MR. BRUCE DEVILLE
My father’s first sermon was a great success. As usual, it was
polished, eloquent, and simple, and withal original. He preached
without manuscript, almost without notes, and he took particular
pains to keep within the comprehension of his tiny congregation. Lady
Naselton, who waited for me in the aisle, whispered her warm approval.
“Whatever induced your father to come to such an out-of-the-way
hole as this?” she exclaimed, as we passed through the porch into
the fresh, sunlit air. “Why, he is an orator! He should preach at
cathedrals! I never heard any one whose style I like better. But all
the same it is a pity to think of such a sermon being preached to such
a congregation. Don’t you think so yourself?”
I agreed with her heartily.
“I wonder that you girls let him come here and bury himself, with his
talents,” she continued.
“I had not much to do with it,” I reminded her. “You forget that I
have lived abroad all my life; I really have only been home for about
eight or nine months.”
“Well, I should have thought that your sister would have been more
ambitious for him,” she declared. “However, it’s not my business,
of course. Since you are here, I shall insist, positively insist,
upon coming every Sunday. My husband says that it is such a drag
for the horses. Men have such ridiculous ideas where horses are
concerned. I am sure that they take more care of them than they do of
their wives. Come and have tea with me to-morrow, will you?”
“If I can,” I promised. “It all depends upon what Providence has in
store for me in the shape of callers.”
“There is no one left to call,” Lady Naselton declared, with her foot
upon the carriage step. “I looked through your card plate the other
day whilst I was waiting for you. You will be left in peace for a
little while now.”
“You forget our neighbor,” I answered, laughing. “He has not called
yet, and I mean him to.”
Lady Naselton leaned back amongst the soft cushions of her barouche,
and smiled a pitying smile at me.
“You need not wait for him, at any rate,” she said. “If you do you
will suffer for the want of fresh air.”
The carriage drove off, and I skirted the church yard, and made my
way round to the Vicarage gate. Away across the park I could see a
huge knickerbockered figure leaning over a gate, with his back to
me, smoking a pipe. It was not a graceful attitude, nor was it a
particularly reputable way of spending a Sunday morning.
I was reminded of him again as I walked up the path towards the
house. A few yards from our dining room window a dog was lying upon a
flower bed edge. As I approached, it limped up, whining, and looked at
me with piteous brown eyes. I recognized the breed at once. It was a
beagle--one of Mr. Deville’s without a doubt. It lay at my feet with
its front paw stretched out, and when I stooped down to pat it, it
wagged its tail feebly, but made no effort to rise. Evidently its leg
was broken.
I fetched some lint from the house, and commenced to bind up the limb
as carefully as possible. The dog lay quite still, whining and licking
my hand every now and then. Just as I was finishing off the bandage
I became conscious that some one was approaching the garden--a firm,
heavy tread was crossing the lane. In a moment or two a gruff voice
sounded almost at my elbow.
“I beg pardon, but I think one of my dogs is here.”
The words were civil enough, but the tone was brusque and repellant. I
looked round without removing my hands from the lint. Our neighbor’s
appearance was certainly not encouraging. His great frame was
carelessly clad in a very old shooting suit, which once might
have been of good cut and style, but was now only fit for the rag
dealer. He wore a grey flannel shirt with a turn-down collar of the
same material. His face, whatever its natural expression might have
been, was disfigured just then with a dark, almost a ferocious,
scowl. His hand was raised, as though unwillingly, to his cap, and a
pair of piercing grey eyes were flashing down upon me from beneath his
heavily marked eyebrows. He stood frowning down from his great height,
a singularly powerful and forbidding object.
I resumed my task.
“No doubt it is your dog!” I said, calmly. “But you must wait until
I have finished the bandage. You should take better care of your
animals! Perhaps you don’t know that its leg is broken.”
He got down on his knees at once without glancing at me again. He
seemed to have forgotten my very existence.
“Lawless,” he exclaimed, softly--”little lady, little lady, what have
you been up to? Oh, you silly little woman!”
The animal, with the rank ingratitude of its kind, wriggled
frantically out of my grasp and fawned about its master in a paroxysm
of delight. I was so completely forgotten that I was able to observe
him at my ease. His face and voice had changed like magic. Then I saw
that his features, though irregular, were powerful and not ill-shaped,
and that his ugly flannel shirt was at any rate clean. He continued
to ignore my presence, and, taking the dog up into his arms, tenderly
examined the fracture.
“Poor little lady!” he murmured. “Poor little Lawless. One of those
damned traps of Harrison’s, I suppose. I shall kill that fellow some
day!” he added, savagely, under his breath.
I rose to my feet and shook out my skirts. There are limits to one’s
tolerance.
“You are perfectly welcome,” I remarked, quietly.
There was no doubt as to his having forgotten my presence. He looked
up with darkened face. Lady Naselton was perfectly right. He was a
very ugly man.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I had quite forgotten that you were
here. In fact, I thought that you had gone away. Thank you for
attending to the dog. That will do very nicely until I get it home,”
he added, touching the bandage.
“Until you get it home!” I repeated. “Thank you! Do you think that you
can bandage better than that?”
I looked down with some scorn at his large, clumsy hands. After all,
were they so very clumsy, though? They were large and brown, but they
were not without a certain shapeliness. They looked strong, too. He
bore the glance with perfect equanimity, and, taking the two ends of
the line into his hands, commenced to draw them tighter.
“Well, you see, I shall set the bone properly when I get back,” he
said. “This is fairly done, though, for an amateur. Thank you--and
good morning.”
He was turning brusquely away with the dog under his arm, but I
stopped him.
“Who is Harrison?” I asked, “and why does he set traps?”
He frowned, evidently annoyed at having to stay and answer questions.
“Harrison is a small tenant farmer who objects to my crossing his
land.”
“Objects to you crossing his land?” I repeated, vaguely.
“Yes, yes. I take these dogs after hares, you know--beagling, we call
it. Sometimes I am forced to cross his farm if a hare is running,
although I never go there for one. He objects, and so he sets traps.”
“Is he your tenant?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you get rid of him, then? I wouldn’t have a man who would
set traps on my land.”
He frowned, and his tone was distinctly impatient. He was evidently
weary of the discussion.
“I cannot. He has a long lease. Good morning.”
“Good morning, Mr. Deville.”
He looked over his shoulder.
“You know my name!”
“Certainly. Don’t you know mine?”
“No.”
“Let me introduce myself, then. I am Miss Ffolliot--the pale-faced
chit, you know!” I added, maliciously. “My father is the new vicar.”
I was standing up before him with my hands clasped behind my back, and
almost felt the flash of his dark, fiery eyes as they swept over me. I
could not look away from him.
There was a distinct change in his whole appearance. At last he was
looking at me with genuine interest. The lines of his mouth had come
together sharply, and his face was as black as thunder.
“Ffolliot?” he repeated, slowly--”Ffolliot? How do you spell it?”
“Anyhow, so long as you remember the two F’s!” I answered,
suavely. “Generally, double F, O, double L, I, O, T. Rather a
pretty name, we think, although I am afraid that you don’t seem to
like it. Oh! here’s my father coming. Won’t you stay, and make his
acquaintance?”
My father, returning from the church, with his surplice under his arm,
had been attracted by the sight of a strange man talking to me on the
lawn, and was coming slowly over towards us. Mr. Deville turned round
rather abruptly. The two men met face to face, my father dignified,
correct, severe, Bruce Deville untidy, ill-clad, with sullen, darkened
face, lit by the fire which flashed from his eyes. Yet there was
a certain dignity about his bearing, and he met my father’s eyes
resolutely. The onus of speech seemed to rest with him, and he
accepted it.
“I need no introduction to Mr. Ffolliot,” he said, sternly. “I am
afraid that I can offer you no welcome to Northshire. This is a
surprise.”
My father looked him up and down with stony severity.
“So far as I am concerned, sir,” he said, “I desire no welcome from
you. Had I known that you were to be amongst my near neighbors, I
should not have taken up my abode here for however short a time.”
“The sentiment,” remarked Mr. Deville, “is altogether mutual. At any
rate, we can see as little of each other as possible. I wish you a
good morning.”
He raised his cap presumably to me, although he did not glance in my
direction, and went off across the lawn, taking huge strides, and
crossing our flower beds with reckless unconcern. My father watched
him go with a dark shadow resting upon his face. He laid his fingers
upon my arm, and their touch through my thin gown was like the touch
of fire. I looked into his still, calm face, and I wondered. It was
marvellous that a man should wear such a mask.
“You have known him?” I murmured. “Where? Who is he?”
My father drew a long, inward breath through his clenched teeth.
“That man,” he said, slowly, with his eyes still fixed upon the now
distant figure, “was closely, very closely, associated with the most
unhappy chapter of my life. It was all over and done with before you
were old enough to understand. It is many, many years ago, but I felt
in his presence as though it were but yesterday. It is many years
ago--but it hurts still--like a knife it hurts.”
He held his hand pressed convulsively to his side, and stood watching
the grey, stalwart figure now almost out of sight. His face was
white and strained--some symptoms of yesterday’s faintness seemed
to be suggested by those wan cheeks and over bright eyes. Even I,
naturally unsympathetic and callous, was moved. I laid my hand upon
his shoulders.
“It is over and finished, you say, this dark chapter,” I whispered,
softly. “I would not think of it.”
He looked at me for a moment in silence. The grey pallor still
lingered in his thin, sunken cheeks, and his eyes were like cold
fires. It was a face which might well guard its own secrets. I looked
into it, and felt a vague sense of trouble stirring within me. Was
that chapter of his life turned over and done with forever? Was that
secret at which he had hinted, and the knowledge of which lay between
these two, wholly of the past, or was it a live thing? I could not
tell. My father was fast becoming the enigma of my life.
“I cannot cease to think about it,” he said, slowly. “I shall never
cease to think about it until--until----”
“Until when?” I whispered.
“Until the end,” he cried, hoarsely--”until the end, and God grant
that it may not be long.”