The church-bells made a pleasant music in Hey-don Hay on Sunday
mornings, and were naturally at their best upon a summer Sunday, when
the sunshine had thrown itself broadly down to sleep about the
tranquil fields. Heydon Hay was undisturbed by the presence of a single
conventicle in opposition to the parish church, and the leisurely
figures in the fields and lanes and in the village street were all bent
one way. In fine weather the worshippers were for the most part a little
in advance of time, and thereby found opportunity to gather in knots
about the lich-gate, or between it and the porch, where they exchanged
observations on secular affairs with a tone and manner dimly tempered by
the presence of the church.
Half a dozen people in voluminous broadcloth were already gathered about
the lich-gate when Fuller appeared, carrying his portly waistcoat with
a waddle of good-humored dignity, and mopping at his forehead. He was
followed by a small boy, who with some difficulty carried the 'cello in
a big green baize bag. One or two of the loungers at the gate carried
smaller green bags, and while they and Fuller exchanged greetings,
Sennacherib and Isaiah appeared in different directions, each with a
baize-clothed fiddle tucked beneath his arm. The church of Heydon Hay
boasted a string band of such excellence that on special occasions
people flocked from all the surrounding parishes to listen to its
performances. The members of the band and choir held themselves rather
apart from other church-goers, like men who had special dignities and
special interests. They had their fringe of lay admirers, who listened
to their discussions on “that theer hef sharp,” which ought to have
sounded, or ought not to have sounded, in last Sunday's anthem.
Whether his lordship made a point of it or not, the Barfield carriage
was always a little late, and Ferdinand certainly approved of the habit;
but on this particular morning the young gentleman was earlier than
common and arrived on foot. The male villagers took off their hats as he
walked leisurely along, the female villagers bobbed courtesies at him,
and the children raced before him to do him a sort of processional
reverence. This simple incense was pleasant enough, for he had spent
most of his time in larger places than Heydon Hay, and had experienced
but little of the sweets of the territorial sentiment. He walked along
in high good-humor, and enjoyed his triumphal progress, though he made
himself believe that it was only the quaint, rural, and Old-world smack
of it which pleased him.
Here and there he paused, and was affable with a county elector, but
when he reached the lich-gate he was altogether friendly with Fuller and
Sennacherib, and shook hands with Isaiah with actual warmth.
“Mr. Hales was dining at the Hall last night,” he said. “He told us that
some of the local people were in favor of an organ for the church, and
had talked about getting up a subscription, but he wouldn't listen to
the idea.”
“Should think not,” said Sennacherib. “Parson knows when he's well off.”
“Indeed he does,” returned Ferdinand; “he looks on the band as being
quite a part of the church, and says that he would hardly know the place
without it.”
“A horgin!” grunted Sennacherib, scornfully. “An' when they'd got it,
theer's some on 'em as 'ud niver be content till they'd got a monkey in
a scarlit coat to sit atop on it.”
“I hardly think they want _that_ kind of organ, Mr. Eld,” said
Ferdinand, smoothly.
“I do' know why they shouldn't,” returned Sennacherib. “It's nothin' but
their Christian humbleness as could mek 'em want it at all. The Lord's
made 'em a bit better off than their neighbors, an' they feel it
undeserved. It's castin' pearls afore swine to play for half on 'em
about here.”
Fuller, with both hands posed on the baize-clad head of the 'cello,
which the small boy had surrendered to him some moments before, shook
his fat ribs at this so heartily that Sennacherib himself re laxed into
a surly grin, and then Ferdinand felt him self at liberty to laugh also.
“You are rather severe upon your audience, Mr. Eld,” he said.
“A tongue like a file, our Sennacherib's got,” said the mild Isaiah.
“Touches nothin' but what he rasps clean through it.”
Ferdinand raised his hat at this moment and made a forward step, with
his delicately gloved right hand extended.
“Good-morning, Miss Fuller.”
Mr. De Blacquaire prided himself, and not without reason, on his own
_aplomb_ and self-possession, but he felt now a curious fluttering
sensation to which he had hitherto been an entire stranger.
Ruth accepted his proffered hand and responded to his salute, and then
shook hands with the two brethren. Ferdinand, with a jealousy at which
he shortly found time to be surprised, noticed that her manner in
shaking hands with these two stout and spectacled old vulgarians
differed in no way from her manner in shaking hands with him. This in
itself was a renewal of that calm, inexplicable disdain with which the
girl had treated him from the first. If rustic beauty had been fluttered
at his magnificent pressure, he could have gone his way and thought no
more about it; but when rustic beauty was just as cool and unmoved by
his appearance as if their social positions had been reversed, the
thing became naturally moving, and had in it a lasting astonishment for
leisure moments.
And there was no denying that the girl was surprisingly pretty. Prettier
than ever this Sunday morning, in a remarkably neat dress of dove color,
a demurely coquettish hat, and a bit of cherry-colored ribbon. Rustic
beauty was not altogether disdainful of town-grown aids, it would seem,
for Ferdinand's eye, trained to be critical in such matters, noted that
the girl was finely gloved and booted.
Her dress was like a part of her, but that, though the young gentleman
could not be supposed to know it, was a charm she owed to her own good
taste and her own supple fingers. The young gentleman might have been
supposed to know, perhaps, that her greatest charm of all was her
unconsciousness of charming, and it was certainly this which touched him
more than anything else about her.
There was no outer sign of the young Ferdinand's inward disturbance.
“I am afraid,” he said, resolute to draw her into talk with himself if
he could, though it were only for a moment, “I am afraid that I have
made Mr. Eld very angry.”
Ruth's brown eyes took a half-smiling charge of Sennacherib's surly
figure.
“Seems,” said Sennacherib, “the young gentleman was a-dinin' last night
along with the vicar, and it appears as some o' the fools he knows want
to rob the parish church o' the band, and build a horgin.”
“The vicar won't listen to the idea,” said Ferdinand. “There was only
one opinion about it.”
“It would be a great shame to break up the band,” Ruth answered,
speaking with vivacity, and addressing Ferdinand. “Everybody would
miss it so. We would rather have the band than the finest organ in the
world.”
It happened, as such things will happen for the disturbance of lovers,
that just as Ruth turned to address Ferdinand, Reuben Gold marched under
the lich-gate and caught sight of the group. The girl, her father, the
two Elds, and the young gentleman were standing by this time opposite
the church porch, but as far away from it as the width of the pathway
would allow. Various knots of villagers, observing that his lordship's
guest had stayed to talk, stood respectfully apart to look on, and,
if it might be, to listen. Now Reuben, for reasons already hinted at,
disliked Mr. De Blacquaire. He was not, perhaps, quite so conscious
as Mr. De Blacquaire himself that all the advantage of the differences
between them rested on the young gentleman's side. Reuben was not the
sort of youngster who says to himself, “I am a handsome fellow,” or “I
am a clever fellow,” or “I am a fellow of a good heart,” but in face of
Ferdinand's obvious admiration of Ruth and his evident desire to stand
well in her graces he had sprung up at once to self-measurement, and
had set himself shoulder to shoulder with the intruder for purposes of
comparison. With all the good the love for a good woman does us, with
all the wheat and oil and wine it brings for the nourishment of the
loftier half of us, it must needs bring a foolish bitter weed or two,
which being eaten disturb the stomach and summon singular apparitions.
And when Reuben saw the girl of his heart in vivacious public talk with
a young man of another social sphere he was quite naturally a great deal
more perturbed than he need have been. The gentleman admired her, and
it was not outside the nature of things that she might admire the
gentleman. He came up, therefore, mighty serious, and shook hands with
Fuller and the brethren, and then with Ruth, with an air of severity
which was by no means usual with him. He carried his violin case tucked
beneath his arm--a fact which of itself gave him an unworthy aspect in
Ferdinand's eyes--and he had shaken hands with Ruth without raising his
hat. A denizen of Heydon Hay who had taken off his hat in the open air
to a woman would have been scoffed by his neighbors, and would probably
have startled the woman herself as much as his own sense of propriety.
But all the same Reuben's salute seemed mutilated and boorish to the man
of more finished breeding, and helped to mark him as unworthy to be the
suitor of so charming a creature as the rustic beauty.
“Mr. De Blacquaire's a-tellin' us, Reuben,” said old Fuller, “as theer's
been some talk o' breaking up the church band and starting a horgin i'
the place on it.”
“That will end in talk,” said Reuben, with a half-defiant,
half-scrutinizing look at Ferdinand, as if he charged him in his own
mind with having suggested the barbarism.
“There is no danger that it will go further in the vicar's
time,” returned Ferdinand. “Besides, his lordship is as strongly opposed
to the change as anybody.”
“It's time we was movin' inside, lads,” said Fuller, glancing up at
the church clock. Ruth inclined her head to Ferdinand, gave a nod and
a smile to Reuben (who nodded back rather gloomily), and passed like a
sunbeam into the shadow of the porch. Fuller took up his 'cello in a big
armful, and followed, with the brethren in his rear. Ferdinand, feeling
Reuben's company to be distasteful, lingered in it with a perverse hope
that the young man might address him, and Reuben stood rather sullenly
by to mark his own sense of social contrast by allowing the gentleman to
enter first.
Each being disappointed by the other's immobility and quiet, a gradual
sense of awkwardness grew up between them, and this was becoming acute
when Ezra appeared, and afforded a diversion. Under cover of his uncle's
arrival Reuben escaped into the church.
In the course of centuries the church-yard had grown so high about
the building that grass waved on a level with the sills of the lower
windows, and the church was entered by a small flight of downward steps.
The band and choir had a little bare back gallery to themselves, and
approached it by a narrow spiral stone staircase. There were no side
galleries, and band and choir had therefore an uninterrupted survey of
the building. Reuben valued his place because it gave him a constant
sight of Ruth, and perhaps, though the fancy is certain of condemnation
at the hands of some of the severer sort, the visible presence of the
maiden, for whose sake he hoped for all possible excellences in himself,
was no bad aid to devotion. She sat in a broad band of tinted sunlight
with her profile towards her lover, looking to his natural fancy as if
she caused the sunlight, and were its heart and centre. Opposite to her
and with _his_ profile towards the music gallery also, sat Ferdinand,
and Reuben saw the young gentleman cast many glances across the church
in Ruth's direction. This spectacle afforded no aid to devotion, and not
even his music could draw the mind or eyes of the lover from Ferdinand,
whom he began to regard as being an open rival.
There was enough in this reflection to spur the most laggard of admirers
into definite action, and before the service was over Reuben had made up
his mind. He would speak to Ruth after church, and at least decide
his own chances. The vicar's sermon was brief, for the good man had no
rival, and could afford to please himself; but its duration, short as it
was, gave Reuben ample time to be rejected and accepted a score of times
over, and to gild the future with the rosiest or cloud it with the most
tempestuous of colors. The Earl of Barfield, according to his custom,
had arrived late, and it comforted Reuben a little to think that in his
presence, at all events, the young gentleman could make no progress
with his love affairs. It comforted him further to see that Ruth took no
notice of the glances of her admirer, and that she was to all appearance
unconscious of them and of him.
But when once he had made up his mind to instant action, the vicar's
brief discourse began to drag itself into supernatural length. Facing
the preacher, and immediately beneath Reuben's feet, was a clock of
old-fashioned and clumsy structure, and the measured tick, tick of its
machinery communicated a faintly perceptible jar to a square foot or so
of the gallery flooring. The mechanical rhythm got into Reuben's brain
and nerves until every second seemed to hang fire for a phenomenal time,
and the twenty minutes' discourse dragged into an age. Even when the
vicar at last lifted his eyes from the neatly ranged papers which lay on
the pulpit cushion before him, laid down his glasses, and without pause
or change of voice passed on to the benediction, and even when after the
customary decent pause the outward movement of the congregation began,
Reuben's impatience had still to be controlled, for it was the duty of
the band to play a solemn selection from the works of some old master
while the people filed away. Reuben led, and since the others must needs
follow at the pace he set, the old master was led to a giddier step than
he had ever danced to in a church before. Sennacherib was scandalized,
and even the mild Fuller was conscious of an inward rebellion. The taste
in Heydon Hay was rather in favor of drawl than chatter, and the
old masters in their serious moods were accustomed to be taken with
something more than leisure.
“Why, Reuben, lad,” began Sennacherib, “how didst come to let your hand
run away with your elber i' that way?”
But Reuben, sticking his hat on anyhow, was gone before the old man had
finished his question, thrusting his violin into its case as he made his
way down the corkscrew stairs. A single glance assured him that Ruth was
no longer in the churchyard. The Earl of Barfield's carriage blocked
the way at the lich-gate, and the young fellow waited in high impatience
until the obstacle should disappear. His lordship, in view of the
approaching election, was much more amiable and talkative than common,
and he and his protégé stood exchanging talk upon indifferent topics
with a little crowd of church-goers, but in a while the earl climbed
slowly into the carriage. Ferdinand skipped nimbly after him and the two
were driven away. Reuben, with hasty nods and good-mornings at one or
two who would have detained him, strode into the highway just in time to
see the dove-colored dress turn at a distant corner. He hurried after
it at his swiftest walk, and reaching the corner in the most evident
violent hurry, narrowly escaped walking over the object of the chase,
who had halted in talk with Aunt Rachel at the place where their
homeward ways divided.
He had expected to find her still far ahead, and this sudden encounter
was amazingly disconcerting to him. To begin with, apart from his real
purpose he had no business whatsoever round that particular corner. Then
to pause suddenly in the midst of so violent a hurry was in itself a
plain proclamation of his intent, and his hot courage had so rapidly
gone cold that the change of inward temperature carried a shock with it.
Nevertheless, he stopped and stammered a disjointed greeting to Rachel,
who returned for sole answer an icy little nod, pinching her lips
together somewhat superciliously as she gave it.
Ruth, who would have been burdened by a shyness equalling Reuben's own
had he succeeded in catching her by herself, was bold enough in the
presence of one of her own sex, and observed the situation with a
delighted mischief. But this was changed, as swiftly as Reuben's
emotions themselves, to a state of freezing discomfort when Aunt Rachel
bolt upright, and with a mincing precision in her speech, demanded to
know if this young--ahem!--this person had any communication to make.
“My dear aunt,” said the poor girl, blushing scarlet, and casting an
appealing glance at Reuben.
“You appeared to be in a hurry, Mr. Gold,” said the terrible old lady.
“My niece and I will not detain you.”
“Thank you,” responded Reuben, shaken back into self-possession. “I am
not in a hurry any longer.”
Aunt Rachel turned right about face with an almost military precision,
and passing her arm through Ruth's led the girl away, leaving Reuben
shaken back into internal chaos. Ruth's blushing face and humid brown
eyes were turned towards him in momentary but keen apology, and he was
left standing alone on the cobbled pavement with a feeling of perfect
wreck.
“Aunt Rachel!” said the girl, as she suffered herself thus ignominiously
to be towed away. “How could you make me behave so rudely?”
“Have nothing to do with those people,” replied Aunt Rachel, frigidly.
“They are bad, root and branch. I know them, my dear. That young man has
the audacity to admire you. You must not encourage him.”
“I am sure,” said Ruth, guiltily, only half knowing what she said, “he
has never spoken a word--”
“It is not necessary to wait for words,” returned the old lady. “I
can see quite clearly. I am experienced. I know the Golds. I have been
familiar with the method of their villany for many years.”
“How can you speak so?” the girl asked, recovering something of her
native spirit. “I am sure that there is no better man in the world than
Mr. Ezra Gold. Everybody speaks well of him.”
“It is not quite accurate, my dear,” said Aunt Rachel, “to say that
everybody speaks well of him, when a person even so inconsiderable
as myself is in the act of speaking ill of him.” The quaint veneer of
fashion with which for many years she had overlaid her speech and manner
was more apparent in this address than common, but suddenly she broke
through it and spoke with an approach to passion. “I know them; they are
villains. Have nothing to do with any member of that family, my dear,
as you value your happiness.” She pinched her niece's arm tightly as she
spoke, and for a little time they walked on in silence, Ruth not knowing
what to say in answer to this outburst, but by no means convinced as
yet of the villany either of Ezra or Reuben. “Now, my dear,” Aunt Rachel
began again, with a return to her customary mincing tones, “you are not
far from your own residence. I observe,” with a swift glance over her
shoulder, “that the person still lingers at the corner. But if he should
attempt to follow you may rely upon me to intercept him. My niece must
act like my niece. You must show your detestation of his odious advances
in a proper manner.”
“But, Aunt Rachel!” protested Ruth, “he has never made any advances, and
I--I haven't any detestation.”
“All in good time, my dear,” responded the old lady. “In the mean time,
rely upon my protection.” With this she stood up birdlike, and pecked
affectionately at Ruth's rosy cheek. The girl was well-nigh
crying, but restrained herself, and answered Rachel's “God bless you”
with some self-possession.
“Good-morning, dear aunt. But you are quite, oh, quite mistaken.”
“Indeed, my dear,” said Aunt Rachel, with a glitter in her youthful
eyes, and a compression of her mobile lips, “I am nothing of the
kind.” Ruth's eyes sank, and she blushed before the old lady's keen and
triumphant smile. She moved away downcast, while Aunt Rachel took the
opposite direction. The old lady wore a determined air which changed to
a sparkling triumph as she saw Reuben cross the road with an inelastic
step, and continue his homeward way with a head bent either in thought
or dejection.