THE PEDLAR'S STONE
THE Vicarage at Crishowell looked duller than ever, Isoline thought,
as she and Mr. Lewis came round the corner of the church and faced its
homely front. Howlie was at the door grinning affably, in her eyes a
horrible travesty of the soft-mannered footman who had presided over
their departure at the other end of their drive. A duck was quacking
by the pond, and she would have liked to throw stones at the creature
for the odious familiarity of its greeting, had she only known how to
do so. She knew herself to be built for refinement, and, after two
days of a ladyship's society, it could hardly be expected of her to
slip glibly into lower surroundings. Her face grew haughty as she
perceived Howlie.
The visit to Waterchurch had, perhaps, lacked something of the
grandeur expected, and the discrepancy between her anticipations of
Lady Harriet and the real woman were a little upsetting; but there had
been compensations, for she suspected herself of having, in some ways,
impressed her hostess. A woman who went out in a homespun skirt and
thick boots could not fail to notice the difference between herself
and a young lady who wore beflounced dresses and kid shoes even in the
country.
She had now no doubt of Harry's feelings; he was deeply in love with
her, and she looked to his coming visit as to a red-letter day. He
would arrive next week "on his own business," as he had said, and his
business would be hers too. She was quite shrewd enough to foresee
opposition on the part of his family, but the game was worth the
candle, and would be hers in the end. It was stimulating to think of a
victory over Lady Harriet.
Howlie and the maid-servant carried her box to her room, the former
puffing loudly as he went up the staircase supporting the hinder end
of the load.
"Unlock it," said Isoline, as it was set down in its place, tossing
him her keys with the air of a duchess.
He looked as impudently at her as he dared, and picking up the bunch,
proceeded to make as much noise as he possibly could over the
operation.
"How dreadfully clumsy you are, Howell," she exclaimed, annoyed, very
naturally, by the superfluous rattling that was going on.
He only sniffed, a habit he had when he found reply unnecessary.
The rattling did not abate, till she darted across the room to snatch
the keys from him, the hauteur of her deportment flying to the winds.
"You stupid boy!" she exclaimed, "if you were at Waterchurch Court,
where I have been, you would not be tolerated for a single day! Her
ladyship would send you packing in a very short time!"
He fixed his gaze upon her critically, and observed that, in taking
off her hat, she had loosened some hairpins.
"Yewre 'air's coming down," he remarked placidly.
Her hand went up to it at once.
"Oi can settle that for yew," he continued, with pleasant good-nature,
"for oi learned to plat up the 'orses' tails proper when I was working
i' the yard at Jones'."
"You are impertinent as well as noisy," said Miss Ridgeway angrily;
"if you cannot unlock my box you had better go down-stairs. Why Mr.
Lewis keeps you here at all is a wonder to me, mannerless,
good-for-nothing boy that you are!"
He gathered himself up from the floor on which he was kneeling by the
box, and left the room. Isoline was still ruffled when she turned to
her dressing-table, but Howlie was smiling as he made his way to the
back premises. "Miss is crewell hoigh since she come back from
Fenton's," he remarked to the maid-servant as he entered the kitchen.
"She's a settin' her cap at the young general over there. Moy! but
he's a smart feller too," he added, thinking of the half-crown.
For a couple of days after her return the memory of Waterchurch buoyed
up Isoline through the flatness of life at the Vicarage, and she spent
many an hour anticipating Harry's coming and its almost certain
result. But, in spite of this, time was long, and the excitement in
her mind made her restless, too restless to sit quietly in the house;
she felt she must be out and moving about--a rather unusual thing with
her.
It was with a half-formed resolution that she put on her hat one
afternoon, the Pedlar's Stone in her mind. Harry was so much in her
thoughts that she was a little unwilling to replace his visionary
image by the reality of the person she was likely to find there, but,
in spite of this, her feet seemed to carry her imperceptibly towards
the way that had become so familiar. She found herself on the turf of
the plateau almost before she had decided whether it would be pleasant
to see Rhys or not.
She was pretty certain that he would be waiting there, for, though he
had made no actual declaration of love to her, she had seen plainly at
their last meeting that he was on the high-road to doing so. Comparing
him with Harry in her mind, she knew that he was the more attractive
of the two, partly because of the mystery surrounding him, and partly
because, as a man, he was a more imposing person. Harry was a boy. But
what Harry lacked in personal importance was made up to him a
thousandfold by his accessories; the actual man mattered little to
her. She had hardly discovered more about Rhys than he had told her on
the evening of their first meeting, for though she had tried to
question him about himself on subsequent occasions, she had got at
nothing new. To-night she resolved to find out something further.
Dusk had fallen when she reached the Pedlar's Stone; she knew nothing
of its history nor the reason of its existence, and her curiosity
about outdoor things was so small, that it had never occurred to her
to ask him about it. She stood beside it looking round at the
darkening landscape, never suspecting that, apart from the Pig-driver
and a few of his dependents, she was almost the only person in
Crishowell parish who would venture to do so. Had she known it, the
idea would hardly have troubled her, for though not physically brave,
she was too unimaginative to be upset by anything she could neither
see nor feel. She stepped up on to the bank in which it was embedded,
and looked through the straggling hazels for some sign of Rhys. Not a
live thing was to be seen. She shuddered a little at the awful
loneliness that hung around, and for a moment a kind of panic took
her. It was almost as though the atmosphere of horror raised round the
place by popular tradition had made itself tangible and leaped upon
her. She turned quickly to come down the bank, screaming at the sudden
apparition of Rhys' figure. He stood a few paces off, with his arms
folded, watching her.
"How you startled me!" she exclaimed, half angry; "where did you come
from?"
"I have followed you for some way," he replied, smiling as he took her
hand.
"I don't like that," she said pettishly; "it is horrid to think of
some one walking behind one when one does not suspect it."
"Are you angry with me?" asked Rhys. "Don't be unkind after I've
waited for you every evening for the last four days."
"But I told you I should be away from Crishowell. I only came back the
day before yesterday. I enjoyed myself very much too."
"I am glad of that," said Rhys, in a voice which gave the lie to his
words.
"I was staying at such a delightful place," she continued, pausing for
the expected question.
It came at once.
"Where was that?"
"A place called Waterchurch Court. Have you ever heard of it? It
belongs to Mr. Fenton, who is very rich."
Rhys repressed an exclamation. "I know about him. He has a son, hasn't
he?"
"Yes," replied Isoline, looking conscious.
"An' I'll be bound he paid you a sight of attention," cried Walters,
relapsing, as he sometimes did when excited, into the speech of his
forefathers.
"Let us go and sit down," said Isoline, "I am getting tired." She
moved towards the great stone on which they usually sat.
"You haven't answered me," he exclaimed, tormented by the thought of
Harry.
Isoline liked power. "Why should I?" she asked lightly.
"I'll tell you why," he cried, his breath coming short through his hot
lips; "because I love you, Isoline--I love you! I love you! I think of
nothing but you, day and night!"
She quickened her pace, her head turned away from him, yet her
expression was not exactly one of displeasure. But he could not see
that.
"Ah, you don't care, I suppose," he went on, catching her hand again,
"but you can't stop me, Isoline. Do you hear that? I love you! I
_will_ love you, whatever you may say. What do I care for anything in
this world but you? Here I've sat, night after night, crying out in my
heart for you, and longing all the days you have been away for a sight
of your face! Hate me if you like, I can't stop loving you."
"Let me alone, Mr. Kent," faltered the girl, somewhat taken off her
feet by his torrent of words. "Let me go, please; I cannot stay here
if you go on in that way."
"You _shall_ hear me!" cried Walters, planting himself before her.
"Why did you come here, making me forget everything, luck and trouble
alike? Isoline! Isoline!"
She was getting alarmed by his violence, and would have turned and
fled, but his arms were round her and he was covering her face, her
lips, her cheek, her hair, with furious kisses. She struggled angrily
for a moment, and finding resistance useless, dropped her head upon
his shoulder and began to cry. Rhys held her closer.
"Don't cry like that," he said, almost in a whisper, frightened in his
turn by the effect of his outburst.
"Let me go," she repeated. "I want to go home."
"Isoline, don't say that--don't go! Ah! how I love you! You must not
go. Speak to me--tell me you like me a little, only to keep me from
breaking my heart."
"Let me go," she repeated again.
He loosed his arms and she pushed him away. "How can you be so rough
and frighten me so?" she exclaimed, drying her eyes with her
handkerchief. "I will never come back here--never--never!"
Rhys was half-mad with excitement and despair at her words. He turned
away, striking his clenched hands together and walking to and fro like
a creature in a cage. She watched him over her handkerchief; emotion
was a thing new to her, and she did not like it.
"Do stop," she said petulantly, putting it back in her pocket. He
turned round and stood humbly before her.
"I have terrified you," he said. "I am a brute beast, not fit to speak
to you, not fit to love you."
Almost for the first time in his life he thought more of another than
of himself. She was silent, the resentment in her face giving way to
curiosity.
"Why do you behave like that?" she asked at last.
"Oh, Isoline, I am sorry. Only stay with me a little longer. I swear
to you that I will be quiet, and not frighten you any more. I couldn't
help it, dear; I love you so."
"I think you have behaved very badly," the girl said, pursing up her
lips and quite self-possessed again. "It is impossible for me to stay.
I am accustomed to gentlemen."
Rhys groaned.
"I hope you are ashamed," she said, with a fine ignorance of her own
share in the situation.
"I am, I am."
He stood silent while she smoothed her hair, which had become
disarranged.
"I suppose I may go a bit of the way with you," he hazarded, when she
had finished. "It's dark, and I must see you as far as the place above
the farm."
She did not move; she was looking at him with a faint curiosity.
"I will stay a short time if you give me your word that you will not
annoy me again," she said, a little surprised at his submission.
Certainly it was a strange state of mind for such a man as Rhys
Walters. But many things had cropped up in his heart, unsuspected even
by himself.
"I don't deserve it," he said.
"I do not wish to be too hard upon you," she replied, judicially, as
she seated herself in their usual place.
Rhys' depression was so great that Isoline soon began to get rather
tired of his company, for he seemed quite incapable of entertaining
her, and the little admiring speeches that had formerly fallen so
glibly from his tongue would not come, charmed she never so wisely.
In a short time she rose to go home, and he made no protest after he
had extorted a reluctant promise that she would return again. Her
reluctance did not go very deep.
"Why have you told me so little about yourself?" she asked, as they
went along the plateau. "I know your name, and I know that I must not
speak of you to any one; but that is not much."
He was not embarrassed by these questions, for he had long ago
foreseen them and prepared something to meet them with.
"What are you doing here?" continued she. "Does no one ever see you?"
"No one but you and one other. If I were seen I should have to leave
this place at once. I am a Government agent on private business for
the Crown."
He paused a moment, and Isoline's eyes opened wide in her interest.
"Yes," she said, "go on."
"I'm employed by Government to watch some people who are thought to be
doing wrong, and to do that, I have to keep myself out of sight."
"Who are they, and what are they doing?"
"I can't tell any one that, but it has to do with an estate."
The girl drank his words in. The little imagination she had was always
attracted by a mystery, and the very vagueness of his story only
served to impress her more.
"Then is Kent your real name?" she asked.
"No--no, it isn't. But I have had to take it for business purposes.
You haven't forgotten that you promised to tell no one you had seen
me. You will keep your word, Isoline?"
"Oh, certainly," she exclaimed fervently, "I should be afraid to say
anything after what you have told me. I might get into trouble,
mightn't I?" she added naïvely.
"And I might have to go to prison," he said, speaking the exact truth.
"You would be sorry for that, wouldn't you, Isoline?"
"Oh, really I should. How dreadful!" she exclaimed.
At this his heart thrilled; he had no idea how the words "Crown" and
"Government" had exalted him in her eyes. The pedestal upon which he
had raised her was so high that he never supposed she could see down
into the sordid world beneath her. Poor Rhys! the spiritual part of
him was small, a feeble spark hidden deep in the darkness of
selfishness, but Isoline had struck it with her little worthless hand,
and it had flickered up.
After leaving her he went back to the cottage in a state of rapture,
for she had promised to return. Like Harry at Waterchurch, he was
wakeful with thoughts of her, but, unlike him, he went out into the
night, and spent it rambling among the shoulders of the mountain.
It was dawning when he came home and locked himself in for the coming
day, and the place was so cheerless that he almost missed George. He
wondered what had become of him as he went down the ladder and threw
himself on his bed. The underground room was now half filled with
things which he had carried below after his companion had left him,
and the mattress and other possessions belonging to the sheep-stealer
furnished his prison, and made it a little more habitable. The
impossibility of having a fire tried him in the cold weather, for the
place was chilly with the damp of the surrounding earth, and he dared
not during the day kindle the smallest flame in the fire-place, for
fear that, by some fraction of a chance, some one might pass, and
observe the uncommon spectacle of smoke issuing from an empty house.
For some days after Williams had gone he had been in sore straits.
There were few provisions in the cottage, and when they were finished,
there was no means of getting more, as he dared not venture out.
Fortunately, it wanted but a few days of the Pig-driver's weekly
visit, and he eked out his food till the old man should arrive,
fighting his hunger as best he might, and blessing the clear mountain
water which ran at the door. As he heard the sound of Bumpett's
squeaky voice one morning in the room above, he felt like a
shipwrecked man who sees a sail. Had his visitor been an angel from
heaven, instead of an exceedingly wicked old man, he could not have
been more welcome.