HOW A MYSTERIOUS COAL BARGE CAME TO THE "KING'S ARMS."
"You are late, girl," he said gloomily.
"Nay, father," answered Ruth, glancing from his face towards the
still brilliant westward horizon. "'Tis not yet seven o'clock."
"Tush!" he rejoined impatiently. "I'll have no more of these
gaddings. And hark you, young mistress, no more of these vanities
neither;" and he looked as he spoke, in angry contempt at her dainty
skirts. "In with you at once and lay them away. Or better still,
cast them into the kitchen fire. And as for this," he went on,
roughly clutching at her hawthorn wreath, and dragging it from her
head, he flung it into the water, "Let that settle it."
[Sidenote: A gloomy end to May-day.]
Tears of grief and indignation sparkled into Ruth's eyes, as she
watched the beautiful flowers whirled by the eddying tide into deep
water; but by a strong effort she restrained herself, and only said
in tones of gentle reproach, "'Twas my crown, father. They made me
Queen of May."
"Queen! crown! forsooth! did they so?" he said, with a bitter smile.
"How is it the very stones do not cry out against this restoring in
our unhappy country of these mummings and pagan holidays? Is it not
enough to be having queens--ay, and kings--of flesh and blood
wantoning it at Whitehall, but we must be seeing modest maidens aping
their antics, and behaving in this fashion?"
"Nay, Master Rumbold," said Lee, "our people desired to do Ruth an
honour; and I think you should be proud."
"I should be prouder," returned Rumbold, turning irefully on the
young man, "to see her in her winding-sheet, a pale white--Marry! and
let me look at your face now, Mistress," he went on, snatching her
roughly by the chin. "Ha! red as your gaudy flowers there! So! I
guessed as much. And there has been romping, has there?"
"Nay, father; just a little turn or two at Hoodman Blind, and Hunt
the Slipper."
"What next?" said Rumbold groaningly, and turning up his eye.
"And--and a measure," faltered the truthful Ruth.
"Dancing!" and now the stern eye glared.
"Only round--round the Maypole, father."
Rumbold's lips parted with a jerk, as if he was about to break into
still sharper rebuke; but as his eye caught the expression of
Lawrence's face he contented himself with reiterating his dismissal.
"Good night, father," said Ruth, lifting her face to his, but Rumbold
did not, or affected not to see. He was standing absorbed in
watching the approach of a big black coal-laden barge which now hove
lumbering in sight through the middle span of the bridge.
[Sidenote: The queen's crown goes down.]
As the boat cleared into open stream again her huge black bows came
athwart the poor drowning May garland, and swirled it deep down under
water.
Whether the unfortunate wreath's destruction afforded Rumbold special
pleasure, or that some other cause originated the grim smile slowly
breaking on his gloomy lips, who shall say? The look at all events
roused Lee's ire, and he said in tones of indignant reproach, which
he seemed at small pains to conceal, "Your daughter bids you
good-night, Master Rumbold."
The maltster started from his abstraction, and imprinting a cold kiss
on Ruth's upturned brow, waved her away with a gesture of impatience,
and resumed his contemplation of the barge.
Now, in Ruth's eyes coal-laden barges were things as ugly almost as
they were common up and down their little silver Lea; and the rapt
interest her father appeared to be taking in this one and particular
specimen of its class, attracted her wonder and curiosity.
To her the boat seemed only more than a usually hideous one, by
reason of its cruel destruction of her May crown; and partly in
search of sympathy, partly in good-night, she stole a glance at
Lawrence Lee. Alack! He had seemingly forgotten her very existence,
so absorbed was he also in following the course of the barge. "And
this," thought Ruth, swallowing back a rising lump in her throat, was
"the end of the delightfullest day she had ever spent!" Truly, as
once she had read somewhere in some dusty fusty old book, "a merry
going out makes a mournful coming in," and she turned with lagging
and sorrowful step up the grassy slope, pausing, however, within a
few yards of the road, which was fringed with a thick growth of
bracken and bramble, to cast one more wistful glance at Lawrence, and
to see whether the odious barge had taken itself out of sight.
Nothing of the sort. There stood the young man with folded arms, and
brows gloomily knit, watching the boat, which was now turning from
midstream. A minute more, and it floated up to a standstill
alongside of the water steps, near the bottom of the inn garden.
[Sidenote: Mysterious visitors.]
The willow boughs interlace and hang so heavily over the white wooden
paling which skirts the garden by the water's edge, and cast such
bewildering shadows in the now fast gathering darkness, that Ruth
cannot be certain of the precise number of figures all wearing
broad-brimmed slouch hats and long black cloaks, which rise, as she
looks, from the depths of the barge, and springing in hot haste to
the bank, as quickly disappear in the direction of the inn yard.
Two--three--five--seven, and Ruth, despite her chagrins, was
beginning to smile at the vision she has conjured up of Mistress
Sheppard's face when she should see this concourse of barge-men,
coal-heavers, or whatever they might be, besieging her kitchen door.
"A scurvy lot, quotha!" could not Ruth hear her grumbling over it all
as plain as if she really spoke? "A scurvy lot! Each of them, of
course, looking for his cup of her home-brewed cider for their
invaluable aid of landing a few coals."
Suddenly the lean, thread-paper body of Mistress Sheppard's husband
showed among the gooseberry bushes, describing, as it neared the
steps, the acute angles which always marked his fashion of welcoming
distinguished guests to his hostelry.
[Sidenote: Strange cargo.]
"Here!" at the same moment said a voice from the barge in low tones,
but of which every syllable was audible to Ruth through the utter
silence around. "Lend a hand, can't you?" and then rose up another
figure, habited like the rest, but with the folds of his mantle flung
far back over his shoulders, leaving his arms free to encompass a
load covered with a large piece of tarry canvas. This man's burden,
judging by his swaying gait, must have been of no light weight,
"They're not feathers," he growled, as he laboured with it to the
broad top of the barge's sides.
"All right!" eagerly said the voice of Rumbold as he advanced to the
steps. "Come along in, quick, Colonel. We'll unload presently."
"That's as you please," returned the other. "But by your leave we'll
be having these under cover at once. They were tempered Venice way;
and your own pretty daughter wouldn't get so much harm from the night
dews, as they would. By the by,--little Mistress Ruth, she is safe
indoors and abed?"
"Ay," sullenly grunted Rumbold. "That's my affair, I doubt, Colonel
Rumsey."
"No offence," returned the other. "I just ventured to ask the
question, because I had a notion that I caught a glimpse of young
Farmer Lee's brown jerkin among the yew trunks yonder as we were
clearing the bridge."
"And what if you did? Isn't he one of us?" said the maltster,
casting a careless glance round.
[Sidenote: A startling accident.]
"True," answered Rumsey, in rather lagging tones. "He's a necessary
evil, as you explained, for the use his premises may be to us; but
I'd as lief he'd been out of the bargain if't had been possible.
He's but a stripling; and old heads are the only ones for our sort of
work, depend upon't. There's what one may call a kind of
touch-and-go slipperiness"-- The rest of what the speaker might be
having to say was lost in a deafening clash of steel, while he
himself disappeared totally from Ruth's range of sight, in what
seemed a flash of blue lightning.
"Lookye, Colonel!" said Rumbold, when, after a brief interval, he had
succeeded, with Master Sheppard's aid, in hauling Rumsey to his feet
again and landing him safe on the top of the steps. "Half an inch
more and you'd have been under water."
"'Twas those confounded nettles," growled the discomfited Rumsey,
rubbing himself all over, and glaring vindictively behind him at the
dank weed tangle all crushed into greenish mud under his heavy
weight, while Rumbold and Sheppard busied themselves in hastily
collecting the scattered contents of the fallen load. "Have you got
them all?"
"Ay, ay," answered Rumbold. "Come along, Colonel. They're waiting
for us."
"There were twelve," said Rumsey.
"Well, well, we can make another search presently," impatiently
returned Rumbold. "There's no fear. The place hereabouts is
haunted, the credulous yokels will tell you; and they'd sooner die
than set foot in it after nightfall. So come. Have with you, Master
Sheppard."
And followed by Sheppard the two walked towards the house.
[Sidenote: Lawrence Lee hesitates.]
And Lawrence? What has been his share in this unexpected scene?
Hardly that of an amazed spectator, Ruth thinks, while she watches
the hurried, half-stealthy nod of recognition bestowed on him by the
new-comer, as the three men pass within a few yards of the spot where
he is standing. Gloomily the young man returns their greeting, but
he remains motionless as any stone statue, making no attempt to join
them; and when they have disappeared he casts a wistful glance at his
own little craft, where she lies moored in a fall flood of moonlight,
and sighing so heavily that Ruth can hear the sound of it ever so
distinctly in the silence, for not so much as a leaf is stirring now
Then he turns, and, taking the narrow footpath leading to the front
porch of the inn, is lost in its shadows.
[Sidenote: The postern gate.]
Ruth rose from her hiding-place, listening intently. All quiet at
last; and gathering the tiffany skirts close about her, she sped like
a lapwing through the brushwood towards a little postern-gate in the
red wall, and tapped at it softly.