... For me,
Perhaps I am not worthy, as you say,
Of work like this; perhaps a woman's soul
Aspires, and not creates; yet we aspire...
... I,
Who love my art, would never wish it lower
To suit my stature. I may love my art,
You'll grant that even a woman may love art,
Seeing that to waste true love on anything
Is womanly, past question.
E. B. BROWNING.
The heat of the blazing day was just beginning to be tempered with light
puffs of sea-scented air as the sun declined, when the Honorable Claud
Cranmer stepped upon the platform at Stanton, and asked the
station-master if the London train were due.
"Yes, it was--just signalled from Coryton;" and Claud, after the manner
of his race, put his hands behind him, wrinkled up his eyelids on
account of the sun, and gazed away along the flat marshy valley of the
Ashe river, to catch the first glimpse of the approaching train.
On the other side of the sandy river mouth lay the little old village of
Ashemouth, picturesquely nestling at the foot of the tall cliff. It was
a pretty view, but not to be compared at all with the beauty of Edge
Combe.
"I do hope the young lady will arrive," soliloquised the young man. "The
poor fellow ought to have some one with him who knows him. I only wish I
could hit upon some clue to the mystery; it's the most baffling thing!"
He sighed, and then he yawned vigorously, for he had been up the greater
part of the night, and he was a person whom it did not suit to have his
rest disturbed. The village nurse had been quite inadequate to the task
of holding poor Allonby in his bed, and so had aroused "the gentleman"
at about two, since when he had only had an hour's nap. The day had been
most distressing. Lady Mabel had sent Joseph, the coachman, into Stanton
for ice, which he had obtained with difficulty, but it seemed as if
nothing would abate the fierce heat in that sick-chamber, they longed
for cool wind and cloudy skies to obscure the brilliant weather in which
the haymakers were so rejoicing. As the fever grew higher, Dr. Forbes'
face grew graver, and it was with a sickening dislike to being the
bearer of such tidings that Claud set out for the station to meet the
patient's sister, and drive her up to the farm.
The train appeared at last, curving its dark bulk along the gleaming
metals with the intense deliberation which marks the pace of all trains
on branch lines of the South-Western.
"No need to hurry oneself this hot weather," the engine appeared to be
saying, comfortably, while Claud was feverishly thinking how much hung
on every moment. He had formed no pre-conceived idea as to what Miss
Allonby's exterior would be like. His eyes dwelt anxiously on the
somewhat numerous female figures which emerged from the carriage doors.
Most of them were mammas and nurses, with two or three small children in
striped cotton petticoats, whose cheeks looked sadly in want of the
fresh salt air of Stanton.
At last he became aware of a girl, who he guessed might be the one he
sought for, merely because he could not see anyone else who could
possibly answer to that description.
This girl must have alighted from the train with great celerity, for her
portmanteau had already been produced from the van and laid beside her.
She was rather tall and particularly slight--somewhat thin, in fact. She
wore a dust-colored tweed suit very plainly made, and a helmet-shaped
cap of the same cloth. Her face was pale, with an emphasis in the
outline of the chin which faintly recalled her handsomer brother. Her
eyes were keen, and her expression what Americans call intense.
She was walking towards Mr. Cranmer, but her gaze was fixed on a porter
who stood just behind him.
"Is there a cart or anything in waiting to take me to Poole Farm?" she
asked, with the thin clearness of voice and purity of accent belonging
to London girls. Claud stepped forward, raising his cap.
"I'm afraid I can't lay claim to being a _cart_," he said, modestly,
"but perhaps you would kindly include me in your definition of a
_thing_. I am in waiting to take you to Poole Farm."
An amused look broke over the girl's face, a look not of surprise but of
arrested interest; in a moment it changed, a shadow fell on the eyes as
if a cloud swept by, she made a step forward and spoke breathlessly.
"You come from Poole Farm? What news do you bring me of my brother?"
Claud felt a sudden movement of most unnecessary emotion; there was such
a feverish, pathetic force in the question, and in the expression of the
mouth which asked it, that he was conscious of an audible falter in his
voice, as he replied, as hopefully as he could:
"Mr. Allonby has had a very bad accident, it is folly not to tell you
that at once. He is very ill, but the doctor says he has a fine
constitution, and hopes that everything--that all--in short, that he'll
pull through all right. You will want to reach him as quickly as
possible. Will you come this way, please?"
He hurriedly took her travelling-bag from her, not looking at her face,
lest he should see tears; and hastened out of the station to where
Joseph stood with the trap.
By the servant's side stood an unclassified looking man of quiet
appearance, and plain, unostentatious dress. As Mr. Cranmer approached
he stepped forward and touched his hat.
"Mr. Dickens, sir, from Scotland Yard," he said, in a low voice.
"Oh, ah! Yes, of course. You came down by this train. Just get on the
box, will you, and we will take you straight to the scene of the
tragedy, as I suppose all the newspapers will have it to-morrow," and
Claud motioned Joseph to his seat with a hurried injunction "to look
sharp." When he turned again to Miss Allonby, she was quite quiet and
composed. Nobody could have guessed that she had received any news that
might shock her. "Wasting my pity, after all, it seems," thought Claud,
as he helped her into the carriage. "I hope you will excuse my driving
up with you," he said, as he took his place beside her. "It's a good
long walk, and I'm anxious to be back as fast as possible."
"I can only thank you most sincerely for taking so much trouble on our
account," she answered, at once, "and I should be so grateful if you
would tell me something of what has happened. I am quite in the dark,
and--the suspense is oppressive."
"I shall be only too glad to help you in any way," he said, with one of
his deft little bows, which always conveyed an impression of finished
courtesy. "You are Miss Allonby, I presume?"
"Yes--and you?"
"My name's Cranmer, and I am a total stranger to your brother, whom I
have never seen but in a state of perfect unconsciousness."
He proceeded to relate to her all the incidents of the eventful
yesterday.
She listened with an interest which was visible but controlled, and with
perfect self-possession. Her eyes rested on his face all the while he
was speaking--not with any disagreeable persistency, but with a simple
frank desire to comprehend everything--not the mere words alone, but any
such shade of meaning as looks and expression can give.
With his habit of close observation, Claud studied her as he spoke, and
by the end of his narration had catalogued her features and attributes
with the accuracy which was an essential part of him. There are men to
whom girls are in some sense a mystery, who take in dreamy and
comprehensive ideas of them, surrounded by a little idealization or
fancy of their own, these could never tell you what a woman wore, how
her dress was cut, not even the arrangement of her front hair--that all
important detail!--nor the color of her eyes or size of her hands. It is
to be conjectured that a certain loss of illusion might result to these
men when, on being married, they find themselves unavoidably in close
proximity to one of these heretofore mistily contemplated divinities,
and by slow degrees make the inevitable discovery that their "phantom of
delight" eats, drinks, sleeps, brushes her hair, and dresses and
undresses in as mundane a fashion as their own.
Claud Cranmer, though doubtless he lost much delight by never
surrounding womanhood with a halo of unreality, yet would certainly be
spared any such lowering of a preconceived ideal, since he took stock in
a detailed and matter-of-fact way of every woman he met, and by the time
Miss Allonby and he reached Poole Farm could have handed in a report as
cool and unpoetically worded as Olivia's description of herself--"_Item_
two lips, indifferent red--_item_ two grey eyes with lids to them."
But his companion's eyes were not grey, they were hazel and were the
only feature of her face meriting to be called handsome. As before
stated, she was pale, and had the air of being overworked--though this
might be partially the result of a long and hurried journey. Her skin
was fair and pure, with an appearance of delicacy, by which term is here
meant refinement, not ill health. Her impassive critic observed that her
ears were small and well-set, that the shape of her head was good, her
teeth white and even, and her eyelashes long, she had no claims at all
to be considered beautiful, or even what is called a pretty girl--which
being stated, the reader will doubtless rush at once to the conclusion
that she was plain, which was far from the case. It was just such a face
as scarcely two people would be agreed upon. One might find it
interesting, another complain that it was hatchetty, the former would
admire the clean-cut way of the features, the latter gloomily prophecy
nut-crackers for old age, and lament over angular shoulders and sharp
elbows.
It was not a face which attracted Claud. He was an admirer of beauty,
and preferred it with a certain admixture of consciousness, he liked a
woman's eyes to meet his with a full knowledge of the fact that they
were of opposite sexes. He had a weakness for pretty figures, cased in
dresses which were a miracle of cut; though of course the wearer must be
more than an ornamental clothes-peg: he was too intelligent to admire a
nonentity.
Miss Allonby's dress was not badly cut, neither was it put on without
some idea of the way clothes should be worn; but it was shabby, and had
evidently never been costly. Her gloves, too, fitted her, and were the
right sort of glove, but they were old and much soiled. Her shoes gave
evidence that her foot was not too large for her height, and her hands,
as Claud mentally noted, _were size six and a quarter_. Her face wore an
expression which can only be described as preoccupied. Of course it was
natural that on this particular day she should be thinking only of her
brother; but her new acquaintance had penetration enough to know that
there was more than a temporary anxiety in her eyes. Had he met her on
any other day, under any other circumstances, it would have been the
same; he was merely a passing event--something which was in no sense
part of the life she was leading. She seemed to convey in some
indescribable fashion the fact that he was not of the slightest
importance to her, and the idea inspired a wholly unreasonable sensation
of irritation.
An unmarried doctor once somewhat coarsely engaged to point out all the
portraits of unmarried women in a photographic album, on the theory that
the countenance of all those who are single wears an expression of
unsatisfied longing. Wyn Allonby's face would hardly have come under
this heading. Hers was not a happy nor a perfectly contented look, but
neither could it be said in any sense to express longing. It was the
look of one who has much serious work to do, the doing of which involves
anxiety, but also brings interest and pleasure--a brave, thoughtful,
preoccupied look, more suggestive of a middle-aged man of science than a
young girl.
Claud found something indirectly unflattering in such an expression; he
liked to have the female mind entirely at his disposal, _pro tem_. Her
age, too, puzzled him; it was necessarily provoking to such an adept to
find himself unable to decide this point within five years. She might be
twenty-one, and looking older, or she might be twenty-five, and looking
younger, or she might claim any one of the three intermediate dates.
When he had told her all that there was to tell, he relapsed into silent
speculation on these important points, now inclining to think that a
life of hardship had made her prematurely self-possessed, now that her
peculiarly unconscious temperament gave an air of fictitious youth. He
would have liked to ask her some questions, or, rather, deftly to
extract from her a few details as to who she was and what were her
circumstances. But Miss Allonby gave him no opening. She was silent
without being shy, which is certainly undue presumption in a woman.
Her first words seemed to be extorted from her almost by force.
They had left Stanton far behind. The distance from thence to Edge Combe
was said to be about five miles; but these miles were not horizontal,
but perpendicular, which somehow tended to increase their length
considerably. They had climbed gradually but continuously for some time
between tall hedges, up a lane remarkable only for its monotony; thence
they had emerged, not without gratitude, into the Philmouth Road. This
was a wide highway, somewhat indefinite as to its edges, which were
fringed irregularly with hart's-tongue and other ferns, or clumped with
low brambles bearing abundant promise of a future blackberry harvest. On
either side a row of ragged and onesided pine-trees, stooping as if
perpetually cringing before the stinging blows of the wild sou'-westers,
which had so tortured them from their youth up that they habitually
leaned one way, like children whose minds are warped from their natural
bent by undue influence in one direction.
Behind these trees the sky was beginning to flame with sunset, making
their uncouth forms stand out weirdly dark in the still air.
For a short way they drove quietly along this road, then turned down a
precipitous lane to the left, and wound along till a white gate was
reached. Mr. Dickens from Scotland Yard jumped down and opened the gate;
and as the carriage went slowly through, and turned a corner, the effect
was like a transformation scene, and a cry of wondering admiration broke
from the silent girl.
They stood on the very edge and summit of a descent so steep as to be
almost a precipice. Below them lay the fairy valley, half-hidden in a
pearly mist, with a vivid stretch of deep-blue sea as its horizon. Well
in evidence lay Poole Farm, directly beneath them, a sluggish wreath of
smoke curling lazily up from its great chimney. The road curved to and
fro down the abrupt hillside like a white folded ribbon, here visible,
there lost behind a belt of ash trees.
"How beautiful," said Wynifred,--"how beautiful it is!"
The rest of evening was over it all--over the tiny, ancient grey church
far, far away towards the valley's mouth; over the peaceable red cows
which lay meditatively here and there among the grass; over the
sun-burnt group of laborers, who, their day's mowing done, were slowly
making their way down to their hidden cottages, with fearless eyes of
Devon blue turned on the strangers and their carriage.
"What splendid terra-cotta-colored people!" said Miss Allonby, following
them with her appreciative gaze. Mr. Cranmer was unable to help
laughing. "They are a delicate shade of the red-brown of the cliffs,"
said the girl, dreamily. "How full of color everything is!"
Her companion mentally echoed the remark: it was the concise expression
of a thought which in him had been only vague. She was right,--it was
the color, the strange glow of grass, and cliffs, and sea, which so
impressed eyes accustomed only to the "pale, unripened beauties of the
north."
"That is Poole Farm, right beneath us," he said. "It is not so near as
it looks."
"Oh, if I were only there!" she burst out; and then was suddenly still,
as if ashamed of her involuntary cry.
"Get on as fast you can, Joseph," said Mr. Cranmer, and felt himself
unaccountably obliged to sit so as not to see the pale face beside him,
nor to pity the evident force which she found it necessary to employ to
avoid a complete break-down.
When at last they stopped at the farm-yard gate, and he had helped her
out, and seen her tall, slight figure disappear swiftly within the
house, he experienced a relaxation of mental tension which was, he told
himself, greatly out of proportion to the occasion; and, strolling into
the big kitchen, was sensible of a quite absurd throb of relief when he
heard that Dr. Forbes hoped his patient was just a little better.
"It is strange how people vary," he reflected. "I have met two girls,
one to-day, one yesterday, neither of whom is in the smallest degree
like any girl I ever saw before."
By which it will be inferred that his acquaintance with modern
developments of girlhood had been limited pretty much to one particular
class of society. The girl art-student he had never met in any of her
varieties; and this opportunity of contemplating a new class, of
perusing a fresh chapter in his favorite branch of study, was by no
means without its charm.