right kind of girl. But I’m sure she isn’t. She thinks it would be a fine thing to be Mrs. Fenton, and I have no doubt she fancies you have lots of money, because you look smart and all that—she doesn’t understand how hard-up we are. I could guess that she was thinking about it that day on the coach.”
Harry was rather impressed.
“Of course it’s a grand thing for her having you dangling about; girls like that sort of thing, I know. But I wouldn’t if I were you.”
“One can’t look at any one else when she’s there,” sighed the other.
“Then don’t go there. I wish you could keep away from that place for a little bit, then you might forget her. And if you couldn’t,” added the astute Llewellyn, “after all, she will be there for ever so long and you will have plenty of chances of going to Hereford when she returns to her aunt. Try, Harry.”
The younger brother’s influence had always been so strong that the elder was never entirely free from it; he had looked at things for so many years of boyhood through Llewellyn’s eyes, that he had never quite lost the habit, though the separation which manhood brought them had weakened it a little.
“Well, I shan’t have any pretext for going to Crishowell for some time,” he said slowly. “You’ve made me rather miserable.”
Llewellyn said no more, but he felt that he had gained something.