Volume Two—Chapter Four.A Collision.Mrs Rolph did not see much of her son, who divided his time between Brackley and Aldershot, when he was not away to attend some athletic meeting. But she was quite content, and paid her calls upon Glynne in company with Marjorie, who sat and beamed upon Sir John’s daughter, and lost not an opportunity for getting her arm about the waist of her cousin’s betrothed, being so intensely affectionate that Glynne stared at her wonderingly at times, and then tried to reciprocate the love bestowed upon her, failed dismally, and often asked Lucy whether she liked Miss Emlin? to receive a short, sharp shake of the head in return.“Sha’n’t say,” Lucy replied one day. “If I do, you’ll think I’m jealous.”Rolph was not aware of the fact, for Marjorie generally avoided him, and behaved as if she were putting the past farther back; but all the same, she watched her cousin furtively on every possible occasion whenever he was at home or staying at Brackley; and to cover her proceedings, she developed an intense love for botany, and more than once encountered Major Day with Lucy and Glynne, and compared notes. But the major never displayed any great desire to impart information, or to induce the young lady to take up his particular branch.“Pity Rolph didn’t marry her,” muttered the old man. “Foxy doesn’t like Glynne at all.”Madge’s botanical studies had a good deal to do with thegynias, and with watching Rolph, who was not aware that his pleasant vices were making of themselves the proverbial rods to scourge him, and unfortunately injure others as well. For Marjorie’s brain was busy; and as she watched him, she made herself acquainted with every movement, noting when he rode over to Brackley or took a walk out into the woods—walks which made her writhe, for she gave her cousin the credit of making his way toward Lindham, out by the solitary collection of houses on the road to nowhere, the spot where Ben Hayle had made his new home.At these times Marjorie hung upon the tenterhooks of agony and suspense till he returned, when there was a warm glow of satisfaction in her breast if his looks showed that his visit had been unsuccessful.Sometimes though, she was stung by her jealousy into believing that he obtained interviews with Judith, for he would come back looking more satisfied and content.She watched him one day, and saw him take the path down through the wood, and she also watched his return.In a few days he went again in the same direction, and on the next morning she started off before he had left the house, and turned down through the woods to an opening miles away, where, in happier days, she had been wont to gather blackberries; and here she knew she could easily hide in the sandy hollows, and see anyone going toward Lindham—herself unseen.It was a lonely nook, where, in bygone days, a number of the firs had been cut down, and a sandpit, or rather sand-pits had been formed. These had become disused, the rabbits had taken possession, and, as sun and air penetrated freely, a new growth of furze, heather and broom grew up among the hollows and knolls.What her plans were she kept hidden, but a looker-on would have said that she had carefully prepared a mine, and that some day, she would spring that mine upon her cousin with a result that would completely overturn his projects, but whether to her own advantage remained to be seen.As Marjorie approached, the rabbits took flight, and their white tails could be seen disappearing into their burrows, a certain sign that no one had been by before her; and in a few minutes she was safely ensconced in a deep hollow surrounded by brambles, after she had taken the precaution to lay a few fern leaves in the bottom of a little basket, and rapidly pick a few weeds to give colour to her presence there.The time glided on, and all was so still that a stone-chat came and sat upon a twig close at hand, watching her curiously. Then the rabbits stole out one by one from their burrows, and began to race here and there, indulging in playful bounds as if under the impression that it was evening; but though Marjorie strained her ears to listen, there was no sound of approaching steps, and at last she sat there with her brow full of lines, and her eyes staring angrily from beneath her contracted brows.“He will not come to-day,” she muttered. “What shall I do?”“Oh!” she cried, in a harsh whisper, after a long pause, as she crushed together the nearest tuft of leaves, “I could kill her.”She winced slightly, and then glanced contemptuously at her glove, which was torn, and in three places her white palm was pierced, scratched and bleeding, for she had grasped a twig or two of bramble.The blood on her hand seemed to have a peculiar fascination for her, and she sat there with her eyes half-shut, watching the long red lines made by snatching her hand away, and at the two tiny beads, which gradually increased till she touched them in turn with the tip of her glove, and then carelessly wiped them away.“‘He cometh not,’” she said to herself, with a curious laugh.Rap! And then, from different parts of the hollow, came the same sharp, clear sound, as rabbit after rabbit struck the ground with its foot, giving the alarm and sending all within hearing scuttling into their holes.Marjorie had been long enough in the country to know the meaning of that noise, and, with her eyes now wide and wild-looking, she listened for the step which had startled the little animals—one plain to them before it grew clear to her.No step. Not a sound, and her face was a study, could it have been seen, in its intense eagerness for what seemed, in the silence, minutes, while she retained her breath.“Hah!”One long, weary exclamation, and a bitter look of disappointment crossed her eager face.The next moment it was strained again, and her eyes flashed like those of some wild animal whose life depends upon the acuteness of its perceptions.There was a faint rustle.Then silence.Then a faintly-heard scratching noise, as of a thorn passing over a garment.“He’s coming,” thought Marjorie, “coming, and this way;” and she leaned forward in time to see a figure, bent down so low that it seemed to be going on all fours, dart silently from behind one clump of brambles away to her left, and glide into the shelter of another.So silently was this act performed that for the moment the watcher asked herself if she had not been deceived.The answer came directly in the re-appearance of the figure, gliding into sight and creeping on till it was in shelter, hiding not a dozen yards from where she crouched; and she shrank back with her heart beginning to beat heavily, while she knew that the blood was coming and going in her cheeks.“No; I’m not afraid of Caleb Kent,” she thought to herself; and her eyes flashed again, and in imagination she seemed to see once more the opening where the lodge stood. Her face grew pale, and a curious shrinking sensation attacked her as she recalled Rolph’s face, his eyes searching hers with such a bitter look of contempt and scorn.Then instantly she seemed to be gazing at herself in the library, clinging to her cousin, till he violently wrenched himself from her, leaving her hopeless and crushed; and she longed bitterly for the opportunity to make some one suffer for this.“No,” she said to herself, “I am not afraid of Caleb Kent;” and she crouched there, seeing every movement, and in a few moments realised that some one must be coming, for, with the activity of a cat, the young half-gipsy, half-poacher, began to move softly back, as if to keep the clump of brambles between him and whoever it was that was passing.Marjorie knew directly after that this must be the case, for she could hear the dull sound of a step, and she strained forward a little to try and see, but shrank back again with her heart beginning to beat rapidly, as she realised that, all intent upon the person passing in front, Caleb Kent had no thought for what might be behind, and he had begun to back rapidly away from the clump which had hidden him, to hide in the safer refuge already occupied.She knew that the step must be her cousin’s, and that he was going over to Lindham to seek Judith.“Suppose,” she asked herself, “he should come nearer and see her hiding—apparently in company with Caleb Kent—what would he say?”She quivered with rage and mortification, and for the moment felt disposed to spring up and walk away, but refrained, for she knew that it would then seem as if she had been keeping an appointment with this man, and had been frightened into showing herself by her cousin’s coming.The situation was horrible, and she knew that all she could do was to wait in the hope that, as soon as Rolph had gone by, Caleb would glide after him.“What for?” she asked herself; and she turned cold at the answering thought.He seemed to have no stout bludgeon, though. Perhaps he was only acting the spy; and as soon as Rolph had been to the cottage and returned, Caleb himself might have some intention of going there.Marjorie’s eyes glittered again as thought after thought came, boding ill to those she hated now with the bitterness of a jealous woman; and all at once, like a flash, a thought flooded her brain which sent the blood thrilling through every artery and vein.“No,” she thought, and she crouched there, compressing her nether lip between her white teeth. Then,—“Why not? What is she that she should rob me of my happiness, and of all I hold dear? But if—”She drew in her breath with a faint hiss that was almost inaudible, but it was sufficient to make the poacher pause and look sharply to right and left, as he still crept backwards till he was beneath the shelter of the clump in the hollow which hid Marjorie, and within a few yards of where she was seated.The sounds of passing steps were very near now. Then there was a faint cough, and Marjorie knew that her cousin was so close that, if he looked about him, he must see her in hiding with this vagabond of the village; and again the girl’s veins tingled with the nervous sensation of anger and mortification.She would have given ten years of her life to have been back at home; but she had brought all this upon herself, and she could only hope that Rolph would pass them without turning his head.“Yes, go on,” said a low, harsh voice, hardly above a whisper, and Marjorie started as she found herself an involuntary listener to the man’s outspoken thoughts. “Only wait,” he continued, and he, too, drew in his breath with a low, hissing sound.The footsteps died completely away, and Marjorie sat there trembling. The thoughts which had seemed to electrify her, she felt now that she dare not foster; and she was longing for the man to go, when, as if he were influenced by her presence, he turned round suddenly to the right as in search of some one, then to the left, and, not satisfied, faced right about, his countenance full of wonderment and dread, which passed away directly, and he uttered a low, mocking laugh.Marjorie shrank away for the moment, but, feeling that she must show no dread of this man who had surprised her in a situation which it would be vain to explain, she rose to go, but Caleb seized her tightly by the arm.“He did not come to meet you,” the man said, with a look of malicious enjoyment, as if it was a pleasure to inflict some of the pain from which he suffered.“What do you mean?” she cried imperiously, as she sought to release her wrist.“Call to him to come back and help you,” whispered Caleb.—“Why don’t you?”He laughed again as he drew himself up into a kneeling position, still holding her tightly,“How dare you!” cried the girl, indignantly. “Loose my arm, fellow!”“Why? Not I. You will not call out for fear the captain there should think you were watching to see him go to Hayle’s cottage and pretty Judith.”He began his speech in a light, bantering way, but as he finished his face was flushed and angry, and his breath came thick and fast, while, still clutching the arm he held, he wrenched his head round and knelt there, gazing in the direction taken by Rolph.The thought which had held possession of Marjorie’s breast twice, now came back with renewed power, and, casting all feeling of dread to the winds as she read her companion’s face, she snatched at the opportunity.That Caleb hated Rolph was plain enough; there was a scar upon his lip now that had been made by the hand of one whom he feared as well as hated; and above all, after his fashion, Marjorie knew that he loved Judith.Here was the instrument to her hand. Why had she not thought of making use of it before?It was as if she were for the moment possessed, as, without trying now to release herself, she leaned forward and whispered in the young man’s ear,—“You coward!”He turned upon her in astonishment.“I say you are a coward,” she repeated. “Why do you let him go and take her from you?”There was an animal-like snap of the teeth, as he snarled out,—“Why do you let him go?”“Because I am a woman. I am not a man, and strong like you.”“Curse him! I’ll kill him,” he snarled.“What good would that do?”“Eh?”“If I were a man like you, do you know how I would act?”“No,” he said; “how could I?” and his lips parted, to show his white teeth in a peculiar laugh, before he gave a quick look to right and left, to satisfy himself that they were not seen.“I’d have revenge.”“How? With a gun?”“And be hung for murder. No!”She leaned towards him, and she too gave a furtive look round, as, with her face flushed strangely, she whispered a few words to him—words that he listened to with his eyes half-closed, and then he turned upon her quickly.“Why? To bring him back to you?” he said, with a mocking laugh. “You love him?”“I hate him,” she said slowly.“Yes,” he said; “and you hate Judy Hayle, too, like the gipsy women hate sometimes. Why don’t you stop it?”“Because I am helpless,” she said bitterly. “Loose my arm. I knew it: you are a coward.”“Am I?” he said, with an ugly smile. “Is this a trap?”“If you think so, let it be,” she said contemptuously; and she tried again to shake her arm free, but the grasp upon it tightened.“Perhaps I am a coward,” he said; “but I will. He wouldn’t marry her then, and it would be serving him out. Not for nothing, though,” he added, with a laugh. “What will you give me?”“Pah!” she said contemptuously; “how much do you want?”He laughed and leaned forward, gazing full in her face.“Perhaps I shall get into trouble again for it,” he said, “and be shut up for a year—perhaps for more. It’s to play your game as well as mine, and I must be paid well.”“Well, I will pay you,” she said. “Tell me what you want.”“A kiss,” he said; and before she could realise what he had said, his left arm was about her waist, and he held her tightly to him. “A kiss from a lady who is handsomer than Judy Hayle,” he whispered.“How dare you!” she cried, in a low voice.“No,” he said, laughing, “you won’t call for help. Come, it isn’t much to give me, and I swear I will.”Marjorie gazed at him wildly, as she realised her position; there, alone, in this man’s power, and no one at hand to defend her. Then, utterly careless of herself, as she thought of the bitter revenge she had planned, she held back her face, and, with a faint laugh and her voice trembling, she said,—“No, I will not call for help. There is no need. Keep your word and I will pay you—as you wish.”The blood crimsoned her cheeks as she spoke.“No,” he said, with a laugh; “you shall pay me now,” and the next moment his arms were fast round her, and his lips pressed to hers.Marjorie started away, angry and indignant, but her furious jealousy made her diplomatise, and she stood smiling at the good-looking, gipsy-like ne’er-do-weel, and said laughingly,—“That was not fair; I promised you that as a reward, and now you have cheated me and will not keep your word.”“Yes, I will,” he cried, as he seized her again eagerly; but she kept him back. “I’ll do anything you ask me. Curse Judith Hayle! She isn’t half so beautiful as you.”Madge’s heart beat heavily, for admiration was pleasant, even from this low-class scoundrel. His words were genuine, as she could see from his eager gaze, the play of his features, and the earnestness in his voice.“I’ve made a slave,” she said to herself, forgetting for a moment the cost, “and he’ll do everything I bid him.”“Don’t talk nonsense,” she said, playfully. “You do not suppose I believe what you say.”“What!” he cried, in a low, excited whisper, “not believe me. Here, tell me anything else to do. Why, I’d kill anyone if you’ll look at me like that.”“I do not want you to kill anyone, and do not want you even to look or speak to me again if you are so rude as that. You forget that I am a lady.”“No, I don’t,” he cried, as he feasted on her with his eyes. “You’re lovely. I never saw a girl so beautiful as you are before.”He tried to catch her in his embrace again, but she waved him off.“There,” she said coldly, “that will do. I see I must ask someone else to do what I want.”“No, no, don’t,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to make you cross. I didn’t want to offend you, but when you looked at me like you did, with your shiny eyes, I couldn’t help myself. I was obliged.”“Silence! How dare you,” she cried indignantly, as, with her heart throbbing with delight, she felt how very strong a hold she was getting upon Caleb’s will. “You forget yourself, sir.”“No, I don’t; its only because—because—you’re so handsome. There, be cross with me if you like. I couldn’t help it.”“And now I suppose you will go and boast in the village taproom that you met the captain’s cousin, and insulted her out in the wood.”“Do you think I’m a fool, miss?” he said sharply. “Do you think I’d ever go and tell on a girl? Why, I shouldn’t tell on a common servant or a farmer’s lass, let alone on a handsome lady like you.”“I don’t believe you,” she said, half turning away.“Yes, do, miss, please do,” he cried earnestly, “you may trust me. I’d sooner go and hang myself than tell anybody—there!”She turned her eyes upon him, and her feeling of delight increased as she realised the truth of all that Caleb said. Then, as he looked up at her now, with the appealing, beseeching aspect of a dog in his countenance, she made a pretence of hesitating.“No,” she said. “I’m afraid I cannot trust you.”“Yes, do, miss, do.”“If I do you will insult me again.”“I didn’t know it was insulting of you to love you,” he said sullenly.“Then I tell you it was, sir. If you had waited it would have been different.”He did not speak, but she could see that he was still feasting upon her with his eyes, and the worship in his looks was pleasant after Rolph’s cold rebuffs.“Well,” she cried, “why are you looking at me like that?”He started and smiled.“I can’t help it,” he said, “You are so different to every other girl I know.”“Except Judith Hayle,” she said contemptuously.“You’re not like her a bit,” he said thoughtfully. “She’s very nice looking, and I used to think a deal of her.”“Oh, yes, she’s lovely,” said Madge with a spiteful laugh.“Yes,” said Caleb, thoughtfully, “so she is,” and he stood looking at the girl without comprehending the sarcasm in her words. “But she hasn’t got eyes like you have, and she isn’t so white, and,” he whispered, approaching her more closely, “if you’ll only be kind to me, and smile at me like you did, and speak soft to me, I’ll be like your dawg.”He looked as if he would, and Marjorie saw it. She had been on the watch, expecting that he would seize her again, but nothing seemed further from his thoughts. It was exactly as he said—he was ready to be like her dog, and had she told him then, he would have cast himself at her feet, and let her plant her foot upon his neck in token of his subjugation.“Well,” she said, “I think I will trust you.”“You will?” he cried.“Yes, if you are obedient, and promise me that you will never dare to be so rude again.”“I’ll promise anything,” he cried huskily, “but—”“But what, sir?”“You’ll keep your word and pay me?” he said with a laugh.“Wait and see,” she said indifferently. “I am going back now.”“But how am I to tell you?” he said.“I shall be sure to know.”“And how shall I see you again?”“You will not want to see me again,” she said archly.“Not want to see you,” he whispered. “Why, I’d go round the world, across the seas, anywhere, to hear you talk to me, and look at your eyes. Tell me when I shall see you again.”“Oh, I don’t know,” she said carelessly, “perhaps some fine day you’ll see me walking in the wood.”“Yes—yes,” he said eagerly. “I’ll always be about watching for you as I would for a hare.”“One of my cousin’s,” she said, with a contemptuous laugh.“They’re not his,” cried Caleb, quietly, “they’re wild beasts, and as much mine as anybody’s.”“We will not discuss that,” she said coldly. “Good-bye, and I hope you will keep your word.”“I’ve sweared it to myself,” he said, “and I shall do it. Don’t go yet.”“Why not?”“Because I could stand and look at you, like, all day, and it will not seem the same when you are gone.”“Why, I thought you were a poacher.”“Well, I suppose I am. What o’ that?”“You talk quite like a courtier?”“Do I?” he said eagerly. “Well, you did it; you made me like you.”“I?”“Yes. I don’t know how it was, but you’ve made me feel as if I’d do anything for you.”“Ah, well, we shall see,” said Marjorie, as she fixed her eyes on his, glorying in her triumph, and feeling that every word spoken was the honest truth. Then, giving him a careless nod, she was turning away.“Don’t go like that,” said Caleb, huskily.“What do you mean?”“Say one kind word to me first.”“Well,” said Madge, showing her white teeth in a contemptuous smile, as his eyes were fixed upon hers, just as her cousin’s Gordon setter’s had been a score of times. “Poor fellow, then,” she said mockingly, and she held out her little hand, as she would have stretched it forth to pat one of the dogs.He took it in his brown, sinewy fingers, bent over it, and held it against his cheek. Then, quick as lightning, he had grasped it with a grip like steel, snatched her from where she stood, and almost before she could notice it, he was holding her in a crouching position down behind the bushes, one arm tightly about her waist, and his right hand over her mouth.She was too much taken by surprise for the moment to struggle or attempt to cry out. Then, as her eyes were fixed upon him fiercely, she felt his hot breath upon her cheek, and his lips pressed upon her ear.“Don’t move, don’t speak,” whispered the man, “he mustn’t see you along o’ me.”Madge strained her sense of hearing, but all was perfectly still, and, concluding that it was a trick, she gathered herself together for a strong effort to get free, when there was a sharp crack as of a broken twig. Then the low brushing sound of dead strands of grass against a man’s leg; and, directly after Rolph came into view, plainly seen through the brambles, and as he came nearer Marjorie grew faint.If he should see her—like that—clasped in this man’s arms!Rolph came nearer and nearer, his way leading him so close to where his cousin crouched that it seemed impossible that he could go by without seeing her, held there by a man whom he would look upon as the scum of the earth. The agony of shame and mortification she suffered was intense, the greater because her presence here was due to the fact that she had vowed that, in spite of all, she would yet be Rolph’s wife, the mistress of The Warren.As her cousin came on, and she felt Caleb’s arm tightening about her, a strange giddiness made her brain swim, and the objects about her grew misty; but clearly seen in advance of this mist was her cousin’s face, his eyes fixed upon the very spot where she was hiding, and plunging through the leaves to search her out, to drag her forth and upbraid her with being a disgrace to her sex, a woman utterly lost to all sense of shame. And all the time, throb, throb, throb, with heavy beat, she could feel Caleb Kent’s heart, and a twitching sensation in the muscle of his arm, as, influenced by the man’s thoughts of flight or violence, he loosened his grip, or held her more tightly still.“He must see us,” thought Marjorie. “Oh, if I could only die!”Close up now, and as he came nearer Rolph struck sharply with his stick at a loose strand which projected half across his path.He must see them; he could not help seeing them, thought Marjorie; and then her heart stood still, and the mist began to close her in, for, to her horror, the culmination of her shame seemed to have arrived. Rolph stopped short, leaned over, apparently to part the brambles and gaze through them at the hiding pair, and then muttered something half aloud as he reached over more and more till his face was not six feet from his cousin’s, staring up at him with her eyes full of horror.A guilty conscience needs no accuser; so runs the old proverbial saying.Rolph had caught sight of an extra large blackberry and he had reached out and picked it, more from habit, fostered by a country life, than desire, and then passed on.A long time appeared to elapse, during which Marjorie lay listening to steps which thundered upon her ear, before a voice, that sounded as if it came from far away, whispered,—“It’s all right, now. I don’t think he saw.”Marjorie looked at the speaker strangely, and then turned away, plunging into the thickest part of the wood to try and grow calm before making her way home, and in perfect unconsciousness of the fact that, not twenty yards away, Caleb Kent was following her, gliding from tree to tree, and always keeping her in sight.Sometimes she stopped to rest her hand upon one of the pine trunks, apparently wrapt in thought; and Caleb Kent drew a long breath and told himself that she was thinking about him. Then she walked swiftly on again till she was at the very edge of the wood, where she stepped down into the sandy lane where he could not follow; but, quickly, almost as a squirrel, he mounted a tall spruce by its short, dense, ladder-like branches, to where, high up, he could still keep the girl in sight, elated by his adventure, and little thinking that she was asking herself whether it would be very difficult to kill Caleb Kent next time she met him in the woods, and so silence for ever a tongue whose utterances might ruin her beyond recovery.“Something to drink—something to drink,” she kept on thinking. “To drink my health.”Her eyes brightened, and her strange look told of an excitement within her which made every pulse throb and bound.“It would be so easy,” she said to herself. But the feeling of elation passed away as she recalled the man’s furtive, suspicious nature, and, in imagination, saw him fixing his keen eyes upon her, and asking her to drink first.
Mrs Rolph did not see much of her son, who divided his time between Brackley and Aldershot, when he was not away to attend some athletic meeting. But she was quite content, and paid her calls upon Glynne in company with Marjorie, who sat and beamed upon Sir John’s daughter, and lost not an opportunity for getting her arm about the waist of her cousin’s betrothed, being so intensely affectionate that Glynne stared at her wonderingly at times, and then tried to reciprocate the love bestowed upon her, failed dismally, and often asked Lucy whether she liked Miss Emlin? to receive a short, sharp shake of the head in return.
“Sha’n’t say,” Lucy replied one day. “If I do, you’ll think I’m jealous.”
Rolph was not aware of the fact, for Marjorie generally avoided him, and behaved as if she were putting the past farther back; but all the same, she watched her cousin furtively on every possible occasion whenever he was at home or staying at Brackley; and to cover her proceedings, she developed an intense love for botany, and more than once encountered Major Day with Lucy and Glynne, and compared notes. But the major never displayed any great desire to impart information, or to induce the young lady to take up his particular branch.
“Pity Rolph didn’t marry her,” muttered the old man. “Foxy doesn’t like Glynne at all.”
Madge’s botanical studies had a good deal to do with thegynias, and with watching Rolph, who was not aware that his pleasant vices were making of themselves the proverbial rods to scourge him, and unfortunately injure others as well. For Marjorie’s brain was busy; and as she watched him, she made herself acquainted with every movement, noting when he rode over to Brackley or took a walk out into the woods—walks which made her writhe, for she gave her cousin the credit of making his way toward Lindham, out by the solitary collection of houses on the road to nowhere, the spot where Ben Hayle had made his new home.
At these times Marjorie hung upon the tenterhooks of agony and suspense till he returned, when there was a warm glow of satisfaction in her breast if his looks showed that his visit had been unsuccessful.
Sometimes though, she was stung by her jealousy into believing that he obtained interviews with Judith, for he would come back looking more satisfied and content.
She watched him one day, and saw him take the path down through the wood, and she also watched his return.
In a few days he went again in the same direction, and on the next morning she started off before he had left the house, and turned down through the woods to an opening miles away, where, in happier days, she had been wont to gather blackberries; and here she knew she could easily hide in the sandy hollows, and see anyone going toward Lindham—herself unseen.
It was a lonely nook, where, in bygone days, a number of the firs had been cut down, and a sandpit, or rather sand-pits had been formed. These had become disused, the rabbits had taken possession, and, as sun and air penetrated freely, a new growth of furze, heather and broom grew up among the hollows and knolls.
What her plans were she kept hidden, but a looker-on would have said that she had carefully prepared a mine, and that some day, she would spring that mine upon her cousin with a result that would completely overturn his projects, but whether to her own advantage remained to be seen.
As Marjorie approached, the rabbits took flight, and their white tails could be seen disappearing into their burrows, a certain sign that no one had been by before her; and in a few minutes she was safely ensconced in a deep hollow surrounded by brambles, after she had taken the precaution to lay a few fern leaves in the bottom of a little basket, and rapidly pick a few weeds to give colour to her presence there.
The time glided on, and all was so still that a stone-chat came and sat upon a twig close at hand, watching her curiously. Then the rabbits stole out one by one from their burrows, and began to race here and there, indulging in playful bounds as if under the impression that it was evening; but though Marjorie strained her ears to listen, there was no sound of approaching steps, and at last she sat there with her brow full of lines, and her eyes staring angrily from beneath her contracted brows.
“He will not come to-day,” she muttered. “What shall I do?”
“Oh!” she cried, in a harsh whisper, after a long pause, as she crushed together the nearest tuft of leaves, “I could kill her.”
She winced slightly, and then glanced contemptuously at her glove, which was torn, and in three places her white palm was pierced, scratched and bleeding, for she had grasped a twig or two of bramble.
The blood on her hand seemed to have a peculiar fascination for her, and she sat there with her eyes half-shut, watching the long red lines made by snatching her hand away, and at the two tiny beads, which gradually increased till she touched them in turn with the tip of her glove, and then carelessly wiped them away.
“‘He cometh not,’” she said to herself, with a curious laugh.
Rap! And then, from different parts of the hollow, came the same sharp, clear sound, as rabbit after rabbit struck the ground with its foot, giving the alarm and sending all within hearing scuttling into their holes.
Marjorie had been long enough in the country to know the meaning of that noise, and, with her eyes now wide and wild-looking, she listened for the step which had startled the little animals—one plain to them before it grew clear to her.
No step. Not a sound, and her face was a study, could it have been seen, in its intense eagerness for what seemed, in the silence, minutes, while she retained her breath.
“Hah!”
One long, weary exclamation, and a bitter look of disappointment crossed her eager face.
The next moment it was strained again, and her eyes flashed like those of some wild animal whose life depends upon the acuteness of its perceptions.
There was a faint rustle.
Then silence.
Then a faintly-heard scratching noise, as of a thorn passing over a garment.
“He’s coming,” thought Marjorie, “coming, and this way;” and she leaned forward in time to see a figure, bent down so low that it seemed to be going on all fours, dart silently from behind one clump of brambles away to her left, and glide into the shelter of another.
So silently was this act performed that for the moment the watcher asked herself if she had not been deceived.
The answer came directly in the re-appearance of the figure, gliding into sight and creeping on till it was in shelter, hiding not a dozen yards from where she crouched; and she shrank back with her heart beginning to beat heavily, while she knew that the blood was coming and going in her cheeks.
“No; I’m not afraid of Caleb Kent,” she thought to herself; and her eyes flashed again, and in imagination she seemed to see once more the opening where the lodge stood. Her face grew pale, and a curious shrinking sensation attacked her as she recalled Rolph’s face, his eyes searching hers with such a bitter look of contempt and scorn.
Then instantly she seemed to be gazing at herself in the library, clinging to her cousin, till he violently wrenched himself from her, leaving her hopeless and crushed; and she longed bitterly for the opportunity to make some one suffer for this.
“No,” she said to herself, “I am not afraid of Caleb Kent;” and she crouched there, seeing every movement, and in a few moments realised that some one must be coming, for, with the activity of a cat, the young half-gipsy, half-poacher, began to move softly back, as if to keep the clump of brambles between him and whoever it was that was passing.
Marjorie knew directly after that this must be the case, for she could hear the dull sound of a step, and she strained forward a little to try and see, but shrank back again with her heart beginning to beat rapidly, as she realised that, all intent upon the person passing in front, Caleb Kent had no thought for what might be behind, and he had begun to back rapidly away from the clump which had hidden him, to hide in the safer refuge already occupied.
She knew that the step must be her cousin’s, and that he was going over to Lindham to seek Judith.
“Suppose,” she asked herself, “he should come nearer and see her hiding—apparently in company with Caleb Kent—what would he say?”
She quivered with rage and mortification, and for the moment felt disposed to spring up and walk away, but refrained, for she knew that it would then seem as if she had been keeping an appointment with this man, and had been frightened into showing herself by her cousin’s coming.
The situation was horrible, and she knew that all she could do was to wait in the hope that, as soon as Rolph had gone by, Caleb would glide after him.
“What for?” she asked herself; and she turned cold at the answering thought.
He seemed to have no stout bludgeon, though. Perhaps he was only acting the spy; and as soon as Rolph had been to the cottage and returned, Caleb himself might have some intention of going there.
Marjorie’s eyes glittered again as thought after thought came, boding ill to those she hated now with the bitterness of a jealous woman; and all at once, like a flash, a thought flooded her brain which sent the blood thrilling through every artery and vein.
“No,” she thought, and she crouched there, compressing her nether lip between her white teeth. Then,—“Why not? What is she that she should rob me of my happiness, and of all I hold dear? But if—”
She drew in her breath with a faint hiss that was almost inaudible, but it was sufficient to make the poacher pause and look sharply to right and left, as he still crept backwards till he was beneath the shelter of the clump in the hollow which hid Marjorie, and within a few yards of where she was seated.
The sounds of passing steps were very near now. Then there was a faint cough, and Marjorie knew that her cousin was so close that, if he looked about him, he must see her in hiding with this vagabond of the village; and again the girl’s veins tingled with the nervous sensation of anger and mortification.
She would have given ten years of her life to have been back at home; but she had brought all this upon herself, and she could only hope that Rolph would pass them without turning his head.
“Yes, go on,” said a low, harsh voice, hardly above a whisper, and Marjorie started as she found herself an involuntary listener to the man’s outspoken thoughts. “Only wait,” he continued, and he, too, drew in his breath with a low, hissing sound.
The footsteps died completely away, and Marjorie sat there trembling. The thoughts which had seemed to electrify her, she felt now that she dare not foster; and she was longing for the man to go, when, as if he were influenced by her presence, he turned round suddenly to the right as in search of some one, then to the left, and, not satisfied, faced right about, his countenance full of wonderment and dread, which passed away directly, and he uttered a low, mocking laugh.
Marjorie shrank away for the moment, but, feeling that she must show no dread of this man who had surprised her in a situation which it would be vain to explain, she rose to go, but Caleb seized her tightly by the arm.
“He did not come to meet you,” the man said, with a look of malicious enjoyment, as if it was a pleasure to inflict some of the pain from which he suffered.
“What do you mean?” she cried imperiously, as she sought to release her wrist.
“Call to him to come back and help you,” whispered Caleb.—“Why don’t you?”
He laughed again as he drew himself up into a kneeling position, still holding her tightly,
“How dare you!” cried the girl, indignantly. “Loose my arm, fellow!”
“Why? Not I. You will not call out for fear the captain there should think you were watching to see him go to Hayle’s cottage and pretty Judith.”
He began his speech in a light, bantering way, but as he finished his face was flushed and angry, and his breath came thick and fast, while, still clutching the arm he held, he wrenched his head round and knelt there, gazing in the direction taken by Rolph.
The thought which had held possession of Marjorie’s breast twice, now came back with renewed power, and, casting all feeling of dread to the winds as she read her companion’s face, she snatched at the opportunity.
That Caleb hated Rolph was plain enough; there was a scar upon his lip now that had been made by the hand of one whom he feared as well as hated; and above all, after his fashion, Marjorie knew that he loved Judith.
Here was the instrument to her hand. Why had she not thought of making use of it before?
It was as if she were for the moment possessed, as, without trying now to release herself, she leaned forward and whispered in the young man’s ear,—
“You coward!”
He turned upon her in astonishment.
“I say you are a coward,” she repeated. “Why do you let him go and take her from you?”
There was an animal-like snap of the teeth, as he snarled out,—
“Why do you let him go?”
“Because I am a woman. I am not a man, and strong like you.”
“Curse him! I’ll kill him,” he snarled.
“What good would that do?”
“Eh?”
“If I were a man like you, do you know how I would act?”
“No,” he said; “how could I?” and his lips parted, to show his white teeth in a peculiar laugh, before he gave a quick look to right and left, to satisfy himself that they were not seen.
“I’d have revenge.”
“How? With a gun?”
“And be hung for murder. No!”
She leaned towards him, and she too gave a furtive look round, as, with her face flushed strangely, she whispered a few words to him—words that he listened to with his eyes half-closed, and then he turned upon her quickly.
“Why? To bring him back to you?” he said, with a mocking laugh. “You love him?”
“I hate him,” she said slowly.
“Yes,” he said; “and you hate Judy Hayle, too, like the gipsy women hate sometimes. Why don’t you stop it?”
“Because I am helpless,” she said bitterly. “Loose my arm. I knew it: you are a coward.”
“Am I?” he said, with an ugly smile. “Is this a trap?”
“If you think so, let it be,” she said contemptuously; and she tried again to shake her arm free, but the grasp upon it tightened.
“Perhaps I am a coward,” he said; “but I will. He wouldn’t marry her then, and it would be serving him out. Not for nothing, though,” he added, with a laugh. “What will you give me?”
“Pah!” she said contemptuously; “how much do you want?”
He laughed and leaned forward, gazing full in her face.
“Perhaps I shall get into trouble again for it,” he said, “and be shut up for a year—perhaps for more. It’s to play your game as well as mine, and I must be paid well.”
“Well, I will pay you,” she said. “Tell me what you want.”
“A kiss,” he said; and before she could realise what he had said, his left arm was about her waist, and he held her tightly to him. “A kiss from a lady who is handsomer than Judy Hayle,” he whispered.
“How dare you!” she cried, in a low voice.
“No,” he said, laughing, “you won’t call for help. Come, it isn’t much to give me, and I swear I will.”
Marjorie gazed at him wildly, as she realised her position; there, alone, in this man’s power, and no one at hand to defend her. Then, utterly careless of herself, as she thought of the bitter revenge she had planned, she held back her face, and, with a faint laugh and her voice trembling, she said,—
“No, I will not call for help. There is no need. Keep your word and I will pay you—as you wish.”
The blood crimsoned her cheeks as she spoke.
“No,” he said, with a laugh; “you shall pay me now,” and the next moment his arms were fast round her, and his lips pressed to hers.
Marjorie started away, angry and indignant, but her furious jealousy made her diplomatise, and she stood smiling at the good-looking, gipsy-like ne’er-do-weel, and said laughingly,—
“That was not fair; I promised you that as a reward, and now you have cheated me and will not keep your word.”
“Yes, I will,” he cried, as he seized her again eagerly; but she kept him back. “I’ll do anything you ask me. Curse Judith Hayle! She isn’t half so beautiful as you.”
Madge’s heart beat heavily, for admiration was pleasant, even from this low-class scoundrel. His words were genuine, as she could see from his eager gaze, the play of his features, and the earnestness in his voice.
“I’ve made a slave,” she said to herself, forgetting for a moment the cost, “and he’ll do everything I bid him.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” she said, playfully. “You do not suppose I believe what you say.”
“What!” he cried, in a low, excited whisper, “not believe me. Here, tell me anything else to do. Why, I’d kill anyone if you’ll look at me like that.”
“I do not want you to kill anyone, and do not want you even to look or speak to me again if you are so rude as that. You forget that I am a lady.”
“No, I don’t,” he cried, as he feasted on her with his eyes. “You’re lovely. I never saw a girl so beautiful as you are before.”
He tried to catch her in his embrace again, but she waved him off.
“There,” she said coldly, “that will do. I see I must ask someone else to do what I want.”
“No, no, don’t,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to make you cross. I didn’t want to offend you, but when you looked at me like you did, with your shiny eyes, I couldn’t help myself. I was obliged.”
“Silence! How dare you,” she cried indignantly, as, with her heart throbbing with delight, she felt how very strong a hold she was getting upon Caleb’s will. “You forget yourself, sir.”
“No, I don’t; its only because—because—you’re so handsome. There, be cross with me if you like. I couldn’t help it.”
“And now I suppose you will go and boast in the village taproom that you met the captain’s cousin, and insulted her out in the wood.”
“Do you think I’m a fool, miss?” he said sharply. “Do you think I’d ever go and tell on a girl? Why, I shouldn’t tell on a common servant or a farmer’s lass, let alone on a handsome lady like you.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said, half turning away.
“Yes, do, miss, please do,” he cried earnestly, “you may trust me. I’d sooner go and hang myself than tell anybody—there!”
She turned her eyes upon him, and her feeling of delight increased as she realised the truth of all that Caleb said. Then, as he looked up at her now, with the appealing, beseeching aspect of a dog in his countenance, she made a pretence of hesitating.
“No,” she said. “I’m afraid I cannot trust you.”
“Yes, do, miss, do.”
“If I do you will insult me again.”
“I didn’t know it was insulting of you to love you,” he said sullenly.
“Then I tell you it was, sir. If you had waited it would have been different.”
He did not speak, but she could see that he was still feasting upon her with his eyes, and the worship in his looks was pleasant after Rolph’s cold rebuffs.
“Well,” she cried, “why are you looking at me like that?”
He started and smiled.
“I can’t help it,” he said, “You are so different to every other girl I know.”
“Except Judith Hayle,” she said contemptuously.
“You’re not like her a bit,” he said thoughtfully. “She’s very nice looking, and I used to think a deal of her.”
“Oh, yes, she’s lovely,” said Madge with a spiteful laugh.
“Yes,” said Caleb, thoughtfully, “so she is,” and he stood looking at the girl without comprehending the sarcasm in her words. “But she hasn’t got eyes like you have, and she isn’t so white, and,” he whispered, approaching her more closely, “if you’ll only be kind to me, and smile at me like you did, and speak soft to me, I’ll be like your dawg.”
He looked as if he would, and Marjorie saw it. She had been on the watch, expecting that he would seize her again, but nothing seemed further from his thoughts. It was exactly as he said—he was ready to be like her dog, and had she told him then, he would have cast himself at her feet, and let her plant her foot upon his neck in token of his subjugation.
“Well,” she said, “I think I will trust you.”
“You will?” he cried.
“Yes, if you are obedient, and promise me that you will never dare to be so rude again.”
“I’ll promise anything,” he cried huskily, “but—”
“But what, sir?”
“You’ll keep your word and pay me?” he said with a laugh.
“Wait and see,” she said indifferently. “I am going back now.”
“But how am I to tell you?” he said.
“I shall be sure to know.”
“And how shall I see you again?”
“You will not want to see me again,” she said archly.
“Not want to see you,” he whispered. “Why, I’d go round the world, across the seas, anywhere, to hear you talk to me, and look at your eyes. Tell me when I shall see you again.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said carelessly, “perhaps some fine day you’ll see me walking in the wood.”
“Yes—yes,” he said eagerly. “I’ll always be about watching for you as I would for a hare.”
“One of my cousin’s,” she said, with a contemptuous laugh.
“They’re not his,” cried Caleb, quietly, “they’re wild beasts, and as much mine as anybody’s.”
“We will not discuss that,” she said coldly. “Good-bye, and I hope you will keep your word.”
“I’ve sweared it to myself,” he said, “and I shall do it. Don’t go yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I could stand and look at you, like, all day, and it will not seem the same when you are gone.”
“Why, I thought you were a poacher.”
“Well, I suppose I am. What o’ that?”
“You talk quite like a courtier?”
“Do I?” he said eagerly. “Well, you did it; you made me like you.”
“I?”
“Yes. I don’t know how it was, but you’ve made me feel as if I’d do anything for you.”
“Ah, well, we shall see,” said Marjorie, as she fixed her eyes on his, glorying in her triumph, and feeling that every word spoken was the honest truth. Then, giving him a careless nod, she was turning away.
“Don’t go like that,” said Caleb, huskily.
“What do you mean?”
“Say one kind word to me first.”
“Well,” said Madge, showing her white teeth in a contemptuous smile, as his eyes were fixed upon hers, just as her cousin’s Gordon setter’s had been a score of times. “Poor fellow, then,” she said mockingly, and she held out her little hand, as she would have stretched it forth to pat one of the dogs.
He took it in his brown, sinewy fingers, bent over it, and held it against his cheek. Then, quick as lightning, he had grasped it with a grip like steel, snatched her from where she stood, and almost before she could notice it, he was holding her in a crouching position down behind the bushes, one arm tightly about her waist, and his right hand over her mouth.
She was too much taken by surprise for the moment to struggle or attempt to cry out. Then, as her eyes were fixed upon him fiercely, she felt his hot breath upon her cheek, and his lips pressed upon her ear.
“Don’t move, don’t speak,” whispered the man, “he mustn’t see you along o’ me.”
Madge strained her sense of hearing, but all was perfectly still, and, concluding that it was a trick, she gathered herself together for a strong effort to get free, when there was a sharp crack as of a broken twig. Then the low brushing sound of dead strands of grass against a man’s leg; and, directly after Rolph came into view, plainly seen through the brambles, and as he came nearer Marjorie grew faint.
If he should see her—like that—clasped in this man’s arms!
Rolph came nearer and nearer, his way leading him so close to where his cousin crouched that it seemed impossible that he could go by without seeing her, held there by a man whom he would look upon as the scum of the earth. The agony of shame and mortification she suffered was intense, the greater because her presence here was due to the fact that she had vowed that, in spite of all, she would yet be Rolph’s wife, the mistress of The Warren.
As her cousin came on, and she felt Caleb’s arm tightening about her, a strange giddiness made her brain swim, and the objects about her grew misty; but clearly seen in advance of this mist was her cousin’s face, his eyes fixed upon the very spot where she was hiding, and plunging through the leaves to search her out, to drag her forth and upbraid her with being a disgrace to her sex, a woman utterly lost to all sense of shame. And all the time, throb, throb, throb, with heavy beat, she could feel Caleb Kent’s heart, and a twitching sensation in the muscle of his arm, as, influenced by the man’s thoughts of flight or violence, he loosened his grip, or held her more tightly still.
“He must see us,” thought Marjorie. “Oh, if I could only die!”
Close up now, and as he came nearer Rolph struck sharply with his stick at a loose strand which projected half across his path.
He must see them; he could not help seeing them, thought Marjorie; and then her heart stood still, and the mist began to close her in, for, to her horror, the culmination of her shame seemed to have arrived. Rolph stopped short, leaned over, apparently to part the brambles and gaze through them at the hiding pair, and then muttered something half aloud as he reached over more and more till his face was not six feet from his cousin’s, staring up at him with her eyes full of horror.
A guilty conscience needs no accuser; so runs the old proverbial saying.
Rolph had caught sight of an extra large blackberry and he had reached out and picked it, more from habit, fostered by a country life, than desire, and then passed on.
A long time appeared to elapse, during which Marjorie lay listening to steps which thundered upon her ear, before a voice, that sounded as if it came from far away, whispered,—
“It’s all right, now. I don’t think he saw.”
Marjorie looked at the speaker strangely, and then turned away, plunging into the thickest part of the wood to try and grow calm before making her way home, and in perfect unconsciousness of the fact that, not twenty yards away, Caleb Kent was following her, gliding from tree to tree, and always keeping her in sight.
Sometimes she stopped to rest her hand upon one of the pine trunks, apparently wrapt in thought; and Caleb Kent drew a long breath and told himself that she was thinking about him. Then she walked swiftly on again till she was at the very edge of the wood, where she stepped down into the sandy lane where he could not follow; but, quickly, almost as a squirrel, he mounted a tall spruce by its short, dense, ladder-like branches, to where, high up, he could still keep the girl in sight, elated by his adventure, and little thinking that she was asking herself whether it would be very difficult to kill Caleb Kent next time she met him in the woods, and so silence for ever a tongue whose utterances might ruin her beyond recovery.
“Something to drink—something to drink,” she kept on thinking. “To drink my health.”
Her eyes brightened, and her strange look told of an excitement within her which made every pulse throb and bound.
“It would be so easy,” she said to herself. But the feeling of elation passed away as she recalled the man’s furtive, suspicious nature, and, in imagination, saw him fixing his keen eyes upon her, and asking her to drink first.
Volume Two—Chapter Five.The Setting of a Dog’s Star.The gentlemen were seated over their claret at the Hall, and the party had become very quiet. Sir John had been preaching on the subject of the value of a cross of the big, coarse, wool-bearing Lincolnshire sheep with the Southdown, as being likely to prove advantageous, the Lincolnshire sheep giving increased wool-bearing qualities, while the lamb would inherit the fine properties of its mother’s mutton.At the words mutton and Southdown lamb, Rolph had pricked up his ears for a moment, since they had suggested under-done chops and cuts out of good haunches, with the gravy in grand supplies of stamina to an athlete; but the suggestion came at the wrong end of the dinner, and, with a yawn, the captain had wished Sir John and his pigs and sheep at Jericho, and begun thinking of his coming match with the Bayswater Stag for a hundred pounds a side, a race for which he told himself he was in training now, though his proceedings in the way of wines and foods would have horrified a trainer and frightened his backers into fits of despair.When Sir John had had his innings, the major began to talk about the translation of a paper by Friés, on the persistency of certain forms of parasitic fungi in the lower plants. To make himself a little more comprehendible to his companions, he kept introducing the word mushroom into his discourse, with the effect of bringing back Rolph’s wandering attention, and rousing Sir John from the doze into which he was falling.Both gentlemen saw mushrooms directly, through a medium of claret, and while the major was thinking of spores, mycelium, and rapid generation, Sir John and the captain saw mushrooms growing, mushrooms cooked, mushrooms in rich sauces, but always of a deep purply claret colour, that was pleasant to the eye.“Hang ’em, they’ll drive me mad between ’em,” thought Rolph. “I wonder how much of this sort of thing a man could stand. Offend the old buffers or no, I must go and have a cigar.”“Yes, what is it?” said Sir John, starting out of a doze.“Morton would like to speak to you, Sir John.”“Morton; what does he want?” said Sir John. “Send him in.”A good deal of shoe wiping was heard outside, and a fine-looking, elderly man, whose velveteens proclaimed his profession, entered, to bow to all three gentlemen in turn.“Sorry to trouble you, Sir John, but I’ve got information that a party from out Woodstay way, sir, are coming netting and snaring to-night.”“Confound their impudence!” cried Sir John, leaping from his chair. “What the deuce do you mean, standing staring there like a fool, man? Why don’t you get the helpers and the watchers together, and go and stop the scoundrels?”“Men all waiting, Sir John,” said the keeper, quietly, “but I thought you and the captain would like to be there, and the major could give us a bit of advice as to plans, Sir John.”“Quite right, Morton. Of course. Quite right. Take a glass of wine. Here’s a claret glass. You won’t have claret though, I suppose.”“Thank ye, kindly, Sir John, but you give me a glass of port last time.”“And you haven’t forgotten it, Morton? Quite right. It’s a fine port. Help yourself, man. We’ll change, and be with you directly. You’ll come, Rolph?”“By George, yes,” cried the captain, whose face had flushed with excitement. “I’m ready there.”“You’ll come, Jem?”“To be sure—to be sure,” said the major, rubbing his hands. “We’ll have a bit of tactics here.”Ten minutes later, Sir John and the major, each carrying a heavy staff, and Rolph, armed with a gun, were following the keeper along one of the paths leading to the fir woods, and with a great mastiff dog close at the keeper’s heels.“Beg pardon, sir,” said the keeper, touching his hat, as they drew near to where a knot of men were gathered waiting for them, “but I wouldn’t use that gun.”“Oh, it’s only loaded with Number 7, Morton,” said the captain. “I sha’n’t fire; but if I did, it would only pepper them.”The man drew back, muttering to himself, “I saw a chap shot dead with Number 7, and they wasn’t chilled shot, neither. I’ve done my duty, though.”There were six men waiting, all armed with short staves, and looking a steady set of fellows as Sir John cast his eye over them, and now increased to ten by the coming of the little party from the Hall, they looked more than a match for any gang of poachers likely to be met, and he said so.“I don’t know, Sir John,” said the keeper, sturdily. “I haven’t much faith in ’em. If it warn’t for the show they’ll make, I’d as soon trust to you, Sir John, the major, the captain, and Nero here. They’re safe to run, some of ’em, if it comes to a fight. That chap of the captain’s, Thompson, has got arms like pipe shanks, and two of the helpers about as much pluck as a cuckoo.”“Oh, they’ll fight if it comes to the proof, I daresay,” said Sir John. “How are you, my lads; how are you?” he continued, as they came up. “Now, then, if we come across the scoundrels, we must take all we can. There’s no excuse for poaching. I’d give any man out of work in the parish something to do on the farm. So it’s as bad as stealing, and I’ll have no mercy on them. Now, Morton, what are you going to do?”“Well, Sir John, from what I can understand, they’re coming with their nets and dogs to scour the meadows and the cut clover patches. There’s a sight of young birds there, as I know. They’ve got to know of it, too, somehow; and I propose, if the major thinks it right, to ’vide ourselves in three. You and me, Sir John, with one man and the dog, and the major and the captain take the other two parties, and lay up till we see ’em come.”“But how shall we know which way they’ll come?” said Sir John.“They’ll come over the common from Woodstay way, Sir John, through the fir wood, and down at once into the long meadow, safe. We’ll take one side, the major the other, and Captain Rolph the bottom of the meadow. We’ll let them get well to work, and then when I whistle all close in, and get as many of ’em as we can. We shall be sure of their nets anyhow, but when I whistle they’ll scatter, and I don’t suppose we shall catch more’n one or two.”“Capital plan,” said the major. “Why, you would have made a good general, Morton.”“Thank ye, sir,” said the keeper, touching his hat. “All ready there? Long Meadow.”It was a soft, dark night, with not a breath of wind to chase the heavy clouds that shrouded the sky. There was no talking—nothing to be heard but the dull tramp of feet, and the rustling noise made by the herbage and heather brushing against the leather leggings worn by the men who followed the lead of the keeper and his dog.There was about half a mile to go to reach the indicated spot, and the blood of both Rolph and the major seemed to course a little more rapidly through their veins as the one hailed the prospect of a bit of excitement with something like delight, and the other recalled night marches and perilous episodes in his old Indian campaigning life, and then sighed as he compared his present elderly self with the smart, dashing young officer he used to know.“Halt here!” said Sir John, interrupting the musings of his brother; and from where they stood, they could dimly make out the extent of the long open space, with fir plantations on either side, a patch of alder in the damp, boggy space where they stood, and about two hundred yards away, right at the top of the slight slope, there was something black to be seen against the sky—something black, that by daylight would have resolved itself into a slope of tall firs.This was the part that the poachers were expected to traverse, and the three parties were therefore stationed according to the plan, and for three hours they waited in utter silence, hidden in the plantations and the alder clump.Sir John had begun to mutter at the end of the first hour, to grumble at the end of the second, and he was growling fiercely at the end of the third, when the keeper suddenly started up.“What is it?” said Sir John, as the dog uttered a low whine.“They’ve circumvented us, Sir John,” replied the keeper, angrily. “They’ve trapped me into the belief that they were coming here to-night, and they’ve been netting Barrows, I’ll be bound.”“Confound the scoundrels!” cried Sir John. “What an idiot you must have been!”“Yes, Sir John, I was,” said the keeper, calmly; “but they won’t have more than finished, and they’ve got to get home. I may be too many for them yet.”Hastily summoning the party on his left, the keeper led them to the weary, cramped party on his right.“This way; quick!” he said; and the sluggish blood began to flow once more with the excitement, as he led them rapidly along the meadow, right up the fir slope through the trees, and out into the lane on the other side.Here he paused and listened for a few moments, and then started off once more to where another clump of firs made the aspect of the night more dark.Beneath the trees it was blacker, but the keeper well knew his way, and at the end of a few minutes he had spread out his forces some fifteen yards apart, with a whispered word to be on the alert.“They’re sure to come through here,” he whispered, “Down on the first man you see. We shall hear you, and will come and help.”General like, the keeper had selected the middle of the line for himself, and placed the trustiest men near where he believed that the poachers would come, Rolph being on his right, the major and Sir John upon his left.“They won’t come—it’s all a hoax,” said Sir John, who was tired of waiting, and the words were hardly out of his lips before the mastiff uttered a muttered growl, and directly after there was the tramp of feet over the pine needles which, as it came nearer, told plainly of there being a strongish gang at work.Sir John’s party kept perfectly quiet, save that a couple of the men began to close up so as to be ready when the signal was given, while apparently quite free from apprehension, the poachers came on talking in a low voice, till they were close upon Sir John, when the keeper gave a shrill whistle, sprang up, and shouted to his men.“Stand back all of you,” cried a stern voice.“Give up, you scoundrels, the game’s over,” cried Sir John. “Close in, my lads.”He dashed forward at once, and the major and keeper well seconded his efforts, but the latter received a heavy blow on the forehead, and went down, felled like an ox, the major was tripped up, and the man whom Sir John attacked proved too much for him, getting him down and kneeling upon his chest.“Shoot them if they come, and then step forrard,” cried a shrill harsh voice, and four reports followed, the poachers sending the shot rattling in amongst the branches over the watchers’ heads, the pine needles and twigs pattering down, and the result was that Thompson, Captain Rolph’s man, began to retire very rapidly in one direction, closely followed by two more, and while others from the right flank also beat a retreat.The scuffle that took place to right and left was soon over, the keeper’s followers not caring to risk their lives in an encounter with armed and desperate men. There was the sound of blows and another shot or two from the poachers, who were eight or nine in number, under the guidance of the man who had felled the keeper, and got Sir John down.“It’s all right, my lads,” growled a voice. “Tie ’em well and let’s be off.”“Here, rope!” said a fresh voice; and then there was another scuffle, as Sir John and the major were forced over on their faces, and their wrists tied behind them.“Here, help! Rolph, Rolph!” cried Sir John.“Hold your row, or—”There was a dull sound like the blow of the butt of a gun on a man’s head, and Sir John uttered a furious oath.“I’ll have you before me, yet, you dog!” he cried.“And commit me for trial then,” said the man with a laugh. “Not this time. Now, my lads, ready?”“Ay.”“Off!”“Halt!”There was a fierce murmur at this last command, uttered in a good ringing military voice, and Sir John’s heart leaped, and the major thought better of the speaker than he had ever thought before, as they both recognised the voice.“Down with him, lads, he’s only one,” growled another.“Halt, or by Gad I’ll fire,” cried Rolph again.It all happened in an instant. There was the sound of a blow, which the captain received on his left arm; of another which came full upon his head, and then there was a flash, cutting the darkness and lighting up the faces of a group of men, a ringing report, and a moan, as Rolph fell back heavily to the ground.What followed was a hurried muttering of voices amid painful, hoarse breathing, and, in the darkness, the major could just make out that men were lifting a burden.“Who’s hurt?” cried Sir John. “Do you hear?—who’s hurt?”There was no answer, only the trampling of feet rapidly receding; and it was the major who now spoke.“Jack,” he cried, “I can’t move; I’m tied, I’m afraid it’s Rolph.”“God forbid!” groaned Sir John.“Curse the brutes! Here, my arm’s smashed,” muttered someone, struggling to his feet. “Hi, Sir John!—Major!”“You, Rolph? Thank heaven!” cried Sir John. “I was afraid you were killed. Where’s Morton?”“Here, Sir John,” said a faint voice.“Don’t say you’re shot, man.”“No, Sir John. Crack on the head.”“Then who is hurt?” said the major. “Here, someone, untie or cut this line.”“I’m a bit hurt,” said Rolph; “arm bruised, and a touch on the head, too.”“But someone must have been shot. Did you fire?” said Sir John.“I think I did. Yes,” said Rolph, “I got a crack on the arm, and I had a finger on the trigger.”“Then someone is down,” cried Sir John. “Where are our men?”“Gone for help, I think,” said the major drily, as Rolph succeeded in loosening Sir John’s hands.“The cowardly scoundrels!” roared Sir John. “Here, let’s pursue the poachers.”“No, no,” said the major. “We’re defeated this time, Jack, and they’ve retired. Thank you, Morton. I think we four made a good fight of it, and—ah, poor fellow!” he cried, bending down. “Nero, Nero, good dog then.”In the darkness they could just see the great dog make an effort to reach the major’s hand, but the attempt resulted in a painful moan; a shudder, a faint struggle, and death.“I’ll swear it was not my shot killed him,” cried Rolph excitedly.“Say no more about it,” said Sir John; “it was an accident. I’d sooner one of the scoundrels had had it in his skin, though. I wouldn’t have taken fifty pounds for that dog.”“Poor old fellow!” said the major, who was kneeling beside the dog, and he stroked the great ears; “but,” he added softly to himself, “I’ve had enough of blood: thank God it was not a man.”A series of loud whistles brought back some of the scattered forces, the men meeting with such an ovation from Sir John that they began to think they had better have had it out honourably with the poachers; and then a stout sapling was cut down, and the dog’s paws being tied, he was carried home to the stable-yard on the shoulders of two watchers.After this, there was much beer drinking in the servant’s-hall, and much discussion in the library, where a piece of sticking-plaister was sufficient to remedy Rolph’s wound, his arm was bathed, and Glynne did not faint.Rolph soon after retired for the night, the major noting that he was looking very pale and uneasy. Twice over he went and looked at himself in the glass, and once he shuddered and stood staring over his shoulder, as if expecting to see someone there.“Man can’t help his gun going off in the excitement of an action,” he said slowly. “What a fool I was not to own up that I had shot the big dog.”“Well, they shouldn’t poach,” he muttered at last; and, lighting a cigar, he sat smoking for an hour before going to bed to sleep soundly, awake fairly fresh the next morning, and go out for what he termed “a breather.”
The gentlemen were seated over their claret at the Hall, and the party had become very quiet. Sir John had been preaching on the subject of the value of a cross of the big, coarse, wool-bearing Lincolnshire sheep with the Southdown, as being likely to prove advantageous, the Lincolnshire sheep giving increased wool-bearing qualities, while the lamb would inherit the fine properties of its mother’s mutton.
At the words mutton and Southdown lamb, Rolph had pricked up his ears for a moment, since they had suggested under-done chops and cuts out of good haunches, with the gravy in grand supplies of stamina to an athlete; but the suggestion came at the wrong end of the dinner, and, with a yawn, the captain had wished Sir John and his pigs and sheep at Jericho, and begun thinking of his coming match with the Bayswater Stag for a hundred pounds a side, a race for which he told himself he was in training now, though his proceedings in the way of wines and foods would have horrified a trainer and frightened his backers into fits of despair.
When Sir John had had his innings, the major began to talk about the translation of a paper by Friés, on the persistency of certain forms of parasitic fungi in the lower plants. To make himself a little more comprehendible to his companions, he kept introducing the word mushroom into his discourse, with the effect of bringing back Rolph’s wandering attention, and rousing Sir John from the doze into which he was falling.
Both gentlemen saw mushrooms directly, through a medium of claret, and while the major was thinking of spores, mycelium, and rapid generation, Sir John and the captain saw mushrooms growing, mushrooms cooked, mushrooms in rich sauces, but always of a deep purply claret colour, that was pleasant to the eye.
“Hang ’em, they’ll drive me mad between ’em,” thought Rolph. “I wonder how much of this sort of thing a man could stand. Offend the old buffers or no, I must go and have a cigar.”
“Yes, what is it?” said Sir John, starting out of a doze.
“Morton would like to speak to you, Sir John.”
“Morton; what does he want?” said Sir John. “Send him in.”
A good deal of shoe wiping was heard outside, and a fine-looking, elderly man, whose velveteens proclaimed his profession, entered, to bow to all three gentlemen in turn.
“Sorry to trouble you, Sir John, but I’ve got information that a party from out Woodstay way, sir, are coming netting and snaring to-night.”
“Confound their impudence!” cried Sir John, leaping from his chair. “What the deuce do you mean, standing staring there like a fool, man? Why don’t you get the helpers and the watchers together, and go and stop the scoundrels?”
“Men all waiting, Sir John,” said the keeper, quietly, “but I thought you and the captain would like to be there, and the major could give us a bit of advice as to plans, Sir John.”
“Quite right, Morton. Of course. Quite right. Take a glass of wine. Here’s a claret glass. You won’t have claret though, I suppose.”
“Thank ye, kindly, Sir John, but you give me a glass of port last time.”
“And you haven’t forgotten it, Morton? Quite right. It’s a fine port. Help yourself, man. We’ll change, and be with you directly. You’ll come, Rolph?”
“By George, yes,” cried the captain, whose face had flushed with excitement. “I’m ready there.”
“You’ll come, Jem?”
“To be sure—to be sure,” said the major, rubbing his hands. “We’ll have a bit of tactics here.”
Ten minutes later, Sir John and the major, each carrying a heavy staff, and Rolph, armed with a gun, were following the keeper along one of the paths leading to the fir woods, and with a great mastiff dog close at the keeper’s heels.
“Beg pardon, sir,” said the keeper, touching his hat, as they drew near to where a knot of men were gathered waiting for them, “but I wouldn’t use that gun.”
“Oh, it’s only loaded with Number 7, Morton,” said the captain. “I sha’n’t fire; but if I did, it would only pepper them.”
The man drew back, muttering to himself, “I saw a chap shot dead with Number 7, and they wasn’t chilled shot, neither. I’ve done my duty, though.”
There were six men waiting, all armed with short staves, and looking a steady set of fellows as Sir John cast his eye over them, and now increased to ten by the coming of the little party from the Hall, they looked more than a match for any gang of poachers likely to be met, and he said so.
“I don’t know, Sir John,” said the keeper, sturdily. “I haven’t much faith in ’em. If it warn’t for the show they’ll make, I’d as soon trust to you, Sir John, the major, the captain, and Nero here. They’re safe to run, some of ’em, if it comes to a fight. That chap of the captain’s, Thompson, has got arms like pipe shanks, and two of the helpers about as much pluck as a cuckoo.”
“Oh, they’ll fight if it comes to the proof, I daresay,” said Sir John. “How are you, my lads; how are you?” he continued, as they came up. “Now, then, if we come across the scoundrels, we must take all we can. There’s no excuse for poaching. I’d give any man out of work in the parish something to do on the farm. So it’s as bad as stealing, and I’ll have no mercy on them. Now, Morton, what are you going to do?”
“Well, Sir John, from what I can understand, they’re coming with their nets and dogs to scour the meadows and the cut clover patches. There’s a sight of young birds there, as I know. They’ve got to know of it, too, somehow; and I propose, if the major thinks it right, to ’vide ourselves in three. You and me, Sir John, with one man and the dog, and the major and the captain take the other two parties, and lay up till we see ’em come.”
“But how shall we know which way they’ll come?” said Sir John.
“They’ll come over the common from Woodstay way, Sir John, through the fir wood, and down at once into the long meadow, safe. We’ll take one side, the major the other, and Captain Rolph the bottom of the meadow. We’ll let them get well to work, and then when I whistle all close in, and get as many of ’em as we can. We shall be sure of their nets anyhow, but when I whistle they’ll scatter, and I don’t suppose we shall catch more’n one or two.”
“Capital plan,” said the major. “Why, you would have made a good general, Morton.”
“Thank ye, sir,” said the keeper, touching his hat. “All ready there? Long Meadow.”
It was a soft, dark night, with not a breath of wind to chase the heavy clouds that shrouded the sky. There was no talking—nothing to be heard but the dull tramp of feet, and the rustling noise made by the herbage and heather brushing against the leather leggings worn by the men who followed the lead of the keeper and his dog.
There was about half a mile to go to reach the indicated spot, and the blood of both Rolph and the major seemed to course a little more rapidly through their veins as the one hailed the prospect of a bit of excitement with something like delight, and the other recalled night marches and perilous episodes in his old Indian campaigning life, and then sighed as he compared his present elderly self with the smart, dashing young officer he used to know.
“Halt here!” said Sir John, interrupting the musings of his brother; and from where they stood, they could dimly make out the extent of the long open space, with fir plantations on either side, a patch of alder in the damp, boggy space where they stood, and about two hundred yards away, right at the top of the slight slope, there was something black to be seen against the sky—something black, that by daylight would have resolved itself into a slope of tall firs.
This was the part that the poachers were expected to traverse, and the three parties were therefore stationed according to the plan, and for three hours they waited in utter silence, hidden in the plantations and the alder clump.
Sir John had begun to mutter at the end of the first hour, to grumble at the end of the second, and he was growling fiercely at the end of the third, when the keeper suddenly started up.
“What is it?” said Sir John, as the dog uttered a low whine.
“They’ve circumvented us, Sir John,” replied the keeper, angrily. “They’ve trapped me into the belief that they were coming here to-night, and they’ve been netting Barrows, I’ll be bound.”
“Confound the scoundrels!” cried Sir John. “What an idiot you must have been!”
“Yes, Sir John, I was,” said the keeper, calmly; “but they won’t have more than finished, and they’ve got to get home. I may be too many for them yet.”
Hastily summoning the party on his left, the keeper led them to the weary, cramped party on his right.
“This way; quick!” he said; and the sluggish blood began to flow once more with the excitement, as he led them rapidly along the meadow, right up the fir slope through the trees, and out into the lane on the other side.
Here he paused and listened for a few moments, and then started off once more to where another clump of firs made the aspect of the night more dark.
Beneath the trees it was blacker, but the keeper well knew his way, and at the end of a few minutes he had spread out his forces some fifteen yards apart, with a whispered word to be on the alert.
“They’re sure to come through here,” he whispered, “Down on the first man you see. We shall hear you, and will come and help.”
General like, the keeper had selected the middle of the line for himself, and placed the trustiest men near where he believed that the poachers would come, Rolph being on his right, the major and Sir John upon his left.
“They won’t come—it’s all a hoax,” said Sir John, who was tired of waiting, and the words were hardly out of his lips before the mastiff uttered a muttered growl, and directly after there was the tramp of feet over the pine needles which, as it came nearer, told plainly of there being a strongish gang at work.
Sir John’s party kept perfectly quiet, save that a couple of the men began to close up so as to be ready when the signal was given, while apparently quite free from apprehension, the poachers came on talking in a low voice, till they were close upon Sir John, when the keeper gave a shrill whistle, sprang up, and shouted to his men.
“Stand back all of you,” cried a stern voice.
“Give up, you scoundrels, the game’s over,” cried Sir John. “Close in, my lads.”
He dashed forward at once, and the major and keeper well seconded his efforts, but the latter received a heavy blow on the forehead, and went down, felled like an ox, the major was tripped up, and the man whom Sir John attacked proved too much for him, getting him down and kneeling upon his chest.
“Shoot them if they come, and then step forrard,” cried a shrill harsh voice, and four reports followed, the poachers sending the shot rattling in amongst the branches over the watchers’ heads, the pine needles and twigs pattering down, and the result was that Thompson, Captain Rolph’s man, began to retire very rapidly in one direction, closely followed by two more, and while others from the right flank also beat a retreat.
The scuffle that took place to right and left was soon over, the keeper’s followers not caring to risk their lives in an encounter with armed and desperate men. There was the sound of blows and another shot or two from the poachers, who were eight or nine in number, under the guidance of the man who had felled the keeper, and got Sir John down.
“It’s all right, my lads,” growled a voice. “Tie ’em well and let’s be off.”
“Here, rope!” said a fresh voice; and then there was another scuffle, as Sir John and the major were forced over on their faces, and their wrists tied behind them.
“Here, help! Rolph, Rolph!” cried Sir John.
“Hold your row, or—”
There was a dull sound like the blow of the butt of a gun on a man’s head, and Sir John uttered a furious oath.
“I’ll have you before me, yet, you dog!” he cried.
“And commit me for trial then,” said the man with a laugh. “Not this time. Now, my lads, ready?”
“Ay.”
“Off!”
“Halt!”
There was a fierce murmur at this last command, uttered in a good ringing military voice, and Sir John’s heart leaped, and the major thought better of the speaker than he had ever thought before, as they both recognised the voice.
“Down with him, lads, he’s only one,” growled another.
“Halt, or by Gad I’ll fire,” cried Rolph again.
It all happened in an instant. There was the sound of a blow, which the captain received on his left arm; of another which came full upon his head, and then there was a flash, cutting the darkness and lighting up the faces of a group of men, a ringing report, and a moan, as Rolph fell back heavily to the ground.
What followed was a hurried muttering of voices amid painful, hoarse breathing, and, in the darkness, the major could just make out that men were lifting a burden.
“Who’s hurt?” cried Sir John. “Do you hear?—who’s hurt?”
There was no answer, only the trampling of feet rapidly receding; and it was the major who now spoke.
“Jack,” he cried, “I can’t move; I’m tied, I’m afraid it’s Rolph.”
“God forbid!” groaned Sir John.
“Curse the brutes! Here, my arm’s smashed,” muttered someone, struggling to his feet. “Hi, Sir John!—Major!”
“You, Rolph? Thank heaven!” cried Sir John. “I was afraid you were killed. Where’s Morton?”
“Here, Sir John,” said a faint voice.
“Don’t say you’re shot, man.”
“No, Sir John. Crack on the head.”
“Then who is hurt?” said the major. “Here, someone, untie or cut this line.”
“I’m a bit hurt,” said Rolph; “arm bruised, and a touch on the head, too.”
“But someone must have been shot. Did you fire?” said Sir John.
“I think I did. Yes,” said Rolph, “I got a crack on the arm, and I had a finger on the trigger.”
“Then someone is down,” cried Sir John. “Where are our men?”
“Gone for help, I think,” said the major drily, as Rolph succeeded in loosening Sir John’s hands.
“The cowardly scoundrels!” roared Sir John. “Here, let’s pursue the poachers.”
“No, no,” said the major. “We’re defeated this time, Jack, and they’ve retired. Thank you, Morton. I think we four made a good fight of it, and—ah, poor fellow!” he cried, bending down. “Nero, Nero, good dog then.”
In the darkness they could just see the great dog make an effort to reach the major’s hand, but the attempt resulted in a painful moan; a shudder, a faint struggle, and death.
“I’ll swear it was not my shot killed him,” cried Rolph excitedly.
“Say no more about it,” said Sir John; “it was an accident. I’d sooner one of the scoundrels had had it in his skin, though. I wouldn’t have taken fifty pounds for that dog.”
“Poor old fellow!” said the major, who was kneeling beside the dog, and he stroked the great ears; “but,” he added softly to himself, “I’ve had enough of blood: thank God it was not a man.”
A series of loud whistles brought back some of the scattered forces, the men meeting with such an ovation from Sir John that they began to think they had better have had it out honourably with the poachers; and then a stout sapling was cut down, and the dog’s paws being tied, he was carried home to the stable-yard on the shoulders of two watchers.
After this, there was much beer drinking in the servant’s-hall, and much discussion in the library, where a piece of sticking-plaister was sufficient to remedy Rolph’s wound, his arm was bathed, and Glynne did not faint.
Rolph soon after retired for the night, the major noting that he was looking very pale and uneasy. Twice over he went and looked at himself in the glass, and once he shuddered and stood staring over his shoulder, as if expecting to see someone there.
“Man can’t help his gun going off in the excitement of an action,” he said slowly. “What a fool I was not to own up that I had shot the big dog.”
“Well, they shouldn’t poach,” he muttered at last; and, lighting a cigar, he sat smoking for an hour before going to bed to sleep soundly, awake fairly fresh the next morning, and go out for what he termed “a breather.”
Volume Two—Chapter Six.Errant Courses.Lucy Alleyne was very pretty. Everybody said so—that she was pretty. No one said that she was beautiful. Now, Lucy was well aware of what people said, and, without being conceited, she very well knew that what people said was true. In fact, she often admired her pretty littleretroussénose and creamy skin in the glass, and, with a latent idea that she ought to preserve her good looks as much as possible for some one. She thought of the favoured person as “some one,” and tried in every way possible to lead a healthy life.To attain the above end, she strove hard to improve her complexion. It did not need improving, being perfect in its shades of pink and creamy white, that somehow put him who gazed upon her in mind of aGloire de Dijonrose; but she tried to improve it all the same, laughingly telling herself that she would wash it in morning dew, or rather let Nature perform the operation, as she went for a good early walk.The pine woods and copses looked as if trouble could never come within their shades, and the last thing any one would have dreamed of would have been the possibility of men meeting there with sticks, bludgeons, and guns, ready to resist capture on the one side, to effect it on the other, and, if needs be, use their weapons to the staining of the earth with blood.No news of the past night’s encounter had reached The Firs. Moray Alleyne, while watching the crossing of a star in the zenith over certain threads of cobweb in the field of his transit instrument had heard the reports of guns; but he was too much intent upon his work to pay heed to what was by no means an unusual circumstance. Lucy, too, had started into wakefulness once, thinking she heard a sound, but only to sink back to her rest once more; and as she walked that morning she saw no sign of struggle, though, had she turned off to the right amongst the pines, she might have found one or two ugly traces, as if a burden had had been laid down by those who bore it while they rested for a few minutes, and while a bit of rough surgery was being performed.The lovely silvery mists were hanging about in the little valleys, or curling around the tops, as if spreading veils over the sombre pines, patches of which, as seen in the early morning sunshine, resembled the dark green and purple plaid of some Scottish clan; and as Lucy reached the edge of the far-stretching common land, dazzled by the brilliancy of the sunshine, and elated by the purity of the morning air, she paused to enjoy the beauty of the lovely scene around.“How stupid people are!” she said half aloud. “How can they call this place desolate and ugly. Why, there’s something growing everywhere, and the gorse and broom are simply lovely.”There was a soft moisture in her pretty eyes, as they rested on the blue-looking distant hills, the purple stretches of heather, and the rich green lawnlike patches of meadow land, saved from the wilds around. Between the hills there were dark shadowy spots, upon them brilliant bits of sunshine, while on all sides the gauzy, silvery vapours floated low down, waiting for the sun, as it increased in power, to drink them up, and after them the millions of iridescent tiny globules that whitened the herbage like frost.The birds were singing from every patch of woodland in the distance; there was the monotonous “coo coo, coo—coo, coo-hoo-coo!” of a wood-pigeon in the pine tops singing his love-song that he always ends in the middle, and far out over the heathery common lark after lark was circling round and rising, in a wide spiral, up and up into the blue sky as it poured forth the never-wearying strain.“People are as stupid and as dense as can be,” said Lucy. “Ours is a grim-looking home, I know, but oh! how beautiful the country is—I wouldn’t live anywhere else for the world.”There seemed to be no reason for a blush to come into Lucy’s cheeks at this declaration, but one certainly did come, like a ruddy cloud over their soft outline, as she glanced back at the blank-looking pile with the hideous brick additions made by Alleyne for his instruments and observations. Not so much as a thread of smoke rose yet, from either of the chimneys, for Eliza was only at the point that necessitated a vexed rub occasionally at her nose with the woody part of a blacklead brush; Mrs Alleyne was dreaming of her son; and her son, who sought his pillow a couple of hours before—after a long watch of his star as it climbed to the zenith and then went down—to lie and think of Glynne Day, and ask himself whether he was not a scoundrel to allow such thoughts to enter his breast.“How good it is to get up so early,” thought Lucy, aloud; and then she stepped lightly over the dewy grass, marked down the spot where several mushrooms were growing, and then stepped on to the sandy road.“I wish Moray would get up early,” she thought, “it would be so nice to have him for a companion; but, poor fellow, he must be tired of a morning. I know what I’ll do,” she cried suddenly. “I’ll get Glynne to promise to meet me two or three times a week, whenever it’s fine, and we’ll go together.”Her cheeks flushed a little hot as she began to think about Glynne, and her thoughts ran somewhat in this fashion,—“She doesn’t know—she doesn’t understand a bit, or she would never have consented. Oh! it’s absolutely horrid, and I don’t believe he cares for her a morsel more than she cares for him.”Lucy stooped down to pick a mushroom, and laid it aside ready to retrieve as she came back from her walk, for Mrs Alleyne approved of a dish for breakfast.“Why, at the end of a year it would be horrible,” cried Lucy, with emphasis. “Mrs Rolph! What would be the use of being married, if you were miserable, as I’m sure she would be.”“It isn’t dishonourable; and if it is, I don’t mind. I know he is beginning to worship her, and it’s as plain as can be that she likes to sit and listen to him, and all he says about the stars. Why, she seems to grow and alter every day, and to become wiser, and to take more interest in everything he says and does.”“There, I don’t care,” she panted, half-tearfully, as she picked another mushroom; and, as if addressing someone who had had spoken chidingly, “I can’t help it; he is my own dear brother, and I will help him as much as I can. Dishonourable? Not it. It is right, poor fellow! Why, she has come like so much sunshine in his life, and it is as plain as can be to see that she is gradually beginning to know what love really is.”As these thoughts left her heart, she looked guiltily round, but there was no one listening—nothing to take her attention, but a couple of glistening, wet, and silvery-looking mushrooms in the grass hard by.“It’s very dreadful of me to be thinking like this,” she said to herself, as she finished culling the mushrooms, and began to make her way back to the road, “but I can’t help it. I love Glynne, and I won’t see my own brother made miserable, if I can do anything to make him happy. It’s quite dreadful the way things are going, and dear Sir John ought to be ashamed of himself. I declare—Oh! how you made me start!”This was addressed to wet-coated, dissipated rabbit, with a tail like a tuft of white cotton, which little animal started up from its hiding-place at her very feet, and went bounding and scuffling off amongst the heather and furze.“I wish, oh, how I wish that things would go right,” cried Lucy, with tears in her eyes. “I wish I could do something to make Glynne see that he thinks ten times more about his nasty races and matches than he does about her. I don’t believe he loves her a bit. It’s shameful. He’s a beast!”There was another pause, during which the larks went on singing, the wood-pigeon cooed, and there was a pleasant twittering in the nearest plantation.“Poor Glynne! when she might be so happy with a man who really loves her, but who would die sooner than own to it. Oh, dear me! I wish a dreadful war would break out, and Captain Rolph’s regiment be ordered out to India, and the Indians would kill him and eat him, or take him prisoner—I don’t care what, so long as they didn’t let him come back any more, and—”Pat—pat—pat—pat—pat—pat—pat—pat—a regular beat from a short distance off, and evidently coming from round by the other side of a clump of larches, where the road curved and then went away level and straight for about a mile.“Whatever is that?” thought Lucy, whose eyes grew rounder, and who stared wonderingly in the direction of the sound. “It can’t be a rabbit, I’m quite sure.”She was perfectly right; it was not a rabbit, as she saw quite plainly the next minute, when a curious-looking figure in white, braided and trimmed with blue, but bare-armed, bare-legged and bare-headed, came suddenly into view, with head forward, fists clenched, and held up on a level with its chest, and running at a steady, well-sustained pace right in the middle of the sandy road.It was a surprise for both.“Captain Rolph!” exclaimed Lucy, as the figure stopped short, panting heavily, and looking a good deal surprised.“Miss Alleyne! Beg pardon. Didn’t expect to see anybody so early. Really.”Lucy felt as if she would like to run away, but that she felt would be cowardly, so she stood her ground, and made, sensibly enough, the best of matters in what was decidedly a rather awkward encounter.“I often come for an early walk,” said the girl, coolly as to speech, though she felt rather hot. “Is this—is this for amateur theatricals?”It would have been wiser not to allude to the captain’s costume, but the words slipped out, and they came like a relief to him, for he, too, had felt tolerably confused. As it was his features expanded into a broad grin, and he then laughed aloud.“Theatricals? Why, bless your innocence, no. I am in training for a race—foot-race—ten miles—man who does it in shortest time gets the cup. I give him—”“Him?” said Lucy, for her companion had paused.“Yes, him,” said the captain. “Champion to run against.”“Run against?” said Lucy, glancing at a great blue bruise upon the captain’s arm and a piece of sticking-plaister upon his forehead. “Do you hurt yourself like that when you run against men?”“Haw, haw, haw! Haw, haw, haw!” laughed the captain. “I beg pardon, but, really, you are such a daisy. So innocent, you know. That was done last night out in the woods. Bit of a row with some poacher chaps. One of them hit me with a stick on the head. That’s from the butt of a gun.”He gave the bruise on his bare arm a slap, and laughed, while Lucy coloured with shame and annoyance, but resolved to ignore the captain’s rather peculiar appearance, and escape as soon as she could.“I ought not to mind,” she said to herself. “It’s only rather French. Like the pictures one sees in the illustrated papers about Trouville.”“Were you fighting?”“Well, yes,” he said indifferently, “bit of a scrimmage. Nothing to mind. People who preserve often meet with that sort of a thing. I did run against a fellow, though,” he continued, laughing. “But that’s not the sort of running against I meant. I’m going to do a foot-race. Matched against a low sort of fellow.”“Oh!” said Lucy, looking straight before her.“Professional, you know; but I’m going to run him—take the conceit out of the cad. Bad thing conceit.”“Extremely,” said Lucy tightening her lips.“Horrid. I’m going to give him fifty yards.”“Oh!” said Lucy, gravely, as she took a step forward without looking at the captain. “But don’t let me hinder you. I was only taking my morning walk.”“Don’t hinder me a bit,” said the captain. “I was just going to put on the finishing spurt, and end at that cross path. I’ve as good as done it, and I’m in prime condition.”“Bad thing conceit,” said Lucy to herself.“Fresh as a daisy.”“Horrid,” said Lucy again to herself.“I feel as if I could regularly run away from him. My legs are as hard as nails.”“Indeed!”“Oh, yes. I haven’t trained like this for nothing. Don’t you think you’ve hindered me. I sha’n’t trouble about it any more.”All this while Lucy was trying to escape from her companion, but it was rather a wild idea to trudge away from a man whose legs were as hard as nails. As she walked on, though, she found herself wondering whether the finishing spurt that the captain talked of putting on was some kind of garment, as she kept steadily along, with, to her great disgust, the captain keeping coolly enough by her side, and evidently feeling quite at home, beginning to chat about the weather, the advantages of early rising, and the like.“I declare,” thought Lucy, “if I met anyone, I should be ready to sink through the ground for shame. I wish he’d go.”“Some people waste half their days in bed, Miss Alleyne. Glad to see you don’t. I’ve been up these two hours, and feel, as they say, as fit as a fiddle, and, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, you look just the same you do really, you know.”He cast an admiring glance at her, which she noted, and for the moment it frightened her, then it fired a train, and a mischievous flash darted from her eyes.This was delicious, and though her cheeks glowed a little, perhaps from the exercise, her heart gave a great leap, and began to rejoice.“I knew he was not worthy of her,” she thought. “The wretch! I won’t run away, though I want to very badly.” And she walked calmly on by his side.“Don’t you find this place dull?” said Rolph.“Dull? oh dear no,” cried Lucy, looking brightly up in his face, and recalling at the same time that this must be at least the tenth time she had answered this question.“I wish you’d let my mother call upon you, and you’d come up to the Hall a little oftener, Miss Alleyne, ’pon my honour I do.”“Why, I do come as often as I am asked, Captain Rolph,” said Lucy with a mischievous look in her eyes.“Do you, though? Well, never mind, come oftener.”“Why?” said Lucy, with an innocent look of wonder in her round eyes.“Why? because I want to see you, you know. It’s precious dull there sometimes.”“What, with Glynne there?” cried Lucy.“Oh yes, sometimes. She reads so much.”“Fie, Captain Rolph!”“No, no; nonsense. Oh, I say, though, I wish you would.”“Really, Captain Rolph, I don’t understand you,” said Lucy, who was in a flutter of fright, mischief and triumph combined.“Oh yes, you do,” he said, “but hold hard a minute. Back directly.”He ran from her out to where something was hanging on a broken branch of a pine, and returned directly, putting on a flannel cricketing cap, and a long, hooded ulster, which, when buttoned up, gave him somewhat the aspect of a friar of orders grey, who had left his beads at home.“You do understand me,” he said, not noticing the mirthful twinkle in Lucy’s eye at his absurd appearance. “Oh yes, you do. It’s all right. I say, Lucy Alleyne, what a one you are.”Lucy’s eyebrows went up a little at this remark, but she did not assume displeasure, she only looked at him inquiringly.“Oh, it’s all right,” he said again. “I am glad I met you, it’s so precious dull down here.”“What, when you have all your training to see to, Captain Rolph.”“Oh, yes; awfully dull. You see Glynne doesn’t take any interest in a fellow’s pursuits. She used to at first, but now it’s always books.”“But you should teach her to be interested, Captain Rolph.”“Oh, I say, hang it all, Lucy Alleyne, can’t you drop that captaining of a fellow when we’re out heretête-à-tête. It’s all very well up at the Hall but not here, and so early in the morning, we needn’t be quite so formal, eh?”“Just as you like,” said Lucy, with the malicious twinkle in her eyes on the increase.“That’s right,” cried Rolph; “and, I say, you know, come, own up—you did, didn’t you?”“Did what?” cried Lucy.“Know I was training this morning.”“Indeed, no,” cried Lucy, indignantly, with a look that in no wise abashed the captain.“Oh, come now, that won’t do,” cried Rolph. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”“I’m not a bit ashamed,” cried Lucy stoutly; and then to herself, “Oh yes, I am—horribly. What a fright, to be sure!”“That’s right,” cried Rolph, “but I know you did come, and I say I’m awfully flattered, I am, indeed. I wish, you know, you’d take a little more interest in our matches and engagements: it would make it so much pleasanter for a fellow.”“Would it?” said Lucy.“Would it? Why, of course it would. You see I should feel more like those chaps used, in the good old times, you know, when they used to bring the wreaths and prizes they had won, and lay ’em at ladies’ feet, only that was confoundedly silly, of course. I don’t believe in that romantic sort of work.”“Oh, but that was at the feet of their lady-loves,” said Lucy, quickly.“Never mind about that,” replied Rolph; “must have someone to talk to about my engagements. It’s half the fun.”“Go and talk to Glynne, then,” said Lucy.“That’s no use, I tell you. She doesn’t care asoufor the best bit of time made in anything. Here, I believe,” he said, warmly, “if that what’s-his-name chap, who said he’d put a girdle round the globe in less than no time, had done it, and come back to Glynne and told her so, she’d just lift up her eyes—”“Her beautiful eyes,” said Lucy, interrupting.“Oh, yes, she’s got nice eyes enough,” said Rolph, sulkily; “but she’d only have raised ’em for a moment and looked at him, and said—‘Have you really.’ Here, I say, Puck’s the chap I mean.”“I don’t think Glynne’s very fond of athletic sports,” said Lucy.“No, but you are; I know you are. Come, it’s of no use to deny it. I say I am glad.”“Why, the monster’s going to make love to me,” said Lucy to herself.“You are now, aren’t you?”“Well, I don’t dislike them,” said Lucy; “not very much.”“Not you; and, I say, I may talk to you a bit about my engagements, mayn’t I?”“Really, Captain Rolph,” replied Lucy, demurely, “I hardly know what to say to such a proposal as this. To how many ladies are you engaged?”“Ladies? Engaged? Oh, come now! I say, you know, you don’t mean that. I say, you’re chaffing me, you know.”“But you said engaged, and I knew you were engaged to Glynne Day,” cried Lucy, innocently.“Oh, but you know I meant engagements to run at athletic meetings. Of course I’m only engaged to Glynne, but that’s no reason why a man shouldn’t have a bit of a chat to any one else—any one pretty and sympathetic, and who took an interest in a fellow’s pursuits. I say, I’ve got a wonderful match on, Lucy.”“How dare he call me Lucy!” she thought; and an indignant flash from her eyes fell upon a white-topped button mushroom beside the road. “A pretty wretch to be engaged to poor Glynne. Oh, how stupid she must be!”The mushroom was not snatched up, and Rolph went on talking, with his hands far down in the pockets of his ulster.“It’s no end of a good thing, and I’m sure to win. It’s to pick up five hundred stones put five yards apart, and bring ’em back and put ’em in a basket one at a time; so that, you see, I have to do—twice five yards is ten yards the first time, and then twice ten yards the second time; and then twice twenty yards is forty yards the third time, and then twice forty yards is eighty yards the fourth time, and—Here, I say, I’m getting into a knot, I could do it if I had a pencil.”“But I thought you would have to run.”“Yes; so I have. I mean to tot up on a piece of paper. It’s five yards more twice over each time, you know, and mounts up tremendously before you’re done; but I’ve made up my mind to do it, and I will.”“All that’s very brave of you,” cried Lucy, looking him most shamelessly full in the eyes, and keeping her own very still to conceal the twitching mischief that was seeking to make puckers and dimples in all parts of her pretty face.“Well,” he said, heavily, “you can’t quite call it brave. It’s plucky, though,” he added, with a self-satisfied smile. “There are not many fellows in my position who would do it.”“Oh, no, I suppose not,” said Lucy, with truthful earnestness this time; and then to herself: “He’s worse than I thought.”“Now that’s what I like, you know,” exclaimed Rolph. “That’s what I want—a sort of sympathy, you know. To feel that when I’m doing my best to win some cup or belt there’s one somewhere who takes an interest in it, and is glad for me to win. Do you see?”“Oh, of course I am glad for you to win, if it pleases you,” said Lucy, demurely.“But it doesn’t please me if it doesn’t please you,” cried Rolph. “I’ve won such a heap of times, that I don’t care for it much, unless there should be some one I could come and tell about it all.”“Then why not tell Glynne?” said Lucy, opening her limpid eyes, and gazing full in the captain’s face.“Because it’s of no use,” cried Rolph. “I’ve tried till I’m sick of trying. I want to tell you.”“Oh, but you mustn’t tell me,” said Lucy.“Oh, yes I must, and I’m going to begin now. I shall tell you all my ventures, and what I win, and when I am going to train; and—I say, Lucy, you did come out this morning to see me train?”“Indeed, I did not,” she cried; “and even if I had, I should not tell you so.”“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Rolph, laughing. “I’m satisfied.”“What a monster for poor Glynne to be engaged to. I believe, if I were to encourage him, he’d break off his engagement.”“I am glad I met you,” said Rolph, suddenly, and he went a little closer to Lucy, who started aside into the wet grass, and glanced hastily round. “Why, what are you doing?” he said.“I wanted to pick that mushroom,” she said.“Oh, never mind the mushrooms, you’ll make your little feet wet, and I want to talk to you. I say, I’m going to train again to-morrow morning. You’ll come, won’t you. Pray do!—Who’s this?”Both started, for, having approached unheard, his pony’s paces muffled by the turf, Philip Oldroyd cantered by them, gazing hard at Lucy, and raising his hat stiffly to Rolph, as he went past.“Confound him! Where did he spring from?” cried Rolph. “Why, he quite startled you,” he continued, for Lucy’s face, which had flushed crimson, now turned of a pale waxen hue.“Oh, no; it is nothing,” she said, as a tremor ran through her frame, and she hesitated as to what she should do, ending by exclaiming suddenly that she must go back home at once.“But you’ll come and see me train to-morrow morning,” said Rolph.“No, no. Oh, no. I could not,” cried Lucy; and she turned and hurried away.“But you will come,” said Rolph, gazing after her. “I’ll lay two to one—five to one—fifty to one—she comes. She’s caught—wired—netted. Pretty little rustic-looking thing. I rather like the little lassie; she’s so fresh and innocent. I wonder what dignified Madame Glynne would say. Bet a hundred to one little Lucy’s thinking about me now, and making up her mind to come.”He was right; Lucy was thinking about him, and wishing he had been at the bottom of the sea that morning before he had met her.“Oh, what will Mr Oldroyd think?” she sobbed, as the tears ran down her face. “It’s nothing to him, and he’s nothing to me; but it’s horrible for him to have seen me walking out at this time in the morning, andalone, with that stupid, common, racing, betting creature, whom I absolutely abominate.”She walked on, weeping silently for a few minutes before resuming her self-reproaches.“I’m afraid it was very wicked and wrong and forward of me, but I did so want to know whether he really cared for Glynne. And he doesn’t—he doesn’t—he does not,” she sobbed passionately. “He’s a wicked, bad, empty-headed, deceitful monster; and he’d make Glynne wretched all her life. Why, he was making love to me, and talking slightingly of her all the time.”Here there was another burst of sobs, in the midst of which, and the accompanying blinding tears, she stooped down to pick another mushroom, but only to viciously throw it away, for it to fall bottom upwards impaled upon the sharp thorns of a green furze bush close at hand.“I don’t care,” she cried; “they may think what they like, both of them, and they may say what they like. I was trying to fight my poor, dear, injured, darling brother’s battle, and to make things happier for him, and if I’m a martyr through it, I will be, and I don’t care a pin.”She was walking on, blinded by the veil of tears that fell from her eyes, seeing nothing, hearing nothing of the song of birds and the whirr and hum of the insect world. The morning was now glorious, and the wild, desolate common land was full of beauty; but Lucy’s heart was sore with trouble, and outburst followed outburst as she went homeward.“I’ve found him out, though, after all, and it’s worth every pain I may feel, and Glynne shall know what a wretch he is, and then she’ll turn to poor, dear Moray, and he’ll be happy once again. Poor fellow, how he has suffered, and without a word, believing that there was no hope for him when there is; and I don’t care, I’m growing reckless now; I’d even let Glynne see how unworthy Captain Rolph is, by going to meet him. It doesn’t matter a bit, people will believe I’m weak and silly; and if the captain were to boast that he had won me, everybody would believe him. Oh, it’s dreadful, dreadful, I want to do mischief to some one else and—and—and—but I don’t care, not a bit. Yes, I do,” she sobbed bitterly. “Everybody will think me a weak, foolish, untrustworthy girl, and it will break my heart, and—oh!”Lucy stopped short, tear-blinded, having nearly run against an obstacle in the way.The obstacle was Lucy’s mental definition of “everybody,” who would think slightingly of her now.For “everybody” was seated upon a pony, waiting evidently for her to come.
Lucy Alleyne was very pretty. Everybody said so—that she was pretty. No one said that she was beautiful. Now, Lucy was well aware of what people said, and, without being conceited, she very well knew that what people said was true. In fact, she often admired her pretty littleretroussénose and creamy skin in the glass, and, with a latent idea that she ought to preserve her good looks as much as possible for some one. She thought of the favoured person as “some one,” and tried in every way possible to lead a healthy life.
To attain the above end, she strove hard to improve her complexion. It did not need improving, being perfect in its shades of pink and creamy white, that somehow put him who gazed upon her in mind of aGloire de Dijonrose; but she tried to improve it all the same, laughingly telling herself that she would wash it in morning dew, or rather let Nature perform the operation, as she went for a good early walk.
The pine woods and copses looked as if trouble could never come within their shades, and the last thing any one would have dreamed of would have been the possibility of men meeting there with sticks, bludgeons, and guns, ready to resist capture on the one side, to effect it on the other, and, if needs be, use their weapons to the staining of the earth with blood.
No news of the past night’s encounter had reached The Firs. Moray Alleyne, while watching the crossing of a star in the zenith over certain threads of cobweb in the field of his transit instrument had heard the reports of guns; but he was too much intent upon his work to pay heed to what was by no means an unusual circumstance. Lucy, too, had started into wakefulness once, thinking she heard a sound, but only to sink back to her rest once more; and as she walked that morning she saw no sign of struggle, though, had she turned off to the right amongst the pines, she might have found one or two ugly traces, as if a burden had had been laid down by those who bore it while they rested for a few minutes, and while a bit of rough surgery was being performed.
The lovely silvery mists were hanging about in the little valleys, or curling around the tops, as if spreading veils over the sombre pines, patches of which, as seen in the early morning sunshine, resembled the dark green and purple plaid of some Scottish clan; and as Lucy reached the edge of the far-stretching common land, dazzled by the brilliancy of the sunshine, and elated by the purity of the morning air, she paused to enjoy the beauty of the lovely scene around.
“How stupid people are!” she said half aloud. “How can they call this place desolate and ugly. Why, there’s something growing everywhere, and the gorse and broom are simply lovely.”
There was a soft moisture in her pretty eyes, as they rested on the blue-looking distant hills, the purple stretches of heather, and the rich green lawnlike patches of meadow land, saved from the wilds around. Between the hills there were dark shadowy spots, upon them brilliant bits of sunshine, while on all sides the gauzy, silvery vapours floated low down, waiting for the sun, as it increased in power, to drink them up, and after them the millions of iridescent tiny globules that whitened the herbage like frost.
The birds were singing from every patch of woodland in the distance; there was the monotonous “coo coo, coo—coo, coo-hoo-coo!” of a wood-pigeon in the pine tops singing his love-song that he always ends in the middle, and far out over the heathery common lark after lark was circling round and rising, in a wide spiral, up and up into the blue sky as it poured forth the never-wearying strain.
“People are as stupid and as dense as can be,” said Lucy. “Ours is a grim-looking home, I know, but oh! how beautiful the country is—I wouldn’t live anywhere else for the world.”
There seemed to be no reason for a blush to come into Lucy’s cheeks at this declaration, but one certainly did come, like a ruddy cloud over their soft outline, as she glanced back at the blank-looking pile with the hideous brick additions made by Alleyne for his instruments and observations. Not so much as a thread of smoke rose yet, from either of the chimneys, for Eliza was only at the point that necessitated a vexed rub occasionally at her nose with the woody part of a blacklead brush; Mrs Alleyne was dreaming of her son; and her son, who sought his pillow a couple of hours before—after a long watch of his star as it climbed to the zenith and then went down—to lie and think of Glynne Day, and ask himself whether he was not a scoundrel to allow such thoughts to enter his breast.
“How good it is to get up so early,” thought Lucy, aloud; and then she stepped lightly over the dewy grass, marked down the spot where several mushrooms were growing, and then stepped on to the sandy road.
“I wish Moray would get up early,” she thought, “it would be so nice to have him for a companion; but, poor fellow, he must be tired of a morning. I know what I’ll do,” she cried suddenly. “I’ll get Glynne to promise to meet me two or three times a week, whenever it’s fine, and we’ll go together.”
Her cheeks flushed a little hot as she began to think about Glynne, and her thoughts ran somewhat in this fashion,—
“She doesn’t know—she doesn’t understand a bit, or she would never have consented. Oh! it’s absolutely horrid, and I don’t believe he cares for her a morsel more than she cares for him.”
Lucy stooped down to pick a mushroom, and laid it aside ready to retrieve as she came back from her walk, for Mrs Alleyne approved of a dish for breakfast.
“Why, at the end of a year it would be horrible,” cried Lucy, with emphasis. “Mrs Rolph! What would be the use of being married, if you were miserable, as I’m sure she would be.”
“It isn’t dishonourable; and if it is, I don’t mind. I know he is beginning to worship her, and it’s as plain as can be that she likes to sit and listen to him, and all he says about the stars. Why, she seems to grow and alter every day, and to become wiser, and to take more interest in everything he says and does.”
“There, I don’t care,” she panted, half-tearfully, as she picked another mushroom; and, as if addressing someone who had had spoken chidingly, “I can’t help it; he is my own dear brother, and I will help him as much as I can. Dishonourable? Not it. It is right, poor fellow! Why, she has come like so much sunshine in his life, and it is as plain as can be to see that she is gradually beginning to know what love really is.”
As these thoughts left her heart, she looked guiltily round, but there was no one listening—nothing to take her attention, but a couple of glistening, wet, and silvery-looking mushrooms in the grass hard by.
“It’s very dreadful of me to be thinking like this,” she said to herself, as she finished culling the mushrooms, and began to make her way back to the road, “but I can’t help it. I love Glynne, and I won’t see my own brother made miserable, if I can do anything to make him happy. It’s quite dreadful the way things are going, and dear Sir John ought to be ashamed of himself. I declare—Oh! how you made me start!”
This was addressed to wet-coated, dissipated rabbit, with a tail like a tuft of white cotton, which little animal started up from its hiding-place at her very feet, and went bounding and scuffling off amongst the heather and furze.
“I wish, oh, how I wish that things would go right,” cried Lucy, with tears in her eyes. “I wish I could do something to make Glynne see that he thinks ten times more about his nasty races and matches than he does about her. I don’t believe he loves her a bit. It’s shameful. He’s a beast!”
There was another pause, during which the larks went on singing, the wood-pigeon cooed, and there was a pleasant twittering in the nearest plantation.
“Poor Glynne! when she might be so happy with a man who really loves her, but who would die sooner than own to it. Oh, dear me! I wish a dreadful war would break out, and Captain Rolph’s regiment be ordered out to India, and the Indians would kill him and eat him, or take him prisoner—I don’t care what, so long as they didn’t let him come back any more, and—”
Pat—pat—pat—pat—pat—pat—pat—pat—a regular beat from a short distance off, and evidently coming from round by the other side of a clump of larches, where the road curved and then went away level and straight for about a mile.
“Whatever is that?” thought Lucy, whose eyes grew rounder, and who stared wonderingly in the direction of the sound. “It can’t be a rabbit, I’m quite sure.”
She was perfectly right; it was not a rabbit, as she saw quite plainly the next minute, when a curious-looking figure in white, braided and trimmed with blue, but bare-armed, bare-legged and bare-headed, came suddenly into view, with head forward, fists clenched, and held up on a level with its chest, and running at a steady, well-sustained pace right in the middle of the sandy road.
It was a surprise for both.
“Captain Rolph!” exclaimed Lucy, as the figure stopped short, panting heavily, and looking a good deal surprised.
“Miss Alleyne! Beg pardon. Didn’t expect to see anybody so early. Really.”
Lucy felt as if she would like to run away, but that she felt would be cowardly, so she stood her ground, and made, sensibly enough, the best of matters in what was decidedly a rather awkward encounter.
“I often come for an early walk,” said the girl, coolly as to speech, though she felt rather hot. “Is this—is this for amateur theatricals?”
It would have been wiser not to allude to the captain’s costume, but the words slipped out, and they came like a relief to him, for he, too, had felt tolerably confused. As it was his features expanded into a broad grin, and he then laughed aloud.
“Theatricals? Why, bless your innocence, no. I am in training for a race—foot-race—ten miles—man who does it in shortest time gets the cup. I give him—”
“Him?” said Lucy, for her companion had paused.
“Yes, him,” said the captain. “Champion to run against.”
“Run against?” said Lucy, glancing at a great blue bruise upon the captain’s arm and a piece of sticking-plaister upon his forehead. “Do you hurt yourself like that when you run against men?”
“Haw, haw, haw! Haw, haw, haw!” laughed the captain. “I beg pardon, but, really, you are such a daisy. So innocent, you know. That was done last night out in the woods. Bit of a row with some poacher chaps. One of them hit me with a stick on the head. That’s from the butt of a gun.”
He gave the bruise on his bare arm a slap, and laughed, while Lucy coloured with shame and annoyance, but resolved to ignore the captain’s rather peculiar appearance, and escape as soon as she could.
“I ought not to mind,” she said to herself. “It’s only rather French. Like the pictures one sees in the illustrated papers about Trouville.”
“Were you fighting?”
“Well, yes,” he said indifferently, “bit of a scrimmage. Nothing to mind. People who preserve often meet with that sort of a thing. I did run against a fellow, though,” he continued, laughing. “But that’s not the sort of running against I meant. I’m going to do a foot-race. Matched against a low sort of fellow.”
“Oh!” said Lucy, looking straight before her.
“Professional, you know; but I’m going to run him—take the conceit out of the cad. Bad thing conceit.”
“Extremely,” said Lucy tightening her lips.
“Horrid. I’m going to give him fifty yards.”
“Oh!” said Lucy, gravely, as she took a step forward without looking at the captain. “But don’t let me hinder you. I was only taking my morning walk.”
“Don’t hinder me a bit,” said the captain. “I was just going to put on the finishing spurt, and end at that cross path. I’ve as good as done it, and I’m in prime condition.”
“Bad thing conceit,” said Lucy to herself.
“Fresh as a daisy.”
“Horrid,” said Lucy again to herself.
“I feel as if I could regularly run away from him. My legs are as hard as nails.”
“Indeed!”
“Oh, yes. I haven’t trained like this for nothing. Don’t you think you’ve hindered me. I sha’n’t trouble about it any more.”
All this while Lucy was trying to escape from her companion, but it was rather a wild idea to trudge away from a man whose legs were as hard as nails. As she walked on, though, she found herself wondering whether the finishing spurt that the captain talked of putting on was some kind of garment, as she kept steadily along, with, to her great disgust, the captain keeping coolly enough by her side, and evidently feeling quite at home, beginning to chat about the weather, the advantages of early rising, and the like.
“I declare,” thought Lucy, “if I met anyone, I should be ready to sink through the ground for shame. I wish he’d go.”
“Some people waste half their days in bed, Miss Alleyne. Glad to see you don’t. I’ve been up these two hours, and feel, as they say, as fit as a fiddle, and, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, you look just the same you do really, you know.”
He cast an admiring glance at her, which she noted, and for the moment it frightened her, then it fired a train, and a mischievous flash darted from her eyes.
This was delicious, and though her cheeks glowed a little, perhaps from the exercise, her heart gave a great leap, and began to rejoice.
“I knew he was not worthy of her,” she thought. “The wretch! I won’t run away, though I want to very badly.” And she walked calmly on by his side.
“Don’t you find this place dull?” said Rolph.
“Dull? oh dear no,” cried Lucy, looking brightly up in his face, and recalling at the same time that this must be at least the tenth time she had answered this question.
“I wish you’d let my mother call upon you, and you’d come up to the Hall a little oftener, Miss Alleyne, ’pon my honour I do.”
“Why, I do come as often as I am asked, Captain Rolph,” said Lucy with a mischievous look in her eyes.
“Do you, though? Well, never mind, come oftener.”
“Why?” said Lucy, with an innocent look of wonder in her round eyes.
“Why? because I want to see you, you know. It’s precious dull there sometimes.”
“What, with Glynne there?” cried Lucy.
“Oh yes, sometimes. She reads so much.”
“Fie, Captain Rolph!”
“No, no; nonsense. Oh, I say, though, I wish you would.”
“Really, Captain Rolph, I don’t understand you,” said Lucy, who was in a flutter of fright, mischief and triumph combined.
“Oh yes, you do,” he said, “but hold hard a minute. Back directly.”
He ran from her out to where something was hanging on a broken branch of a pine, and returned directly, putting on a flannel cricketing cap, and a long, hooded ulster, which, when buttoned up, gave him somewhat the aspect of a friar of orders grey, who had left his beads at home.
“You do understand me,” he said, not noticing the mirthful twinkle in Lucy’s eye at his absurd appearance. “Oh yes, you do. It’s all right. I say, Lucy Alleyne, what a one you are.”
Lucy’s eyebrows went up a little at this remark, but she did not assume displeasure, she only looked at him inquiringly.
“Oh, it’s all right,” he said again. “I am glad I met you, it’s so precious dull down here.”
“What, when you have all your training to see to, Captain Rolph.”
“Oh, yes; awfully dull. You see Glynne doesn’t take any interest in a fellow’s pursuits. She used to at first, but now it’s always books.”
“But you should teach her to be interested, Captain Rolph.”
“Oh, I say, hang it all, Lucy Alleyne, can’t you drop that captaining of a fellow when we’re out heretête-à-tête. It’s all very well up at the Hall but not here, and so early in the morning, we needn’t be quite so formal, eh?”
“Just as you like,” said Lucy, with the malicious twinkle in her eyes on the increase.
“That’s right,” cried Rolph; “and, I say, you know, come, own up—you did, didn’t you?”
“Did what?” cried Lucy.
“Know I was training this morning.”
“Indeed, no,” cried Lucy, indignantly, with a look that in no wise abashed the captain.
“Oh, come now, that won’t do,” cried Rolph. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not a bit ashamed,” cried Lucy stoutly; and then to herself, “Oh yes, I am—horribly. What a fright, to be sure!”
“That’s right,” cried Rolph, “but I know you did come, and I say I’m awfully flattered, I am, indeed. I wish, you know, you’d take a little more interest in our matches and engagements: it would make it so much pleasanter for a fellow.”
“Would it?” said Lucy.
“Would it? Why, of course it would. You see I should feel more like those chaps used, in the good old times, you know, when they used to bring the wreaths and prizes they had won, and lay ’em at ladies’ feet, only that was confoundedly silly, of course. I don’t believe in that romantic sort of work.”
“Oh, but that was at the feet of their lady-loves,” said Lucy, quickly.
“Never mind about that,” replied Rolph; “must have someone to talk to about my engagements. It’s half the fun.”
“Go and talk to Glynne, then,” said Lucy.
“That’s no use, I tell you. She doesn’t care asoufor the best bit of time made in anything. Here, I believe,” he said, warmly, “if that what’s-his-name chap, who said he’d put a girdle round the globe in less than no time, had done it, and come back to Glynne and told her so, she’d just lift up her eyes—”
“Her beautiful eyes,” said Lucy, interrupting.
“Oh, yes, she’s got nice eyes enough,” said Rolph, sulkily; “but she’d only have raised ’em for a moment and looked at him, and said—‘Have you really.’ Here, I say, Puck’s the chap I mean.”
“I don’t think Glynne’s very fond of athletic sports,” said Lucy.
“No, but you are; I know you are. Come, it’s of no use to deny it. I say I am glad.”
“Why, the monster’s going to make love to me,” said Lucy to herself.
“You are now, aren’t you?”
“Well, I don’t dislike them,” said Lucy; “not very much.”
“Not you; and, I say, I may talk to you a bit about my engagements, mayn’t I?”
“Really, Captain Rolph,” replied Lucy, demurely, “I hardly know what to say to such a proposal as this. To how many ladies are you engaged?”
“Ladies? Engaged? Oh, come now! I say, you know, you don’t mean that. I say, you’re chaffing me, you know.”
“But you said engaged, and I knew you were engaged to Glynne Day,” cried Lucy, innocently.
“Oh, but you know I meant engagements to run at athletic meetings. Of course I’m only engaged to Glynne, but that’s no reason why a man shouldn’t have a bit of a chat to any one else—any one pretty and sympathetic, and who took an interest in a fellow’s pursuits. I say, I’ve got a wonderful match on, Lucy.”
“How dare he call me Lucy!” she thought; and an indignant flash from her eyes fell upon a white-topped button mushroom beside the road. “A pretty wretch to be engaged to poor Glynne. Oh, how stupid she must be!”
The mushroom was not snatched up, and Rolph went on talking, with his hands far down in the pockets of his ulster.
“It’s no end of a good thing, and I’m sure to win. It’s to pick up five hundred stones put five yards apart, and bring ’em back and put ’em in a basket one at a time; so that, you see, I have to do—twice five yards is ten yards the first time, and then twice ten yards the second time; and then twice twenty yards is forty yards the third time, and then twice forty yards is eighty yards the fourth time, and—Here, I say, I’m getting into a knot, I could do it if I had a pencil.”
“But I thought you would have to run.”
“Yes; so I have. I mean to tot up on a piece of paper. It’s five yards more twice over each time, you know, and mounts up tremendously before you’re done; but I’ve made up my mind to do it, and I will.”
“All that’s very brave of you,” cried Lucy, looking him most shamelessly full in the eyes, and keeping her own very still to conceal the twitching mischief that was seeking to make puckers and dimples in all parts of her pretty face.
“Well,” he said, heavily, “you can’t quite call it brave. It’s plucky, though,” he added, with a self-satisfied smile. “There are not many fellows in my position who would do it.”
“Oh, no, I suppose not,” said Lucy, with truthful earnestness this time; and then to herself: “He’s worse than I thought.”
“Now that’s what I like, you know,” exclaimed Rolph. “That’s what I want—a sort of sympathy, you know. To feel that when I’m doing my best to win some cup or belt there’s one somewhere who takes an interest in it, and is glad for me to win. Do you see?”
“Oh, of course I am glad for you to win, if it pleases you,” said Lucy, demurely.
“But it doesn’t please me if it doesn’t please you,” cried Rolph. “I’ve won such a heap of times, that I don’t care for it much, unless there should be some one I could come and tell about it all.”
“Then why not tell Glynne?” said Lucy, opening her limpid eyes, and gazing full in the captain’s face.
“Because it’s of no use,” cried Rolph. “I’ve tried till I’m sick of trying. I want to tell you.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t tell me,” said Lucy.
“Oh, yes I must, and I’m going to begin now. I shall tell you all my ventures, and what I win, and when I am going to train; and—I say, Lucy, you did come out this morning to see me train?”
“Indeed, I did not,” she cried; “and even if I had, I should not tell you so.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Rolph, laughing. “I’m satisfied.”
“What a monster for poor Glynne to be engaged to. I believe, if I were to encourage him, he’d break off his engagement.”
“I am glad I met you,” said Rolph, suddenly, and he went a little closer to Lucy, who started aside into the wet grass, and glanced hastily round. “Why, what are you doing?” he said.
“I wanted to pick that mushroom,” she said.
“Oh, never mind the mushrooms, you’ll make your little feet wet, and I want to talk to you. I say, I’m going to train again to-morrow morning. You’ll come, won’t you. Pray do!—Who’s this?”
Both started, for, having approached unheard, his pony’s paces muffled by the turf, Philip Oldroyd cantered by them, gazing hard at Lucy, and raising his hat stiffly to Rolph, as he went past.
“Confound him! Where did he spring from?” cried Rolph. “Why, he quite startled you,” he continued, for Lucy’s face, which had flushed crimson, now turned of a pale waxen hue.
“Oh, no; it is nothing,” she said, as a tremor ran through her frame, and she hesitated as to what she should do, ending by exclaiming suddenly that she must go back home at once.
“But you’ll come and see me train to-morrow morning,” said Rolph.
“No, no. Oh, no. I could not,” cried Lucy; and she turned and hurried away.
“But you will come,” said Rolph, gazing after her. “I’ll lay two to one—five to one—fifty to one—she comes. She’s caught—wired—netted. Pretty little rustic-looking thing. I rather like the little lassie; she’s so fresh and innocent. I wonder what dignified Madame Glynne would say. Bet a hundred to one little Lucy’s thinking about me now, and making up her mind to come.”
He was right; Lucy was thinking about him, and wishing he had been at the bottom of the sea that morning before he had met her.
“Oh, what will Mr Oldroyd think?” she sobbed, as the tears ran down her face. “It’s nothing to him, and he’s nothing to me; but it’s horrible for him to have seen me walking out at this time in the morning, andalone, with that stupid, common, racing, betting creature, whom I absolutely abominate.”
She walked on, weeping silently for a few minutes before resuming her self-reproaches.
“I’m afraid it was very wicked and wrong and forward of me, but I did so want to know whether he really cared for Glynne. And he doesn’t—he doesn’t—he does not,” she sobbed passionately. “He’s a wicked, bad, empty-headed, deceitful monster; and he’d make Glynne wretched all her life. Why, he was making love to me, and talking slightingly of her all the time.”
Here there was another burst of sobs, in the midst of which, and the accompanying blinding tears, she stooped down to pick another mushroom, but only to viciously throw it away, for it to fall bottom upwards impaled upon the sharp thorns of a green furze bush close at hand.
“I don’t care,” she cried; “they may think what they like, both of them, and they may say what they like. I was trying to fight my poor, dear, injured, darling brother’s battle, and to make things happier for him, and if I’m a martyr through it, I will be, and I don’t care a pin.”
She was walking on, blinded by the veil of tears that fell from her eyes, seeing nothing, hearing nothing of the song of birds and the whirr and hum of the insect world. The morning was now glorious, and the wild, desolate common land was full of beauty; but Lucy’s heart was sore with trouble, and outburst followed outburst as she went homeward.
“I’ve found him out, though, after all, and it’s worth every pain I may feel, and Glynne shall know what a wretch he is, and then she’ll turn to poor, dear Moray, and he’ll be happy once again. Poor fellow, how he has suffered, and without a word, believing that there was no hope for him when there is; and I don’t care, I’m growing reckless now; I’d even let Glynne see how unworthy Captain Rolph is, by going to meet him. It doesn’t matter a bit, people will believe I’m weak and silly; and if the captain were to boast that he had won me, everybody would believe him. Oh, it’s dreadful, dreadful, I want to do mischief to some one else and—and—and—but I don’t care, not a bit. Yes, I do,” she sobbed bitterly. “Everybody will think me a weak, foolish, untrustworthy girl, and it will break my heart, and—oh!”
Lucy stopped short, tear-blinded, having nearly run against an obstacle in the way.
The obstacle was Lucy’s mental definition of “everybody,” who would think slightingly of her now.
For “everybody” was seated upon a pony, waiting evidently for her to come.