A PARTY OF THREE.
“I’d tip you a stave, only I’ve got a hoarseness since yesterday, and
I’d ask Alice to play a bit, only there’s no piano here to kick up a
gingle with, and Charlie never sang a note in his life, and”--standing
before the fire, he yawned long and loud--“by Jove, that wasn’t over
civil of me, but old friends need not be stiff, and I vote we yawn all
round for company; and I’ll forgive ye, for my hour’s come, and I’ll be
taking the road.”
“I wish so much I had a bed to offer you, Harry; but you know all
about it--there hasn’t been time to arrange anything,” said Charles.
“Won’t you stay and take some tea?” urged Alice.
“I never could abide it, child; thank ye all the same,” said he, “I’d
as soon drink a mug o’ whey.”
“And what about the gray hunter--you did not sell him yet?” asked
Charles.
“I don’t well know what to do about him,” answered his brother. “I’d a
sold him for fifty, only old Clinker wouldn’t pass him for sound.
Clinker and me, we had words about that.”
“I want fifty pounds very much, if I could get it,” said Charles.
“I never knew a fellow that didn’t want fifty very bad, if he could
get it,” laughed Harry; “but you’ll not be doin’ that bad, I’m afeard,
if ye get half the money.”
“The devil!--do you really--why I thought, with luck, I might get
seventy. I’m hard up, Harry, and I know you’ll do your best for me,”
said Charles, to whom this was really a serious question.
“And with luck so you might; but chaps isn’t easy done these times;
and though I swear it’s only his mouth, he steps short at the off
side, and a fellow with an eye in his head won’t mistake his action.”
“You will do the best you can for me, Harry, I know,” said Charles,
who knew nothing about horses, and was lazy in discussion. “But it’s
rather a blow just now, when a poor devil wants every shilling he can
get together, to find himself fifty pounds nearly out of pocket.”
Was it fancy, or did Alice’s pretty ear hear truly? It seemed to her
that the tone in which Charlie spoke was a little more sour than need
be, that it seemed to blame her as the cause of altered circumstances,
and to hint, though very faintly, an unkind repentance. His eye met
hers; full and sad it looked, and his heart smote him, for the
intangible reproof was deserved.
“And here’s the best little wife in the world,” he said, “who would
save a lazy man like me a little fortune in a year, and make that
unlucky fifty pounds, if I could but get it, do as much as a hundred.”
And his hand was fondly placed on her shoulder, as he looked in her
loving eyes.
“A good house-wife is she, that’s something,” said Harry, who was
inspecting his spur. “Though by Jove it was hardly at Wyvern she
learned thrift.”
“All the more merit,” said Charles, “it’s all her wise, good little
self.”
“No, no; I can’t take all that praise; it’s your great kindness,
Charlie. But I’ll try. I’ll learn all I can, and I’m sure the real
secret is to be very anxious to do it well.”
“Ay, to be sure,” interrupted Harry, who, having completed his little
arrangement, placed his foot again on the ground. “The more you like
it the better you’ll do it--pare the cheeses, skin the flints, kill
the fleas for the hide and tallow, pot the potato-skins, sweat the
shillin’s and all that, and now I’ll be going. Good-night, Alice. Will
you let Charlie see me down to the end o’ the lane, and I’ll send him
safe back to you? Come along, Charlie. God bless you, girl, and I’ll
look in again whenever I have a bit o’ news to tell ye.”
And with that elegant farewell, he shook Alice by the hand and clapped
her on the shoulder, and “chucked” her under the chin.
“And don’t ye be faint-hearted, mind, ’twill all come right, and I
didn’t think this place was so comfortable as it is. It is a snug old
house with a bit o’ coal and a faggot o’ wood, and a pair o’ bright
eyes, and a glass o’ that, a man might make shift for a while. I’d do
it myself. I didn’t think it was so snug by half, and I’d rayther stay
here to-night by a long chalk than ride to Barnsley, I can tell ye.
Come, Charlie, it’s time I should be on the road; and she says, don’t
you, Alice, you may see me a bit o’ the way.”
And so the leave-taking came to an end, and Charlie and Harry went out
together; and Alice wondered what had induced Harry to come all that
way for so short a visit, with so very little to tell. Perhaps,
however, his own business, for he was always looking after horses, and
thought nothing of five-and-thirty miles, had brought him to the verge
of Cressley Common, and if so, he would have come on the few
additional miles, if only to bait his horse and get his dinner.
Perhaps the old Squire at Wyvern had broken out more angrily, and was
threatening something in which there was real danger to Charlie, which
the brothers did not choose to tell her. A kindly secrecy and
considerate, but seldom unsuspected, and being so often fifty-fold
more torturing than downright ghastly frankness.
There had been a little chill and shadow over the party of three, she
thought. Charlie thought his brother Harry the most thorough partisan
that ever man had, and the most entirely sympathetic. If that were so,
and should not he know best? Harry had certainly laughed and joked
after his fashion, and enjoyed himself, and there could not be much
wrong. But Charlie--was not there something more upon his mind than
she quite knew? She stood too much in awe of her husband to follow
them, as she would have wished, and implore of them if there was any
new danger to let her hear it all. In her ear was the dismal
iteration, as it were, of this little “death-watch” and sighing, she
got up and opened the window-shutter and looked out upon the
moonlighted scene.
A little platform of grass stood between the wall of the house and the
precipitous edge of the vale of Marlow. Tall trees stood silent and
lonely sentinels without the old gray walls, and a low ivied parapet
guarded the sudden descent of the riven and wooded cliff. The broken
screen of the solemn forest foreground showed in the distance the
thicker masses of the wood that topped the summit of the further side
of that sombre glen. Stiller, sadder scene fancy never painted.
She had opened the shutter, uncertain whether the window commanded the
point from which her husband and his brother might be expected to
emerge, for the geography of this complicated house was still new to
her, and disappointed, she lingered in contemplation of a view which
so well accorded with the melancholy of her lonely misgivings.
How soon in the possession of our heart’s desire comes the sense of
disappointment, and the presence of the worm, and promise of the
blight among the flowers of our vernal days. Pitch the tent or drop
the anchor where we may, always a new campaign opening, always a new
voyage beginning--quiet nowhere.
“I dare say it is only my folly--that nothing has gone wrong, and that
they have no secrets to hide from me. I have no one else; he would not
shut me out from his confidence, and leave me quite alone. No, Ry, you
could not.”
With a full heart she turned again from the window.
“He’ll come again in a minute; he’ll not walk far with Harry.”
She went to the door, and opening it, listened. She heard a step enter
the passage from the stable-yard, and called to ask who was there. It
was only Tom, who had let out Master Harry’s horse, and opened the
gate for him. He led it out, and they walked together--Master Harry
with the bridle in his hand, and Master Charles walking beside him.
They took the narrow way along the little glen towards Cressley
Common.
She knew that he would return probably in a few minutes; and more and
more she wondered what those minutes might contain, she partly
wondered at her own anxiety. So she returned to the room and waited
there for him. But he remained longer away than she expected. The
tea-things were on the table deserted. The fire flickered its genial
invitation in vain, and she, growing more uncomfortable and lonely,
and perhaps a little high at being thus forsaken, went upstairs to pay
old Dulcibella Crane a visit.