Author Of ‘Aunt Rachel,’ ‘The Weaker Vessel,’ Etc.
I
Castle Barfield, Heydon Hey, and Beacon Hargate form the three points
of a triangle. Barfield is a parish of some pretensions; Heydon Hey is a
village; Beacon Hargate is no more than a hamlet. There is not much that
is picturesque in Beacon Hargate, or its neighbourhood. The Beacon Hill
itself is as little like a hill as it well can be, and acquires what
prominence it has by virtue of the extreme flatness of the surrounding
country. A tuft of Scotch firs upon its crest is visible from a distance
of twenty miles in some directions. A clear but sluggish stream winds
among its sedges and water-lilies round the western side of the Beacon
Hill, and washes the edge of a garden which belongs to the one survival
of the picturesque old times Beacon Hargate has to show.
The Oak House was built for a mansion in the days of Queen Elizabeth,
but who built it nobody knows at this time of day, or, excepting perhaps
a hungry-minded antiquary or two, greatly cares to know. The place
had been partly pulled down, and a good deal altered here and there.
Stables, barns, cow-sheds, and such other outhouses as are needful to
a farm had been tacked on to it, or built near it; and all these
appurtenances, under the mellowing hand of time and weather, had grown
congruous, insomuch that the Oak House if stripped of them would have
looked as bare even to the unaccustomed eye as a bird plucked of its
feathers.
The house faced the stream, and turned its back upon the Beacon with
its clump of fir-trees. It had chimneys enough for a village--an
extraordinary wealth of chimneys--‘twisted, fluted, castellated, stacked
together in conclave or poised singly about the gables. The front of
the house was crossed laterally and diagonally by great beams of
black-painted oak. The windows, which are full of diamonded panes, were
lowbrowed, deep-sunken, long, and shallow. The door had a porch, and
this porch was covered with creepers. In summer time climbing roses and
honeysuckle bloomed there. The garden ran right up to the house, and
touched it all round. The fragrant sweet-william, nestling against the
walls, looked as though it were a natural fringe. Without the faintest
sense of primness, or even of orderliness, everything had an air of
being precisely where it ought to be, and conveyed somehow a suggestion
of having been there always. The house looked less as if it had been
built than as if it had grown, and this feeling was heightened by the
vegetable growth about it and upon it--the clinging ivy, the green
house-leek, the purple and golden moss on the roofs and walls. In the
course of its three hundred years the Oak House had stood long enough to
be altogether reconciled to nature, and half absorbed by it.
In 1850--which, though it seem a long while ago, is well within human
memory--and for many years before, the Oak House was tenanted by a
farmer who bore the name of Fellowes, a sturdy and dogmatic personage,
who was loud at the table of the market ordinary once a week, and for
the most part silent for the rest of his life at home. The gray mare
was the better horse. Excepting within doors at the Oak House, Fellowes
ruled the hamlet. There were no resident gentry; the clergyman was
an absentee; the tiny church was used only as a chapel-of-ease; and
Fellowes was the wealthiest and most important personage for a mile or
two. He was a little disposed to be noisy, and to bluster in his show of
authority, and therefore fell all the more easily captive to his wife,
who had a gift for the tranquil saying of unpleasant things which was
reckoned quite phenomenal in Beacon Hargate. This formidable woman was
ruled in turn by her daughter Bertha.
Bertha, unless looked at through the eyes of susceptible young manhood,
would by no means be pronounced formidable. She was country-bred and
quite rustic; but there are refinements of rusticity; and for Beacon
Hargate, Bertha was a lady. She would have been a lady anywhere
according to her chances; for she was naturally sensitive to refining
influences, and of a nature which, remembering how strong it was, was
curiously tender.
It was May, in the year 1850--mid-May--and the weather was precisely
what mid-May weather ought to be, perfumed and softly fresh, with
opposing hints of gaiety and languor in it. The birds were singing
everywhere--a vocal storm, and the sheep--who can never express
themselves as being satisfied in any weather--bleated disconsolately
from the meadows. The clucking of fowls, the quacking of ducks, the very
occasional grunt of some contented porker in the backward regions of
the place, the stamp of a horse’s foot, and the rattle of a chain in
a manger-ring--sounds quite unmusical in themselves--blended with the
birds’ singing, and the thick humming of the bees, into an actual music
in which no note was discordant. The day was without a cloud, and the
soft light was diffused everywhere on a skyey haze of whitish blue.
In this positively delightful weather, Bertha stood with folded hands
in the porch of the Oak House (the floor and the far wall of the kitchen
behind her patched with gleams of red and brown light), like the central
figure of a picture framed in live green. She was pretty enough to be
pleasant to look at; but her charms were mainly the growth of tranquil
good temper and sound sense. Broad brow, gray eyes, resolute little
chin, the mouth the best feature of the face, her expression thoughtful,
serene, and self-possessed, the gray eyes a trifle inclined to dream
wide-awake, hair of no particular colour, but golden in the sunlight.
She stood leaning sideways, with one shoulder touching the trellis-work
of the porch, and one pretty little foot crossed over the other, her
head poised sideways and nestled into the ivy. She was looking far away,
seeing nothing, and her folded hands drooped before her. A bridge, with
a hand-rail on either side of it, crossed the stream and led from a
meadow path to the garden. This meadow path was hidden--partly by the
garden wall, and partly by the growth of alder and pollard at the side
of the stream--and a man came marching along it, unobserved. Before he
reached the bridge he brought his footsteps to a sudden halt, and sent a
glance towards the porch. Seeing the girl there, sunk in day dreams, he
slipped back into the shelter of the withies and took a good long look
at her. Twice or thrice, though his feet did not quit the ground, he
made a faint movement to go on again, and at length, after two or three
minutes of indecision, he walked briskly to the foot of the bridge,
threw open the little gate at the end of it, and, suffering it to fall
with a clanking noise behind him, tramped across the hollow-resounding
boards.
At this sudden break upon the rural stillness--for, in spite of the
chorus of the birds and the farmyard noises which mingled with it, the
general effect was somehow of stillness and solitude--the girl looked
round at the new-comer, drew herself up from her lounging attitude,
placed her hands behind her and there re-folded them, and stood waiting,
with an added flush of colour on her cheek. The new-comer strode along
in a kind of awkward resoluteness, looking straight at the girl with a
glance which appeared to embarrass her a little, though she returned it
frankly enough.
‘Here I am, you see,’ said the new-comer, halting before her.
He was tallish, well-made, and of middle age. His expression was
a trifle dogged, and for a man who came love-making he looked less
prepossessing than he himself might have wished.
‘Good afternoon, Mr. Thistlewood,’ said the girl, in a tone which a
sensitive man might have thought purposely defensive.
‘Is it yes or no to-day, Bertha?’ asked Mr. Thistlewood.
‘It has always been no,’ she answered, looking down.
‘Oh,’ he answered, ‘I’m perfectly well aware of that. It always has been
no up till now, but that’s no reason why it should be no to-day. And if
it’s no to-day that’s no reason why it should be no again this day three
months. Maids change their minds, my dear.’
‘It is a pity you should waste your time, Mr. Thistlewood,’ said Bertha,
still looking down.
‘As for wasting my time,’ returned John Thistle-wood, ‘that’s a thing as
few can charge me with as a general rule. And in this particular case,
you see, I can’t help myself. The day I see you married I shall make up
my mind to leave you alone until such time as you might happen to be a
widow, and if that should come to pass I should reckon myself free to
come again.’
‘It has always been no,’ said Bertha. ‘It is no to-day. It will always
be no.’
The words in themselves were sufficiently decisive, and the voice,
though it had something soft and regretful in it, sounded almost as
final as the words.
‘Let’s look at it a bit, my dear,’ said John Thistle-wood, grasping in
both hands the thick walking-stick he carried, and pressing it firmly
against his thighs as he leaned a little forward and looked down upon
her. ‘Why is it no? And if it’s no again to-day, why is it always going
to be no?’
‘I like you very well, Mr. Thistlewood,’ she answered, looking up at
him, ‘but I don’t like you in a marrying way, and I never shall.’
‘As for never shall,’ said he, ‘that remains to be seen.’
He straightened himself as he spoke, and releasing the walking-stick
with his left hand put the point of it softly, slowly, and strongly down
upon the gravel, dinting the ground pretty deeply with the pressure.
‘Let’s look at it a little further,’ he added.
‘It is of no use,’ the girl answered pleadingly. ‘It hurts us both, and
it can do no good at all.’
‘Let’s look at it a bit further,’ he said again. ‘This day month you
said there was nobody you’d seen you liked better than me. Is that true
still?’
‘It is quite true,’ she answered, ‘but it makes no difference.’
‘That remains to be seen,’ said John Thistlewood again. ‘And as for not
liking me in a marrying way, that’s a thing a maid can’t be supposed to
know much of.’ He waited doggedly as if to hear her deny this, but she
made no answer. ‘You’ve known me all your life, Bertha, and you never
knew anything again me.’
‘Never,’ she said, almost eagerly.
‘I’m well-to-do,’ he went on stolidly, but with all his force, as if
he were pushing against a wall too heavy to be moved by any pressure he
could bring to bear against it, and yet was resolute to have it down.
‘I’m not too old to be a reasonable match for a maid of your years.
You’ve had my heart this five years I waited two afore I spoke at all
There’s a many--not that I speak it in a bragging way--as would be
willing enough to have me.’
‘It’s a pity you can’t take a fancy to one of them,’ she said, with
perfect simplicity and good faith.
‘Perhaps it is,’ answered Thistlewood, with a dogged sigh; ‘but be that
as it may, I can’t and shan’t. Where my fancy lies it stays. I didn’t
give my heart away to take it back again. You’ll wed me yet, Bertha, and
when you do you’ll be surprised to think you didn’t do it long before.’
At this point the voice of a third person broke in upon the colloquy.
‘That caps all!’ said the voice. ‘There’s Mr. Forbes, the Scotch
gardener at my Lord Barfield’s, tells me of a lad in his parts as prayed
the Lord for a good consate of himself. That’s a prayer as you’ll never
find occasion t’offer, John Thistlewood.’
‘Maybe not, Mrs. Fellowes,’ answered Thistlewood, addressing the owner
of the voice, who remained invisible; ‘but I wasn’t speaking in a
braggart way.’
‘No--no,’ returned the still invisible intruder. ‘Wast humble enough
about it, doubtless. You’m bound to tek a man’s own word about his own
feelings. Who is to know ‘em if he doesn’t?’
‘Just so,’ said Thistlewood, with great dryness. He appeared to be
little if at all disturbed by the interruption, but Bertha was blushing
like a peony.
‘I sat quiet,’ said the girl’s mother, leisurely walking round the
door with a half-finished gray worsted stocking depending from the
knitting-needles she carried in both hands,--’ I sat quiet so as not
to be a disturbance. It’s you for making love to a maid, I must allow,
John.’
The girl ran into the house and disappeared from view.
‘It’s me for speaking my mind, at least, ma’am,’ returned John, with
unaltered tranquil doggedness.
‘Ah!’ responded the farmer’s wife; ‘you’re like a good many more of ‘em;
you’d sooner not have what you want than go the right way to get it.’
Thistlewood digested this in silence, and Mrs. Fellowes set the
knitting-needles flashing.
‘I’ve always fancied,’ he said in a little while, ‘as I had your
goodwill in the matter.’
‘You’ve got my goodwill, in a way to be sure,’ said the old woman.
‘You’d mek the gell a goodish husband if her could find a fancy for
you--but the fancy’s everything--don’t you see, John?’
‘I’m not above taking advice, Mrs. Fellowes,’ said Thistlewood, digging
at the gravel with his walking-stick. ‘Will you be so good as to tell me
where I’m wrong?’
‘There’s one particular as you’re wrong in,’ returned Mrs. Fellowes,
knitting away with a determinedly uninteresting air, ‘and, I misdoubt
me, you can’t alter it.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Thistlewood, looking up at her suddenly.
‘You’re the wrong man, John.’
‘That remains to be seen,’ he answered, with the same dogged patience as
before.
‘You can’t win a maid’s heart by going at her as solemn as a funeral,’
pursued the old woman. ‘If you’d ha’ begun sprightly with the gell, you
might ha’ had a chance with her. “La!” says you, “what a pretty frock
you’re a-wearing to-day;” or “How nice you do do up your hair for a
certainty.”’
‘I don’t look on marriage as a thing to be approached i’ that fashion,’
said Thistlewood.
‘Well,’ returned the old woman, clicking her needles with added
rapidity, ‘I’ve always said there’s no end to the folly o’ men. D’ye
hear that there cuckoo? Go and catch him wi’ shoutin’ at him. An’ when
next you’re in want of toast at tay-time, soak your bread in a pan o’
cold water.’
Thistlewood stood for a time in a rather dogged-looking silence,
sometimes glancing at the notable woman and glancing away again. Her
eye expressed a triumph which, though purely dialectic, was hard for a
disappointed lover to endure, even whilst he refused to recognise his
disappointment.
‘I should regard any such means of gettin’ into a maid’s good graces as
being despisable,’ he said, after a while.
‘Very well, my Christian friend,’ the farmer’s wife retorted, with a
laugh. ‘Them as mek bread without barm must look to spoil the batch.’
‘I was niver of a flatterin’ turn of mind,’ said Thistlewood.
‘You niver was, John,’ responded Mrs. Fellowes, with an accent which
implied something beyond assent.
He flushed a little, and began to tap at his corduroyed leg with the
stick he carried, at first with a look of shamefaced discomfiture, and
then with resolution. He finished with a resounding slap, and looked up
with a light in his eyes.
‘I’m pretty hard to beat, ma’am,’ he said, ‘though I say it as should
not. I’m not going to be conquered here if I can help it. And I look to
have you and Mr. Fellowes on my side, as far as may be asked in reason.
Her’ll find no better husband than I should be to her, I _am_ sure.
There’s more than a wheedlin’ tongue required to mek a married woman
happy. I’ve pretty well proved as I’m not changeable. There’s a strong
arm to tek care of her. There’s a homely house with plenty in it.
There’s a goodish lump at the bank, and there’s nothing heart can desire
as her might not have by asking for it.’
‘Well, John,’ said the farmer’s wife, clicking her needles cheerfully,
‘I’ve not a word to say again the match. Win the wench and welcome. My
dancin’ days is pretty nigh over, but I’ll tek the floor once more with
pleasure, if you won’t be too long in mekin’ ready for me.’
‘There’s nothing more to be done at present, I suppose,’ the lover said
presently, ‘and so I’ll say good-bye for this afternoon, Mrs. Fellowes.’
With this he turned upon his heel, and marching sturdily down the
path and across the little bridge, disappeared behind the withies and
pollards.
The farmer’s wife waited a while until he was out of hearing, and then,
without turning her head, shrilled out ‘Bertha!’ The girl came silently
downstairs and joined her in the doorway. The mother pursued her
knitting in silence, a faint flicker of a humorous smile touching her
face and eyes now and again. At length she spoke, looking straight
before her.
‘Why woot’ent marry the man?’
‘Mr. Thistlewood?’ asked Bertha, making the feeblest possible defence
against this direct attack.
‘Ay,’ said her mother, ‘Mr. Thistlewood to be sure. Why woot’ent marry
him?’
‘I like him well enough in a way,’ the girl answered ‘But I don’t like
him that way!
‘What way?’
‘Why--in a marrying way,’ said Bertha.
‘Pooh!’ answered the notable woman. ‘What’s a maid know how she’d like a
man?’
‘I should have the greatest respect for him,’ Bertha answered, wisely
avoiding the discussion of this question, ‘if he wouldn’t come bothering
me to marry him.’
‘Ay! ‘said her mother, assenting with a philosophic air. ‘That’s a
wench’s way. When a man wants nothing her’ll give him as much as her
can spare. But look hither, my gell! You listen to the words of a old
experienced woman. There’s a better love comes after the weddin’, if
a gell marries a worthy solid man, than ever her knows before it. If a
gell averts from a man that’s another matter. But if her can abide him
to begin with, and if he’s a good man, her’ll be fond of him before her
knows it.’
‘I should never be fond of Mr. Thistlewood, mother,’ the girl answered,
flushing hotly. ‘It’s of no use to speak about him.’
‘Did the man ever mek love to you at all,’ the mother asked, ‘beyond
comin’ here and barkin’, “Wool’t marry me?”’
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk of him, mother,’ Bertha answered in a troubled
voice. ‘I respect him very highly, but as for marrying him, it’s out of
the question. I can’t do it.’
‘Well, well,’ returned her mother, ‘nobody’s askin’ you to do anything
o’ the sort. I’m trying to find your mind about him. It’s high time
‘twas made up one way or other. You’ve come to a marriageable age.’
‘I’m very well as I am,’ said Bertha, rather hastily. ‘I’m not in a
hurry to be married.’
‘You’ve never been much like other gells,’ said her mother, with a
dry humorous twinkle which looked more masculine than feminine. ‘But I
reckon you’ll be in about as much of a hurry as the rest on ‘em be when
the right man comes.’
At this moment a whistle of peculiar volume, mellowness, and flexibility
was heard. The whistler was trilling ‘Come lasses and lads’ in tones as
delightful as a blackbird’s.
‘Is this him?’ said the old woman, turning upon her daughter.
Bertha blushed, and turned away. The mother laughed. A light footstep
sounded on the echoing boards of the little bridge, and the
human blackbird, marching gaily in time to his tune, flourished a
walking-stick in salutation as he approached.
‘Good-afternoon, Mrs. Fellowes,’ cried the newcomer. ‘Good-afternoon,
_Miss_ Fellowes.’
They both returned his salutation, and he stood before them smilingly,
holding his stick lightly by the middle, and swinging it hither and
thither, as if keeping time to an inward silent tune. His feet were
planted a little apart, he carried his head well back, and his figure
was very alert and lithe. He made great use of his lips in talking, and
whatever he said seemed a little overdone in emphasis. His expression
was eager, amiable, and sensitive, and it changed like the complexion of
water in variable weather. He was a bit of a dandy in his way, too. His
clothes showed his slim and elastic figure to the best advantage, and a
bright-coloured neckerchief with loose flying ends helped out a certain
air of festal rural opera which belonged to him.
‘I passed Thistlewood on my way here,’ he said, laughing brightly. ‘He
looked as cheerful as a frog. Did y’ ever notice what a cheerful-looking
thing a frog is?’
He made a face ludicrously like the creature he mentioned. The old woman
laughed outright, and Bertha smiled, though somewhat unwillingly.
‘I don’t like to hear Mr. Thistlewood made game of, Mr. Protheroe,’ she
said a moment later.
‘Don’t you, Miss Fellowes?’ asked Mr. Protheroe. ‘Then it shan’t be done
in your presence again.’
‘That means it may be done out of my presence, I suppose,’ the girl said
coldly.
‘No, nor out of it,’ said the young fellow, bowing with something of a
flourish, ‘if it displeases you.’
‘Come in, Lane, my lad,’ said the mother, genially. ‘I’ve got the
poultry to look after at this hour. Bertha ‘ll tek care of you till I
come back again.’
Lane Protheroe bowed again with the same gay flourish, and recovering
himself from the bow with an upward swing of the head, followed the
women-folk into the wide kitchen as if he had been crossing the floor in
a minuet. If these airs of his had been assumed they would have touched
the ridiculous, but they were altogether natural to him; and what
with them and his smiling, changeful, sympathetic ways, he was a prime
favourite, and seemed to carry sunshine into all sorts of company.
When the mother had left the kitchen the girl seated herself
considerably apart from the visitor, and taking up a book from a dresser
beside her, began to turn over its pages, stopping now and again to read
a line or two, and rather ostentatiously disregarding her companion.
He sat in silence, regarding her with a grave face for a minute or
thereabouts, and then, rising, crossed the room and placed himself
beside her, bending over her, with one hand resting on the dresser. She
did not look up in answer to this movement, but bent her head even a
little more than before above the book.
‘I’m glad to be left alone with you for a minute, Miss Fellowes,’ he
began gently, and with a faint tremor and hesitation in his voice,
‘because I’ve something very special and particular to say to you.’
There he paused, and Bertha with a slight cough, which was a trifle too
casual and unembarrassed to be real, said, ‘Indeed, Mr. Protheroe?’ and
kept her eyes upon the book.
‘They say a girl always knows,’ he went on, ‘and if that’s true you know
already what I want to say.’
He paused, but if he expected any help from her in the way either of
assent or denial, he was disappointed. He stooped a little lower and
touched her hand with a gentle timidity, but she at once withdrew it.
‘You know I love you, Bertha? You know you’re dearer to me than all the
whole wide world beside?’
Still Bertha said nothing, but the hand that turned the leaves of the
book trembled perceptibly.
‘I’ve come to ask you if you’ll be my wife, dear! if you’ll let me make
you my lifelong care and joy, my darling! You don’t guess how much I
love you. You don’t know how much your answer means to me.’
The girl rose, and, carrying the book with her, walked to the kitchen
window and looked out upon the garden, the river, and the fields,
without seeing anything. She was evidently agitated, and did not find
an answer easily. Lane followed her, and when for a moment she dared
to look up at him she encountered a look so tender, anxious, and ardent
that she lowered her eyes in quick confusion. He seized her hand, and
for a brief instant she let it rest in his.
‘Speak to me,’ he murmured, caressingly and pleadingly. ‘Tell me.’
‘I don’t understand you, Mr. Protheroe,’ the girl said pantingly.
‘Not understand me, dear? ‘he whispered; ‘I am asking you to be my
wife.’
‘I understand that,’ she answered, drawing herself away from him,
and speaking with difficulty. ‘It is _you_ I don’t understand.
You--yourself.’
‘Tell me how, darling,’ he said softly.
‘You tell me,’ she said, lifting a pale and agitated face, ‘that I can’t
guess how much my answer means to you. But you come here whistling and
dancing, as you always come, as if you hadn’t a care upon your mind.’
‘Don’t make that a reproach against me, dear,’ said he. ‘Why it was just
the thought of you made me so happy.’
She looked up at him with an expression of doubt and pain, and as their
eyes met he caught one of her hands in both his, and held it.
‘Dear Bertha!’ he said, with a sudden moisture in his eyes. ‘There is
nobody so good. There is nobody so lovely.’
She drew away from him again, though some sort of electric influence
seemed to come out of him, and draw her strongly to him.
‘I must wait,’ she said. ‘I--I don’t know you well enough. I don’t
understand you. You are too light. You are too careless. I don’t know
how far I can believe you.’
‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘believe me altogether, dear. I love you with all my
heart and soul!’
She moved to the middle of the room, and sheltered herself behind a
table which stood there.
‘I hardly know whether you have a heart,’ she answered then. ‘You fancy
you feel all you say,’ she added quickly. ‘You feel it for the minute.’
He stood at the other side of the table with brows suddenly grown
gloomy.
‘I shall feel it all my life,’ he said. ‘It’s the one thing I’ve ever
been in earnest about. I never thought I should feel as I do. If you
like to wait, dear, before answering me, I’ll wait just as long as ever
you please.’ His gloom was gone, and he was all eagerness and vivacity
again. ‘There’s nothing I won’t do for your asking. I’ll cure every
fault I’ve got. I’ll be everything you’d like to have me. Try me,
darling. Wait and see. But give me only just a little bit of hope. Don’t
send me away quite hungry. Tell me you care for me just a little--not
as I care for you--I don’t expect that. It doesn’t stand to reason yet
awhile you should.’
There she shot one swift glance at him, averting her gaze at once.
‘I won’t say I don’t like you,’ she answered with a candour half rustic,
half characteristic of herself ‘But I won’t answer yes or no just yet.’
‘Very well, dear,’ he answered tenderly. ‘You shall have time to know
if I’m in earnest, or if I’ve taken nothing more than a passing fancy.
Shall I ask you again this day six months?’
‘I won’t promise you an answer then,’ she said. ‘I will answer you when
I am certain.’
‘You could care for me, then,’ he urged her, ‘if you were only quite
sure I loved you, and always would love you? Why, Bertha, I’d put my
hand in that fire to save you from a finger-ache. I’d jump into the
Weale there if I thought I could make you happy by doing it. I’d live my
whole life your servant for a smile a year.’
His eyes flashed or moistened with every phrase, his gestures were
superabundant and intense, and his voice was genuinely tender and
impassioned.
His ardent eyes and voice thrilled the girl, and yet she doubted him.
There was a fear in her mind which she could not shake away.
People in Beacon Hargate were not rich in opportunities for the study
of the acted drama, but Bertha had seen a play or two in the great town
hard by, and Lane looked and talked rather too much like a stage lover
to her mind. In the unreal life behind the footlights lovers talked with
just such a fluency, just such a tender fiery emphasis. In real life
John Thistlewood came doggedly a-wooing with a shoulder propped against
a doorpost, and had hard work to find a word for himself. If only that
one absent element of faith could be imported into the business, Lane
Protheroe’s fashion of courting was certain to be infinitely more
delightful than John Thistlewood’s, but then the absent element was
almost everything. And for poor Bertha the worst part of it seemed
that she loved the man she doubted, and could not love the man in whose
affection she held the profoundest faith. That the rough, clumsy, and
persistent courtier loved her was one of the indisputable facts of life
to her. She knew it just as surely as she knew that she was alive. She
knew it, and the knowledge hurt her, for she could fancy nothing less
hopeful than Thistle-wood’s wooing, and she was without a spark of mere
vanity.
‘I think it is because you say so much that I don’t feel quite able to
believe it all,’ she said. ‘You feel it when you talk about it, but it
seems to me as if you _had_ to talk before you get to feel it.’
His brows bent down over gloomy eyes again, and he folded his arms as he
looked at her. Once more poor Bertha thought of the stage lover she had
seen, and a long-drawn sigh escaped her.
‘I can’t think it’s all quite real,’ she said, almost desperately.
‘You think I say too much?’ he retorted. ‘It seems to me as if I said
too little. It seems to me as if there weren’t any words to speak such
thoughts and feelings.’
‘Is that because you don’t value the words? ‘she .’ asked him. ‘Don’t
you think that if you felt what the words do mean that they’d seem
enough for you?’
‘I know I’m a good-for-nothing beggar,’ he answered, with a sudden air
of weary self-loathing and disdain. ‘I know. I’ve got a way of taking
everything in deadly earnest for an hour or two. But,’ with a sudden
swerve into the track of self-justification, ‘if that makes you think
I’m fickle and weak-willed, you’re all wrong, darling. There are some
fellows--I know plenty--who go through life like a lot of oysters. They
don’t feel anything--they don’t care about anything, or anybody. But,
bless your heart, my dear, they never get doubted.’
Bertha took this for a satiric dig at the absent Thistlewood, and spoke
up for him, needlessly, as it happened.
‘Still waters run deep, Mr. Protheroe.’
‘Some of ‘em do,’ responded Mr. Protheroe, with profoundest gloom, which
lightened suddenly into a smile as bright as sunshine. ‘But some of ‘em
don’t run at all. And some of ‘em are as shallow as any puddle you’ll
find along the road, only they’re so bemuddled you can’t see to the
bottom of ‘em. You can plumb ‘em with your little finger, though, if you
don’t mind soiling it.’
Now this innocent generalisation seemed gratuitously offensive to the
absent Thistlewood, and chilled Bertha greatly.
‘That may be very true of some people,’ she responded; ‘but it isn’t
true of all the quiet people in the world.. And I don’t think, Mr.
Protheroe, that the people who make the greatest parade of their
feelings are the people who really have the most to speak of.’
‘Why, that’s true, too, of some people,’ returned Protheroe; ‘but there
are all sorts in the world, dear. Some say a lot and feel a lot Some
feel a lot and say nothing. Some say nothing and feel nothing. It may be
a fault with me--I don’t know--but when I start to say a thing I want
to say all of it. But surely a feeling isn’t less real because you don’t
seem able to express it whatever words you choose.’
‘Where the feeling’s sacred the words are sacred,’ Bertha objected.
‘Tell me what it is you fear about me,’ he besought her, leaning across
the table, and searching her face with his eyes. ‘You don’t believe
I should have a wandering mind if you said yes, and we should once be
married?’
She had laid the book upon the table, and now betook herself to
fingering the leaves again.
‘I’ve no right to pick faults in you, or give you lessons, Mr.
Protheroe.’
‘Oh yes, you have,’ he answered. ‘All the right in the world. If you’ll
take in hand to show me my faults, I’ll take in hand to cure ‘em so far
as a man may.’
‘I don’t think you’re fickle,’ said the girl hesitatingly; ‘but I do
think you’re shallow, Mr. Protheroe.’
‘Not a bit of it, dear,’ he protested. ‘I’m as deep as Gamck. As for
your still waters running deep, it’d be a better proverb to my mind to
say deep waters run still--at times. Niagara’s deepish, folks say that
have seen it. That’s not to say that I even myself with Niagara, you’ll
understand, though ‘tis in my nature to splash about a good deal. But
all that apart, Bertha dear, try to make up your mind to take me as I
am, and help me to make a man o’ myself.’
At this point back came the farmer’s wife with a clatter of pails in
the back kitchen to indicate her arrival in advance. Lane took his leave
with a reluctant air, going away much more gravely than he had arrived.
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Fellowes, drawing her knitting from a capacious pocket
and falling to work upon it at once, ‘hast sent Number Two about his
business?’
Bertha cast an embarrassed look at her and blushed.
‘Mother,’ she said, ‘you seem to find out everything.’
‘Can find my way to the parish church by daylight,’ the elder woman
answered with complacency. ‘But you tek care, my wench, whilst thee
beest throwin’ all the straight sticks aside, as thee doesn’t pick up a
crooked ‘un at the last. Thee hast a fancy for the lad, too, that’s as
plain to be seen as the Beacon.’
‘Oh!’ cried Bertha, reddening again. ‘I hope not.’
‘For me, my gell,’ said her mother. ‘For me. And it’s outside my
thinkin’ why a maid shouldn’t tek a fancy to him. A lad as is stiddy
an’ handsome, and as blithe as sunshine! He’s as fond as a calf into the
bargain.’
She liked to hear him praised, and, woman-like, began to depreciate him
faintly.
‘I don’t think he’s very solid, mother,’ she said.
The elder woman smiled at the transparent artifice, and refused to be
entrapped by it.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘Lane’s a bit of a butterfly, I will say. And Jack
Thistlewood’s a bulldog. Mek your ch’ice betwixt ‘em while they’m there
to be chose from. Which is it to be? Butterfly or bulldog?’
But Bertha answered nothing.