if they would like to do so--but no one moved. They were anxious, you
see, to hear the will. Only Peggy, who had turned to go out, said,
'Yes, Gwen, I should,' and slipped out with the old woman.
"'There is nothing to keep us now?' said Mr. Hughes briskly when the
door was closed again. And everyone nodding assent the lawyer went on
to read the will, which was not a long one. It was received with a
murmur of satisfaction, and much use of pocket-handkerchiefs.
"'Very fair!' said Mr. Llewellyn Evans, 'He was a clever man, our old
friend.' All the legatees murmured after him 'Very fair!' and a word
went round about the home-brewed, and Robert Evans' recipe for it.
Then Llewellyn, who thought he ought to be taking the lead at Court
now, said it was about time to be going to church.
"'There is one matter,' put in Mr. Griffith Hughes, 'which I think
ought to be settled while we are all together. You see that there is
a--what I may call a charge on the three main portions of the property
in favor of Miss McNeill.'
"'Indeed, but what is that you are saying?' cried Llewellyn sharply.
'Do you mean that there is a rent charge?'
"'Not exactly a rent charge,' said the lawyer.
"'No!' cried Llewellyn with a twinkle in his eyes. 'Nor any obligation
in law, sir?'
"'Well, no,' assented Mr. Hughes grudgingly.
"'Then,' said Llewellyn Evans, getting up and putting his hands in his
pockets, while he winked at the others, 'we will talk of that another
time.'
"But Mr. Hughes said, 'No!' He was a kind man, and very anxious to do
the best for the girl, but he somewhat lost his temper. 'No!' he said,
growing red. 'You will observe, if you please, Mr. Evans, that the
testator says, "Forthwith---forthwith." So that, as sole executor, it
is my duty to ask you to state your intentions now.'
"'Well, indeed, then,' said Llewellyn, changing his face to a kind of
blank, 'I have no intentions. I think that the family has done more
than enough for the girl already.'
"And he would say no otherwise. Nor was it to any purpose that the
lawyer looked at Mrs. Llewellyn. She was examining the furniture, and
feeling the stuffing of the sofa, and did not seem to hear. He could
make nothing of the three Evanses, Nant. They all cried, 'Yes,
indeed!' to what Llewellyn said. Only the Evan Bevans remained, and he
turned to them in despair.
"'I am sure,' he said, addressing himself to them, 'that you will do
something to carry out the testator's wishes? Your share under the
will, Mr. Bevan, will amount to three hundred a year. This young
lady has nothing--no relations, no home. May I take it that you will
settle--say fifty pounds a year upon her? It need only be for her
life.'
"Mr. Bevan fidgeted under this appeal. His wife answered it.
'Certainly not, Mr. Hughes. If it were twenty pounds now, once for
all, or even twenty-five--and Llewellyn and my nephews would say the
same--I think we might manage that?'
"But Llewellyn shook his head obstinately. 'I have said I have no
intentions, and I am a man of my word!' he answered. 'Let the girl go
out to service. It is what we have always wanted her to do. Here are
my nephews. They won't mind a young housekeeper.'
"Well, they all laughed at this except Mr. Hughes, who gathered up his
papers looking very black, and not thinking of future clients.
Llewellyn, however, did not care a bit for that, but walked to the
bell, masterful-like, and rang it. 'Tell the undertaker,' he said to
the servant, 'that we are ready.'
"It was as if the words had been a signal, for they were followed
almost immediately by an outcry overhead and quick running upon the
stairs. The legatees looked uncomfortably at the carpet: the lawyer
was blacker than before. He said to himself, 'Now that poor child has
fainted!' The confusion seemed to last some minutes. Then the door was
opened, not by the undertaker, but by Gwen Madoc. The mourners rose
with a sigh of relief; to their surprise she passed by even Llewellyn,
and with a frightened face walked across to the lawyer. She whispered
something in his ear.
"'What!' he cried, starting back a pace from her, and speaking so that
the wine-glasses on the table rattled again. 'Do you know what you are
saying, woman?'
"'It is true,' she answered, half crying, 'and no fault indeed of mine
neither.'
"Gwen added more in quick, short sentences, which the family, strain
their ears as they might, could not overhear.
"'I will come! I will come!' cried the lawyer. He waved his hand to
them as a sign to make room for her to pass out. Then he turned to
them, a queer look upon his face; it was not triumph altogether,
for there was discomfiture and apprehension in it as well. 'You
will believe me, he said, 'that I am as much taken aback as
yourselves--that till this moment I have been honestly as much in the
dark as anyone. It seems--so I am told--that our old friend is not
dead.'
"'What!' cried Llewellyn in his turn. 'What do you mean?' and he
raised his black-gloved hands as in refutation.
"'What I say,' replied Mr. Hughes patiently. 'I hear--wonderful as it
sounds--that he is not dead. Something about a trance, I believe--a
mistake happily discovered in time. I tell you all I know; and however
it comes about, it is clear we ought to be glad that Mr. Robert Evans
is spared to us.'
"With that he was glad to escape from the room. I am told that their
faces were very strange to see. There was a long silence. Llewellyn
was the first to speak: He swore a big oath and banged his great hand
upon the table. 'I don't 'believe it!' he cried. 'I don't believe it!
It is a trick!'
"But as he spoke the door opened behind him, and he and all turned to
see what they had never thought to see, I am sure. They had come to
walk in Robert Evans' funeral; and here was the gaunt, stooping form
of Robert Evans himself coming in, with an arm of Gwen Madoc on one
side and of Miss Peggy on the other--Robert Evans beyond doubt, alive.
Behind him were the lawyer and Dr. Jones, a smile on their lips, and
three or four women half frightened, half wondering.
"The old man was pale, and seemed to totter a little, but when the
doctor would have placed a chair for him, he declined it, and stood
gazing about him, wonderfully composed for a man just risen from his
coffin. He had all his old grim aspect as he looked upon the family.
Llewellyn's declaration was still in their ears. They could find not a
word to say either of joy or grief.
"'Well, indeed,' said Robert, with a dry chuckle, 'have none of you a
word to throw at me? I am a ghost, I suppose? Ha!' he exclaimed, as
his eye fell on the papers which Mr. Hughes had left upon the table,
'so! so! That is why you are not overjoyed at seeing me. You have been
reading my will. Well, Llewellyn! Have not you a word to say to me now
you know for what I had got you down?'
"At that Llewellyn found his tongue, and the others chimed in finely.
Only there was something in the old man's manner that they did not
like; and presently, when they had all told him how glad they were to
see him again--just for all the world as if he had been ill for a few
days--Robert Evans turned again to Llewellyn.
"'You had fixed what you would do for my girl here, I suppose?' he
said, patting her shoulder gently, at which the family winced. 'It was
a hundred a year you promised to settle, you know. You will have
arranged all that.'
"Lewellyn looked stealthily at Mr. Hughes, who was standing at
Robert's elbow, and muttered that they had not reached that stage.
"'What?' cried the old man sharply. 'How was that?'
"'I was intending,' Llewellyn began lamely, 'to settle----'
"'You were intending!' Robert Evans burst forth in a voice so changed
that they all started back. 'You are a liar! You were intending to
settle nothing! I know it well! I knew it long ago! Nothing, I say! As
for you,' he went on, wheeling furiously round upon the Evanses of
Nant, 'you knew my wishes. What were you going to do for her? What, I
say? Speak, you hobbledehoys!'
"For they were backing from him in absolute fear of his passion,
looking at one another or at the sullen face of Llewellyn Evans, or
anywhere save at him. At length the eldest blurted out, 'Whatever
Llewellyn meant to do we were going to do, sir.'
"'You speak the truth there,' cried old Robert bitterly; 'for that was
nothing, you know. Very well! I promise you that what Llewellyn gets
of my property you shall get too--and it will be nothing! You, Bevan,'
and he turned himself toward the Evan Bevans, who were shaking in
their shoes, 'I am told, did offer to do something for my girl.'
"'Yes, dear Robert,' cried Mrs. Bevan, radiant and eager, 'we did
indeed.'
"'So I hear. Well, when I make my next will, I will take care to set
you down for just so much as you proposed to give her! Peggy, _bach_,'
he continued, turning from the chapfallen lady, and putting into the
girl's hands the will which the lawyer had given him, 'tear up this
rubbish! Tear it up! Now let us have something to eat in the other
room. What, Llewellyn, no appetite?'
"But the family did not stay even to partake of the home-brewed. They
were out of the house, I am told, before the coffin and the
undertaker's men. There was big talking among them, as they went, of a
conspiracy and a lunatic asylum. But though, to be sure, it was a
wonderful recovery, and the doctor and Mr. Hughes, as they drove away
after dinner, were very friendly together--which may have been only
the home-brewed--at any rate the sole outcome of Llewellyn's talking
and inquiries was that everyone laughed very much, and Robert Evans'
name for a clever man was known beyond Carnarvon.
"Of course it would be open house at Court that day, with plenty of
eating and drinking and coming and going. But toward five o'clock the
place grew quiet again. The visitors had gone home, and Gwen Madoc was
upstairs. The old man was sleeping in his chair opposite the settle,
and Miss Peggy was sitting on the window-seat watching him, her hands
in her lap, her thoughts far away. Maybe she was trying to be really
glad that the home, about which the cows lowed and the gulls screamed
in the afternoon stillness and made it seem home each minute, was hers
still; that she was not quite alone, nor friendless, nor poor. Maybe
she was striving not to think of the thing which had been taken from
her and could not be given back. Whatever her thoughts, she was
aroused by some sound to find her eyes full of hot tears, through
which she could dimly see that the old man was awake and looking at
her with a strange expression, which disappeared as she became aware
of it.
"He began to speak. 'Providence has been very good to us, Peggy,' he
said, with grim meaning. 'It is well for you, my girl, that our eyes
are open to see our kind friends as they are. There is one besides
those who were here this morning that will wish he had not been so
hasty.'
"She rose quickly and looked out of the window. 'Don't speak of him.
Let us forget him,' she pleaded, in a low tone.
"But Robert Evans seemed to take a delight in the--well, the goodness
of Providence. 'If he had come to see you only once, when you were in
trouble,' he went on, as if he were summing up the case in his own
mind, and she were but a stick or a stone, 'we could have forgiven
him, and I would have said you were right. Or even if he had written,
eh?'
"'Oh, yes, yes!' sobbed the girl, her tears raining down her averted
face. 'Don't torture me! You were right and I was wrong--all wrong!'
"'Well, yes, yes! Just so. But come here, my girl,' said the old man.
'Come!' he repeated imperiously, as, surprised in the midst of her
grief, she wavered and hesitated, 'sit here,' and he pointed to the
settle opposite to him. 'Now, suppose I were to tell you he had
written, and that the letter had been--mislaid, shall we say? and come
somehow to my hands? Now, don't get excited, girl!'
"'Oh!' cried Peggy, her hands fallen, her lips parted, her eyes wide
and frightened, her whole form rigid with questioning.
"'Just suppose that, my dear,' continued Robert, 'and that the letter
were now before us--would you abide by its contents? Remember, he must
have much to explain. Would you let me decide whether his explanation
were satisfactory or not?"
"She was trembling with expectation, hope. But she tried to think of
the matter calmly, to remember her lover's hurried flight, the lack of
word or message for her, her own misery. She nodded silently, and held
out her hand.
"He drew a letter from his pocket. 'You will let me see it?' he said
suspiciously.
"'Oh, yes!' she cried, and fled with it to the window. He watched her
while she tore it open and read first one page and then another--there
were but two, it was very short--watched her while she thrust it from
her and looked at it as a whole, then drew it to her and kissed it
again and again.
"'Wait a bit! wait a bit!' cried he testily. 'Now, let me see it.'
"She turned upon him almost fiercely, holding it away behind her, as
if it were some living thing he might hurt. 'He thought he would meet
me at the junction,' she stammered between laughing and crying. 'He
was going to London to see his sister--that she might take me in. And
he will be here to fetch me this evening. There! Take it!' and
suddenly remembering herself she stretched out her hand and gave him
the letter.
"'You promised to abide by my decision, you know,' said the old man
gravely.
"'I will not!' she cried impetuously. 'Never!'
"'You promised,' he said.
"'I don't care! I don't care!' she replied, clasping her hands
nervously. 'No one shall come between us.'
"'Very well,' said Robert Evans, 'then I need not decide. But you had
better tell Owen to take the trap to the station to meet your man.'"
IN CUPID'S TOILS.
I.
HER STORY.
"Clare," I said, "I wish that we had brought some better clothes, if
it were only one frock. You look the oddest figure."
And she did. She was lying head to head with me on the thick moss that
clothed one part of the river bank above Breistolen near the Sogn
Fiord. We were staying at Breistolen, but there was no moss
thereabouts, nor in all the Sogn district, I often thought, so deep
and soft, and so dazzling orange and white and crimson as that
particular patch. It lay quite high upon the hills, and there were
great gray bowlders peeping through the moss here and there, very fit
to break your legs, if you were careless. Little more than a mile
higher up was the watershed, where our river, putting away with
reluctance a first thought of going down the farther slope toward
Bysberg, parted from its twin brother, who was thither bound with
scores upon scores of puny, green-backed fishlets; and instead,
came down our side gliding and swishing and swirling faster and
faster, and deeper and wider every hundred yards to Breistolen, full
of red-speckled yellow trout, all half a pound apiece, and very good
to eat.
But they were not so sweet or toothsome to our girlish tastes as the
tawny-orange cloud-berries which Clare and I were eating as we lay. So
busy was she with the luscious pile we had gathered that I had to wait
for an answer. And then, "Speak for yourself," she said. "I'm sure you
look like a short-coated baby. He is somewhere up the river, too."
Munch, munch, munch!
"Who is, you impertinent, greedy little chit?"
"Oh, you know!" she answered. "Don't you wish you had your gray plush
here, Bab?"
I flung a look of calm disdain at her; but whether it was the berry
juice which stained our faces that took from its effect, or the free
mountain air which papa says saps the foundations of despotism, that
made her callous, at any rate she only laughed scornfully and got
up and went off down the stream with her rod, leaving me to finish
the cloud-berries, and stare lazily up at the snow-patches on the
hillside--which somehow put me in mind of the gray plush--and follow
or not, as I liked.
Clare has a wicked story of how I gave in to papa, and came to start
without anything but those rough clothes. She says he said--and Jack
Buchanan has told me that lawyers put no faith in anything that he
says she says, or she says he says, which proves how much truth there
is in this--that if Bab took none but her oldest clothes, and fished
all day, and had no one to run upon her errands--he meant Jack and the
others, I suppose--she might possibly grow an inch in Norway. Just as
if I wanted to grow an inch? An inch indeed! I am five feet one and a
half high, and papa, who puts me an inch shorter, is the worst
measurer in the world. As for Miss Clare, she would give all her
inches for my eyes. So there!
After Clare left it began to be dull and chilly. When I had pictured
to myself how nice it would be to dress for dinner again, and chosen
the frock I would wear upon the first evening, I grew tired of the
snow-patches, and started up stream, stumbling and falling into holes,
and clambering over rocks, and only careful to save my rod and my
face. It was no occasion for the gray plush, but I had made up my mind
to reach a pool which lay, I knew, a little above me; having filched a
yellow-bodied fly from Clare's hat, with a view to that particular
place.
Our river did the oddest things hereabouts--pleased to be so young, I
suppose. It was not a great churning stream of snow-water, foaming and
milky, such as we had seen in some parts--streams that affected to be
always in flood, and had the look of forcing the rocks asunder and
clearing their path, even while you watched them with your fingers in
your ears. Our river was none of these: still it was swifter than
English rivers are wont to be, and in parts deeper, and transparent as
glass. In one place it would sweep over a ledge and fall wreathed in
spray into a spreading lake of black, rock-bound water. Then it would
narrow again until, where you could almost jump across, it darted
smooth and unbroken down a polished shoot with a swoop like a
swallow's. Out of this it would hurry afresh to brawl along a gravelly
bed, skipping jauntily over first one and then another ridge of stones
that had silted up weir-wise and made as if they would bar the
channel. Under the lee of these there were lovely pools.
To be able to throw into mine, I had to walk out along the ridge, on
which the water was shallow, yet sufficiently deep to cover my boots.
But I was well rewarded. The "forellin"--the Norse name for trout,
and as pretty as their girls' wavy fair hair--were rising so merrily
that I hooked and landed one in five minutes, the fly falling from its
mouth as it touched the stones. I hate taking out hooks. I used at one
time to leave the fly in the fish's mouth to be removed by papa at the
weighing house; until Clare pricked her tongue at dinner with an
almost new, red hackle, and was so mean as to keep it, though I
remembered then what I had done with it, and was certain it was
mine-which was nothing less than dishonest of her.
I had just got back to my place and made a fine cast, when there
came--not the leap, and splash, and tug which announced the
half-pounder--but a deep, rich gurgle as the fly was gently sucked
under, and then a quiet, growing strain upon the line, which began to
move away down the pool in a way that made the winch spin again and
filled me with mysterious pleasure. I was not conscious of striking or
of anything but that I had hooked a really good fish, and I clutched
the rod with both hands and set my feet as tightly as I could upon the
slippery gravel. The line moved up and down, and this way and that,
now steadily and as with a purpose, and then again with an eccentric
rush that made the top of the rod spring and bend so that I looked
for it to snap each moment. My hands began to grow numb, and the
landing-net, hitherto an ornament, fell out of my waist-belt and went
I knew not whither. I suppose I must have stepped unwittingly into
deeper water, for I felt that my skirts were afloat, and altogether
things were going dreadfully against me, when the presence of an ally
close at hand was announced by a cheery shout from the far side of the
river.
"Keep up your point! Keep up your point!" someone cried briskly. "That
is better!"
The unexpected sound--it was a man's voice--did something to keep my
heart up. But for answer I could only shriek, "I can't! It will
break!" watching the top of my rod as it jigged up and down, very much
in the fashion of Clare performing what she calls a waltz. She dances
as badly as a man.
"No, it will not," he cried back bluntly. "Keep it up, and let out a
little line with your fingers when he pulls hardest."
We were forced to shout and scream. The wind had risen and was adding
to the noise of the water. Soon I heard him wading behind me. "Where's
your landing-net?" he asked, with the most provoking coolness.
"Oh, in the pool! Somewhere about. I am sure I don't know," I answered
wildly.
What he said to this I could not catch, but it sounded rude. And then
he waded off to fetch, as I guessed, his own net. By the time he
reached me again I was in a sad plight, feet like ice, and hands
benumbed, while the wind, and rain, and hail, which had come down upon
us with a sudden violence, unknown, it is to be hoped, anywhere else,
were mottling my face all sorts of unbecoming colors. But the line was
taut. And wet and cold went for nothing five minutes later, when the
fish lay upon the bank, its prismatic sides slowly turning pale and
dull, and I knelt over it half in pity and half in triumph, but wholly
forgetful of the wind and rain.
"You did that very pluckily, little one," said the on-looker; "but I
am afraid you will suffer for it by and by. You must be chilled
through."
Quickly as I looked up at him, I only met a good-humored smile. He did
not mean to be rude. And after all, when I was in such a mess, it was
not possible that he could see what I was like. He was wet enough
himself. The rain was streaming from the brim of the soft hat which he
had turned down to shelter his face, and trickling from his chin, and
turning his shabby Norfolk jacket a darker shade. As for his hands,
they looked red and knuckly enough, and he had been wading almost to
his waist. But he looked, I don't know why, all the stronger and
manlier and nicer for these things, because, perhaps, he cared for
them not one whit. What I looked like myself I dared not think. My
skirts were as short as short could be, and they were soaked; most of
my hair was unplaited, my gloves were split, and my sodden boots were
out of shape. I was forced, too, to shiver and shake from cold, which
was provoking, for I knew it made me seem half as small again.
"Thank you, I am a little cold, Mr.---- Mr.----" I said gravely,
only my teeth would chatter so that he laughed outright as he took me
up with----
"Herapath. And to whom have I the honor of speaking?"
"I am Miss Guest," I said miserably. It was too cold to be frigid to
advantage.
"Commonly called Bab, I think," the wretch answered. "The walls of our
hut are not sound-proof, you see. But come, the sooner you get back to
dry clothes and the stove, the better, Bab. You can cross the river
just below, and cut off half a mile that way."
"I can't," I said obstinately. Bab, indeed! How dared he?
"Oh yes, you can," with intolerable good temper. "You shall take your
rod and I the prey. You cannot be wetter than you are now."
He had his way, of course, since I did not foresee that at the ford he
would lift me up bodily and carry me over the deeper part without a
pretense of asking leave, or a word of apology. It was done so quickly
that I had no time to remonstrate. Still I was not going to let it
pass, and when I had shaken myself straight again, I said, with all
the haughtiness I could assume, "Don't you think, Mr. Herapath that it
would have been more--more----"
"Polite to offer to carry you over, child? No, not at all. It will be
wiser and warmer for you to run down the hill. Come along!"
And without more ado, while I was still choking with rage, he seized
my hands and set off at a trot, lugging me through the sloppy places
much as I have seen a nurse drag a fractious child down Constitution
Hill. It was not wonderful that I soon lost the little breath his
speech had left me, and was powerless to complain when we reached the
bridge. I could only thank Heaven that there was no sign of Clare. I
think I should have died of mortification if she had seen us come down
the hill hand-in-hand in that ridiculous fashion. But she had gone
home, and at any rate I escaped that degradation.