ANNE ASHTON.
Jabez Gum came out of his house in the bright summer morning, missing Mr.
Elster by one minute only. He went round to a small shed at the back of
the house and brought forth sundry garden-tools. The whole garden was
kept in order by himself, and no one had finer fruit and vegetables than
Clerk Gum. Hartledon might have been proud of them, and Dr. Ashton
sometimes accepted a dish with pleasure.
In his present attire: dark trousers, and a short close jacket buttoned
up round him and generally worn when gardening, the worthy man might
decidedly have been taken for an animated lamp-post by any stranger who
happened to come that way. He was applying himself this morning, first to
the nailing of sundry choice fruit-trees against the wall that ran down
one side of his garden--a wall that had been built by the clerk himself
in happier days; and next, to plucking some green walnuts for his wife to
pickle. As he stood on tip-toe, his long thin body and long thin arms
stretched up to the walnut-tree, he might have made the fortune of any
travelling caravan that could have hired him. The few people who passed
him greeted him with a "Good morning," but he rarely turned his head in
answering them. Clerk Gum had grown somewhat taciturn of late years.
The time went on. The clock struck a quarter-past seven, and Jabez Gum,
as he heard it, left the walnut-tree, walked to the gate, and leaned over
it; his face turned in the direction of the village. It was not the
wooden gate generally attached to smaller houses in rustic localities,
but a very pretty iron one; everything about the clerk's house being
of a superior order. Apparently, he was looking out for some one in
displeasure; and, indeed, he had not stood there a minute, when a girl
came flying down the road, and pushed the gate and the clerk back
together.
Mr. Gum directed her attention to the church clock. "Do you see the time,
Rebecca Jones?"
Had the pages of the church-register been visible as well as the clock,
Miss Rebecca Jones's age might have been seen to be fifteen; but, in
knowledge of the world and in impudence, she was considerably older.
"Just gone seven and a quarter," answered she, making a feint of shading
her eyes with her hands, though the sun was behind her.
"And what business have you to come at seven and a quarter? Half-past six
is your time; and, if you can't keep it, your missis shall get those that
can."
"Why can't my missis let me stop at night and clear up the work?"
returned the girl. "She sends me away at six o'clock, as soon as I've
washed the tea-things, and oftentimes earlier than that. It stands to
reason I can't get through the work of a morning."
"You could do so quite well if you came to time," said the clerk, turning
away to his walnut-tree. "Why don't you?"
"I overslept myself this morning. Father never called me afore he went
out. No doubt he had a drop too much last night."
She went flying up the gravel-path as she spoke. Her father was the man
Jones whom you saw at the railway station; her step-mother (for her own
mother was dead) was Mrs. Gum's cousin.
She was a sort of stray sheep, this girl, in the eyes of Calne, not
belonging very much to any one; her father habitually neglected her, her
step-mother had twice turned her out of doors. Some three or four months
ago, when Mrs. Gum was changing her servant, she had consented to try
this girl. Jabez Gum knew nothing of the arrangement until it was
concluded, and disapproved of it. Altogether, it did not work
satisfactorily: Miss Jones was careless, idle, and impudent; her
step-mother was dissatisfied because she was not taken into the house;
and Clerk Gum threatened every day, and his wife very often, to dismiss
her.
It was only within a year or two that they had not kept an indoor
servant; and the fact of their not doing so now puzzled the gossips of
Calne. The clerk's emoluments were the same as ever; there was no Willy
to encroach on them now; and the work of the house required a good
servant. However, it pleased Mrs. Gum to have one in only by day; and who
was to interfere with her if the clerk did not?
Jabez Gum worked on for some little time after eight o'clock, the
breakfast-hour. He rather wondered he was not called to it, and
registered a mental vow to discharge Miss Becky. Presently he went
indoors, put his head into a small sitting-room on the left, and found
the room empty, but the breakfast laid. The kitchen was behind it, and
Jabez Gum stalked on down the passage, and went into it. On the other
side of the passage was the best sitting-room, and a very small room at
the back of it, which Jabez used as an office, and where he kept sundry
account-books.
"Where's your missis?" asked he of the maid, who was on her knees
toasting bread.
"Not down yet," was the short response.
"Not down yet!" repeated Jabez in surprise, for Mrs. Gum was generally
down by seven. "You've got that door open again, Rebecca. How many more
times am I to tell you I won't have it?"
"It's the smoke," said Rebecca. "This chimbley always smokes when it's
first lighted."
"The chimney doesn't smoke, and you know that you are telling a
falsehood. What do you want with it open? You'll have that wild man
darting in upon you some morning. How will you like that?"
"I'm not afeard of him," was the answer, as Rebecca got up from her
knees. "He couldn't eat me."
"But you know how timid your mistress is," returned the clerk, in a voice
of extreme anger. "How dare you, girl, be insolent?"
He shut the door as he spoke--one that opened from the kitchen to the
back garden--and bolted it. Washing his hands, and drying them with a
round towel, he went upstairs, and found Mrs. Gum--as he had now and then
found her of late--in a fit of prostration. She was a little woman, with
a light complexion, and insipid, unmeaning face--some such a face as
Willy's had been--and her hair, worn in neat bands under her cap, was the
colour of tow.
"I couldn't help it, Gum," she began, as she stood before the glass, her
trembling fingers trying to fasten her black alpaca gown--for she had
never left off mourning for their son. "It's past eight, I know; but I've
had such an upset this morning as never was, and I _couldn't_ dress
myself. I've had a shocking dream."
"Drat your dreams!" cried Mr. Gum, very much wanting his breakfast.
"Ah, Gum, don't! Those morning dreams, when they're vivid as this was,
are not sent for ridicule. Pike was in it; and you know I can't _bear_
him to be in my dreams. They are always bad when he is in them."
"If you wanted your breakfast as much as I want mine, you'd let Pike
alone," retorted the clerk.
"I thought he was mixed up in some business with Lord Hartledon. I don't
know what it was, but the dream was full of horror. It seemed that Lord
Hartledon was dead or dying; whether he'd been killed or not, I can't
say; but an awful dread was upon me of seeing him dead. A voice called
out, 'Don't let him come to Calne!' and in the fright I awoke. I can't
remember what part Pike played in the dream," she continued, "only the
impression remained that he was in it."
"Perhaps he killed Lord Hartledon?" cried Gum, mockingly.
"No; not in the dream. Pike did not seem to be mixed up in it for ill.
The ill was all on Lord Hartledon; but it was not Pike brought it upon
him. Who it was, I couldn't see; but it was not Pike."
Clerk Gum looked down at his wife in scornful pity. He wondered
sometimes, in his phlegmatic reasoning, why women were created such
fools.
"Look here, Mrs. G. I thought those dreams of yours were pretty nearly
dreamed out--there have been enough of 'em. How any woman, short of a
born idiot, can stand there and confess herself so frightened by a dream
as to be unable to get up and go about her duties, is beyond me."
"But, Gum, you don't let me finish. I woke up with the horror, I tell
you--"
"What horror?" interrupted the clerk, angrily. "What did it consist of?
I can't see the horror."
"Nor can I, very clearly," acknowledged Mrs. Gum; "but I know it was
there. I woke up with the very words in my ears, 'Don't let him come to
Calne!' and I started out of bed in terror for Lord Hartledon, lest he
_should_ come. We are only half awake, you know, at these moments. I
pulled the curtain aside and looked out. Gum, if ever I thought to drop
in my life, I thought it then. There was but one person to be seen in the
road--and it was Lord Hartledon."
"Oh!" said Mr. Gum, cynically, after a moment of natural surprise. "Come
out of his vault for a morning walk past your window, Mrs. G.!"
"Vault! I mean young Lord Hartledon, Gum."
Mr. Gum was a little taken back. They had been so much in the habit of
calling the new Lord Hartledon, Lord Elster--who had not lived at Calne
since he came into the title--that he had thought of the old lord when
his wife was speaking.
"He was up there, just by the turning of the road, going on to Hartledon.
Gum, I nearly dropped, I say. The next minute he was out of sight; then I
rubbed my eyes and pinched my arms to make sure I was awake."
"And whether you saw a ghost, or whether you didn't," came the mocking
retort.
"It was no ghost, Gum; it was Lord Hartledon himself."
"Nonsense! It was just as much one as the other. The fact is, you hadn't
quite woke up out of that fine dream of yours, and you saw double. It was
just as much young Hartledon as it was me."
"I never saw a ghost yet, and I don't fear I ever shall, Gum. I tell
you it was Lord Hartledon. And if harm doesn't befall him at Calne, as
shadowed forth in my dream, never believe me again."
"There, that's enough," peremptorily cried the clerk; knowing, if once
Mrs. Gum took up any idea with a dream for its basis, how impossible it
was to turn her. "Is the key of that kitchen door found yet?"
"No: it never will be, Gum. I've told you so before. My belief is, and
always has been, that Rebecca let it drop by accident into the waste
bucket."
"_My_ belief is, that Rebecca made away with it for her own purposes,"
said the clerk. "I caught her just now with the door wide open. She's
trying to make acquaintance with the man Pike; that's what she's at."
"Oh, Gum!"
"Yes; it's all very well to say 'Oh, Gum!' but if you were below-stairs
looking after her, instead of dreaming up here, it might be better for
everyone. Let me once be certain about it, and off she goes the next
hour. A fine thing 'twould be some day for us to find her head smothered
in the kitchen purgatory, and the silver spoons gone; as will be the case
if any loose characters get in."
He was descending the stairs as he spoke the last sentence, delivered in
loud tones, probably for the benefit of Miss Rebecca Jones. And lest the
intelligent Protestant reader should fear he is being introduced to
unorthodox regions, it may be as well to mention that the "purgatory" in
Mr. Jabez Gum's kitchen consisted of an excavation, two feet square,
under the hearth, covered with a grating through which the ashes and
the small cinders fell; thereby enabling the economical housewife to
throw the larger ones on the fire again. Such wells or "purgatories," as
they are called, are common enough in the old-fashioned kitchens of
certain English districts.
Mrs. Gum, ready now, had been about to follow her husband; but his
suggestion--that the girl was watching an opportunity to make
acquaintance with their undesirable neighbour, Pike--struck her
motionless.
It seemed that she could never see this man without a shiver, or overcome
the fright experienced when she first met him. It was on a dark autumn
night. She was coming through the garden when she discerned, or thought
she discerned, a light in the abandoned shed. Thinking of fire, she
hastily crossed the stile that divided their garden from the waste land,
and ran to it. There she was confronted by what she took to be a
bear--but a bear that could talk; for he gruffly asked her who she was
and what she wanted. A black-haired, black-browed man, with a pipe
between his teeth, and one sinewy arm bared to the elbow.
How Mrs. Gum tore away and tumbled over the stile in her terror, and got
home again, she never knew. She supposed it to be a tramp, who had taken
shelter there for the night; but finding to her dismay that the tramp
stayed on, she had never overcome her fright from that hour to this.
Neither did her husband like the proximity of such a gentleman. They
caused securer bolts to be put on their doors--for fastenings in small
country places are not much thought about, people around being
proverbially honest. They also had their shutters altered. The shutters
to the windows, back and front, had holes in them in the form of a
heart, such as you may have sometimes noticed. Before the wild-looking
man--whose name came to be known as Pike--had been in possession of the
shed a fortnight, Jabez Gum had the holes in his shutters filled-in and
painted over. An additional security, said the neighbours: but poor timid
Mrs. Gum could not overcome that first fright, and the very mention of
the man set her trembling and quaking.
Nothing more was said of the dream or the apparition, real or fancied, of
Lord Hartledon: Clerk Gum did not encourage the familiar handling of such
topics in everyday life. He breakfasted, devoted an hour to his own
business in the little office, and then put on his coat to go out. It was
Friday morning. On that day and on Wednesdays the church was open for
baptisms, and it was the clerk's custom to go over at ten o'clock and
apprize the Rector of any notices he might have had.
Passing in at the iron gates, the large white house rose before him,
beyond the wide lawn. It had been built by Dr. Ashton at his own
expense. The old Rectory was a tumbledown, inconvenient place, always
in dilapidation, for as soon as one part of it was repaired another
fell through; and the Rector opened his heart and his purse, both
large and generous, and built a new one. Mr. Gum was making his way
unannounced to the Rector's study, according to custom, when a door on
the opposite side of the hall opened, and Dr. Ashton came out. He was a
pleasant-looking man, with dark hair and eyes, his countenance one of
keen intellect; and though only of middle height, there was something
stately, grand, imposing in his whole appearance.
"Is that you, Jabez?"
Connected with each other for so many years--a connection which had begun
when both were young--the Rector and Mrs. Ashton had never called him
anything but Jabez. With other people he was Gum, or Mr. Gum, or Clerk
Gum: Jabez with them. He, Jabez, was the older man of the two by six or
seven years, for the Rector was not more than forty-five. The clerk
crossed the hall, its tessellated flags gleaming under the colours
thrown in by the stained windows, and entered the drawing-room, a noble
apartment looking on to the lawn in front. Mrs. Ashton, a tall,
delicate-looking woman, with a gentle face, was standing before a
painting just come home and hung up; to look at which the Rector and
his wife had gone into the room.
It was the portrait of a sweet-looking girl with a sunny countenance. The
features were of the delicate contour of Mrs. Ashton's; the rich brown
hair, the soft brown eyes, and the intellectual expression of the face
resembled the doctor's. Altogether, face and portrait were positively
charming; one of those faces you must love at first sight, without
waiting to question whether or not they are beautiful.
"Is it a good likeness, Jabez?" asked the Rector, whilst Mrs. Ashton made
room for him with a smile of greeting.
"As like as two peas, sir," responded Jabez, when he had taken a long
look. "What a face it is! Oftentimes it comes across my mind when I am
not thinking of anything but business; and I'm always the better for it."
"Why, Jabez, this is the first time you have seen it."
"Ah, ma'am, you know I mean the original. There's two baptisms to-day,
sir," he added, turning away; "two, and one churching. Mrs. Luttrell and
her child, and the poor little baby whose mother died."
"Mrs. Luttrell!" repeated the Rector. "It's soon for her, is it not?"
"They want to go away to the seaside," replied the clerk. "What about
that notice, sir?"
"I'll see to it before Sunday, Jabez. Any news?"
"No, sir; not that I've heard of. My wife wanted to persuade me she
saw--"
At this moment a white-haired old serving-man entered the room with
a note, claiming the Rector's attention. "The man's to take back the
answer, sir, if you please."
"Wait then, Simon."
Old Simon stood aside, and the clerk, turning to Mrs. Ashton, continued
his unfinished sentence.
"She wanted to persuade me she saw young Lord Hartledon pass at six
o'clock this morning. A very likely tale that, ma'am."
"Perhaps she dreamt it, Jabez," said Mrs. Ashton, quietly.
Jabez chuckled; but what he would have answered was interrupted by the
old servant.
"It's Mr. Elster that's come; not Lord Hartledon."
"Mr. Elster! How do you know, Simon?" asked Mrs. Ashton.
"The gardener mentioned it, ma'am, when he came in just now," was the
servant's reply. "He said he saw Mr. Elster walk past this morning, as if
he had just come by the luggage-train. I'm not sure but he spoke to him."
"The answer is 'No,' Simon," interposed the Rector, alluding to the note
he had been reading. "But you can send word that I'll come in some time
to-day."
"Charles, did you hear what Simon said--that Mr. Elster has come down?"
asked Mrs. Ashton.
"Yes, I heard it," replied the doctor; and there was a hard dry tone in
his voice, as if the news were not altogether palatable to him. "It must
have been Percival Elster your wife saw, Jabez; not Lord Hartledon."
Jabez had been arriving at the same conclusion. "They used to be much
alike in height and figure," he observed; "it was easy to mistake the one
for the other. Then that's all this morning, sir?"
"There is nothing more, Jabez."
In a room whose large French window opened to flowerbeds on the side of
the house, bending over a table on which sundry maps were spread, her
face very close to them, sat at this moment a young lady. It was the same
face you have just seen in the portrait--that of Dr. and Mrs. Ashton's
only daughter. The wondrously sunny expression of countenance, blended
with strange sweetness, was even more conspicuous than in the portrait.
But what perhaps struck a beholder most, when looking at Miss Ashton for
the first time, was a nameless grace and refinement that distinguished
her whole appearance. She was of middle height, not more; slender; her
head well set upon her shoulders. This was her own room; the schoolroom
of her girlhood, the sitting-room she had been allowed to call her own
since then. Books, work, music, a drawing-easel, and various other items,
presenting a rather untidy collection, met the eye. This morning it was
particularly untidy. The charts covered the table; one of them lay on the
carpet; and a pot of mignonette had been overturned inside the open
window scattering some of the mould. She was very busy; the open sleeves
of her lilac-muslin dress were thrown back, and her delicate hands were
putting the finishing touches in pencil to a plan she had been copying,
from one of the maps. A few minutes more, and the pencil was thrown down
in relief.
"I won't colour it this morning; it must be quite an hour and a half
since I began; but the worst is done, and that's worth a king's ransom."
In the escape from work, the innocent gaiety of her heart, she broke into
a song, and began waltzing round the room. Barely had she passed the open
window, her back turned to it, when a gentleman came up, looked in,
stepped softly over the threshold, and imprisoned her by the waist.
"Be quiet, Arthur. Pick up that mignonette-pot you threw down, sir."
"My darling!" came in a low, heartfelt whisper. And Miss Ashton, with a
faint cry, turned to see her engaged lover, Val Elster.
She stood before him, literally unable to speak in her great
astonishment, the red roses going and coming in her delicate cheeks,
the rich brown eyes, that might have been too brilliant but for their
exceeding sweetness, raised questioningly to his. Mr. Elster folded her
in his arms as if he would never release her again, and kissed the
shrinking face repeatedly.
"Oh, Percival, Percival! Don't! Let me go."
He did so at last, and held her before him, her eyelids drooping now,
to gaze at the face he loved so well--yes, loved fervently and well, in
spite of his follies and sins. Her heart was beating wildly with its own
rapture: for her the world had suddenly grown brighter.
"But when did you arrive?" she whispered, scarcely knowing how to utter
the words in her excessive happiness.
He took her upon his arm and began to pace the room with her while he
explained. There was an attempt at excuse for his prolonged absence--for
Val Elster had returned from his duties in Vienna in May, and it was now
August, and he had lingered through the intervening time in London,
enjoying himself--but that was soon glossed over; and he told her how his
brother was coming down on the morrow with a houseful of guests, and he,
Val, had offered to go before them with the necessary instructions. He
did not say _why_ he had offered to do this; that his debts had become so
pressing he was afraid to show himself longer in London. Such facts were
not for the ear of that fair girl, who trusted him as the truest man she
knew under heaven.
"What have you been doing, Anne?"
He pointed to the maps, and Miss Ashton laughed.
"Mrs. Graves was here yesterday; she is very clever, you know; and when
something was being said about the course of ships out of England, I made
some dreadful mistakes. She took me up sharply, and papa looked at me
sharply--and the result is, I have to do a heap of maps. Please tell me
if it's right, Percival?"
She held up her pencilled work of the morning. He was laughing.
"What mistakes did you make, Anne?"
"I am not sure but I said something about an Indiaman, leaving the London
Docks, having to pass Scarborough," she returned demurely. "It was quite
as bad."
"Do you remember, Anne, being punished for persisting, in spite of the
slate on the wall and your nursery-governess, that the Mediterranean lay
between Scotland and Ireland? Miss Jevons wanted to give you bread and
water for three days. How's that prig Graves?" he added rather abruptly.
Anne Ashton laughed, blushing slightly. "He is just as you left him; very
painstaking and efficient in the parish, and all that, but, oh, so stupid
in some things! Is the map right?"
"Yes, it's right. I'll help you with the rest. If Dr. Ashton--"
"Why, Val! Is it you? I heard Lord Hartledon had come down."
Percival Elster turned. A lad of seventeen had come bounding in at
the window. It was Dr. Ashton's eldest living son, Arthur. Anne was
twenty-one. A son, who would have been nineteen now, had died; and
there was another, John, two years younger than Arthur.
"How are you, Arthur, boy?" cried Val. "Edward hasn't come. Who told you
he had?"
"Mother Gum. I have just met her."
"She told you wrong. He will be down to-morrow. Is that Dr. Ashton?"
Attracted perhaps by the voices, Dr. and Mrs. Ashton, who were then out
on the lawn, came round to the window. Percival Elster grasped a hand of
each, and after a minute or two's studied coldness, the doctor thawed. It
was next to impossible to resist the genial manner, the winning
attractions of the young man to his face. But Dr. Ashton could not
approve of his line of conduct; and had sore doubts whether he had done
right in allowing him to become the betrothed of his dearly-loved
daughter.