ALEXIS COMES TO GRIEF.
That interview at Redcastle has embittered Alexis Secretan’s feelings
towards his mercenary wife. Love has given place to contempt. A woman
who could set the hope of wealth against her fidelity to him is
unworthy of another thought of his.
He goes back to Cheswold reckless, angry, wounded to the core of his
heart, and he tells himself that he is indifferent to his wife’s
fate, that he cares not if he never see her false face again.
The blow that has hit him hardest, he thinks, is the knowledge of his
boy’s death. That son whose fair young face he has pictured in many a
day-dream--seen vividly in many a vision of his sleep,--the son who
was to inherit Cheswold in the days to come--the son for whose sake
it would have been go proud and pleasant a labour to add field to
field, and extend the boundaries of that modest manor--this unknown
but fondly loved son is lost to him, nay, has never lived save as
the infant of a day old. The chubby yearling, the bonny boy of two
summers, whose image, limned by fancy, has been almost a living thing
for him, has had no existence.
The loss of this shadow hangs upon him heavily. He is no longer the
gay young squire who enjoyed the novel pleasures of wealth and social
status. He is gloomy and absent-minded, and avoids all intercourse
with his neighbours, save in the hunting-field, where he rides like a
man who holds his neck as a trifle not worth his care.
In this desolation of his mind he turns to two sources for
comfort--the first, his faithful friend, Richard Plowden, whom he
detains at Cheswold for an unlimited period, to the peril of the
Brompton fernery; the second, his stable, to which he devotes himself
a good deal at this time.
His two hunters are considered the handsomest animals and the
straightest goers in this part of the country, and his reputation is
advanced among the rustic population by his reckless riding.
‘I know you’ll come to grief some of these days, Alexis,’ says the
faithful Dick, who looks on his friend’s proceedings with much dread.
‘Blokus, the gardener, told me yesterday that you ride with what he
calls a “plaguey loose rein,” and that you don’t know the country
well enough to run such risks. I don’t like that tall brute of yours
a bit.’
‘Not Bayard?’ exclaims Alexis, who resents this abuse of his last
acquisition, a fine bay horse, sixteen two and a half, and described
at Tattersall’s as the cleverest thing in hunters. ‘Why, he’s the
best horse I ever rode. Such a mouth! You might ride him with a skein
of silk.’
‘But you see you haven’t ridden many horses,’ responds the prudent
Richard. ‘You’re half a foreigner. You haven’t been brought up
like these country squires, who have spent half their lives in the
pigskin. It is pigskin, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Dick. And do you suppose I didn’t ride when I was in the army,
and hunt into the bargain? and do you suppose I didn’t ride in the
colonies, where a man thinks nothing of forty miles in the saddle?’
‘I don’t know anything about the colonies, Alex, but you weren’t
brought up to following the hounds, like these Hampshire gentlemen,
and I feel wretched every day you ride that new horse of yours,
expecting to see you brought home on a shutter.’
‘And if I were, Dick, would it matter to any one except you?’
‘Alex!’ cries Dick, reproachfully.
‘Yes, old fellow, I know you’d be sorry, but not so sorry as the
heir-at-law would be glad. Who is my heir-at-law, by the way? I must
make a will, Dick. Some part of all these good things of ours must go
to the only being I care for.’
‘His wife,’ thinks the simple-minded Dick.
Alexis rides over to Winchester that very afternoon, and is closeted
for an hour with Mr. Scrodgers, the lawyer, to whom he gives
instructions for a concise and simple will.
He leaves his real estate to his next of kin on his father’s side
who shall bear the name of Secretan, or, in the absence of any such
Secretan, to his next of kin on his mother’s side, exclusive of Mrs.
Gorsuch and her children, who shall assume the name of Secretan.
‘I feel myself bound to do this much out of reverence for the good
old name,’ he says, ‘out of gratitude to my cousin Matilda, who
honoured the name in my unworthy person. But my personal property I
shall leave to the one friend whose sincerity I am assured of, and
who stood by me when I was at the bottom of the ladder. I owe it
perhaps to him that Miss Secretan’s bequest found me an honest man,
and not a blackguard or a swindler.’
‘Very right, very proper,’ murmurs Mr. Scrodgers, wondering whether
he is to be put down for a mourning ring, or a legacy of a hundred
guineas or so. He is old, and Alexis is young, it is true, whereby
the chances of his inheriting any such legacy seem slender. But then
Mr. Scrodgers is careful of himself, and these young men hunt, and
drink more brandy and soda than is good for them, and shoot with
new-fangled guns, and drive tandem with untried horses after dark.
There might be a chance of his getting the legacy, should so proper
an idea occur to his client. But Alexis furnishes his instructions
without remembering the claims of Mr. Scrodgers. He leaves Richard
Plowden all his personal property, furniture, books, horses, and
pictures.
‘They ought to realize enough to make that honest fellow independent
for the rest of his days,’ thinks Alexis, ‘and now if Bayard makes
an end of me some fine morning, I shall at least have done one good
thing in my life.’
Mr. Scrodgers drives over to the Grange next morning in his highly
respectable four-wheeled chaise, and the will is executed, but Mr.
Secretan tells his friend nothing about its contents, nor is Richard
Plowden curious. There breathes not on this earth a less mercenary
creature. He is grateful beyond measure for his friend’s affection,
proud and happy that his presence at the Grange can give pleasure to
Alexis. He plods on at his school books every morning in the snug
quietude of the study, and in the afternoon takes long and solitary
walks, while Alexis spends his days in the hunting-field.
The neighbourhood is full of rustic beauty, even in winter, and
Richard, who has spent almost all the days of his life amidst a
wilderness of brick and mortar, is delighted with these country
lanes, these noble old trees, beautiful in their leafless majesty,
these grassy hills crowned with dark pine trees, the blue river that
winds through the green valleys, these peaceful English homesteads
nestling in sheltered spots, and here and there a picturesque old
water-mill, with a big brown wheel that never seems to go round.
Like many lame people Dick can get over a good deal of ground, and
get along as fast as those who have the full use of their legs. He
grows strong in this pure air, and gets young again. His complexion
loses its sickly tint. Those transparent hands of his lose much of
their delicacy.
‘If you go on in this way, Dick, I shall find my refined and
intellectual friend of the Brompton Road developing into a
Hampshire chawbacon,’ says Alexis, jocosely, as they breakfast
together luxuriously, in front of a blazing wood fire, one hunting
morning,--the master of the Grange arrayed in pink and tops ready for
the day’s sport, Dick in a comfortable suit of gray homespun.
‘I do so enjoy your lovely scenery,’ replies Dick. ‘There’s only one
thing makes me uneasy.’
‘Your mother----’
‘No, it’s not about mother herself. She has some extra good lodgers
in the drawing-room floor, and is as happy as the day is long. What
I’m afraid of is that she’ll give the ferns too much water. Mother
has such an idea of watering plants. She thinks the more you drench
them the better they grow, and she’s rather self-opinionated in those
matters, dear soul. I tremble for my polypodium.’
‘I’m glad it isn’t any other kind of Polly you tremble for, Dick,’
replies Alexis. ‘What a close old fellow you are, by the way! you’ve
never told me anything about your experience in that tender passion
which makes fools of the wisest of us sooner or later.’
‘Simply because I have had nothing to tell.’
‘Nonsense! Were you never in love?’
‘Never. I have admired feminine loveliness and goodness in the
abstract, but it never came near enough to me to tempt me to fall in
love with it.’
‘Happy man!’ exclaims Alexis. ‘To escape love is to shun man’s worst
peril;--
‘For soon or late Love is his own avenger.’
It is the middle of February, one of those days on which the mists of
morning linger on the face of the land, as if they loved it. Gleams
of sun pierce that silvery veil, and the westerly breeze seems rather
autumnal than wintry. The two friends part in excellent spirits,
Alexis riding off gaily on his covert hack, Titmouse, a pretty little
gray mare. Bayard has been sent on before.
‘How’s the bay this morning, Joe?’ asks Mr. Secretan as he mounts.
‘Fresh as paint, sir, but I thinks as you did ought to have ’ad him
hexercised a bit yesterday.’
‘Nonsense, Joe! I don’t care a straw for a horse when all the spirit
has been taken out of him. That boy of yours gallops like the deuce
when he gets the chance, I know. I don’t care about having Bayard
spoiled that way.’
‘I hopes Bay-hard won’t spoil you,’ mutters the groom, as Titmouse
carries his master down the drive.
‘I hope you’re not afraid of that bay horse, Marshall,’ says Richard,
when Titmouse and her rider are out of sight.
‘No, sir, I ain’t afraid of no ’oss going, and I don’t say there’s
any ’arm in Bay-hard. But the ’oss is young and silly, and my
master--well, I ain’t going to be disrespectuous to so good a master
as him, or I should say he’s young and silly too.’
‘But he’s a good rider, isn’t he?’
‘He’s a good ’and at sittin’ on a ’oss, Mr. Plowden, but there’s
summot more nor that wanted to make a good rider.’
This conversation, superadded to honest Dick’s own fears, makes
him feel rather uncomfortable; but when he has started on his
rustic ramble the sun shines out of the mist, the west wind is so
balmy and caressing, earth is altogether so lovely in her wintry
garb, that Dick’s spirits rise, and he tells himself that a bold
brave fellow like Alexis is not the kind of man to come to harm in
the hunting-field. It is your timid rider rather who is liable to
misfortune.
So Dick goes his way, and his way of late has generally been the same
way.
There is a tiny village about three miles from Cheswold--a village
so small that compared with it Cheswold is quite an important
settlement. This other village consists of a cluster of labourers’
cottages, with whitewashed walls, thatched roofs steeply sloping,
and long strips of garden which would be quite an acquisition to
many a suburban villa. There is a queer little old church at which
there is service every alternate Sunday afternoon, and there are
a water-mill and a homestead with a farm of about thirty acres
appertaining thereto. This mill is the chief feature of the scene,
and it is to the mill that Dick has come. It is a picturesque old
place, big water-wheel, gurgling mill-race, and placid pool. The
willows that lean across the water look centuries old. The low white
dwelling-house, with its steeply sloping thatch, its white plastered
walls crossed and recrossed by timbers painted black, must have
been here in the days of Elizabeth. The snowdrops peeping over the
tall box border yonder are half a century old, and have spread and
multiplied in the shelter of the southern wall. There is a roomy old
porch with wooden benches, and it is in this porch that Dick takes
his rest after his three miles walk.
It is about a month since he came here one biting January
afternoon--the roads white with snow, the hedges loaded with a fine
crop of icicles, the ditches ice-bound, and black as ink. On so
cold a day it surprised him a little to see a girl of delicate and
refined appearance at work with garden scissors and basket in the
little bit of ground in front of the homestead by the mill. She was
plainly dressed in a gray stuff gown and black apron, and wore a
little scarlet shawl tied across her chest, but her head was bare--a
very pretty head, Dick thought, with dark brown hair, that made a
rippling line across the forehead, and was gathered in a loose knot
at the back. He was not quite clear in his mind as to whether the
fair gardener was pretty or not. Her features belonged to no regular
type; her nose was neither severely Grecian nor commandingly Roman,
but rather inclined to the _retroussé_, but it was an inoffensive
nose at worst. Her complexion, heightened to a rich bloom by the
nipping air, was a thing for poets to rave about--for painters to
vainly imitate. Her eyes were dark gray, with thick black lashes; her
eyebrows dark and strongly marked; her mouth beautiful, though Dick
was not wise enough to know it. He only saw that her smile was sweet,
and his chief impression was of a look of goodness which pervaded the
face--or so he thought. She looked so amiable that he, the shyest of
men, ventured to address her.
‘Rather a cold day for gardening,’ he said.
‘I don’t find it so,’ she answered, smiling. ‘If my poor arbutus
can stand the cold, I don’t think it will hurt me;’ and she went on
snipping off dead leaves, and smartening the garden by those little
touches which maintain order and beauty even at a flowerless season.
‘We shall soon have the snowdrops,’ she said, cheerfully.
‘Ah,’ said Dick, ‘they bloom about this time of year, do they?’
He had made himself acquainted with the habits of ferns, but had
very vague notions about flowers. The girl looked at him wonderingly,
and then, as he walked a little way further, contemplating the
picture of mill-wheel and water, she perceived that slight lameness
from which he suffered.
‘Would you like to rest after your walk?’ she asked, timidly. ‘You
have come some distance, perhaps?’
‘From Cheswold.’
‘That’s a good three miles. Our porch is quite at your service if you
would like to sit down.’
She opened the gate as she spoke, and Dick walked in. He felt as
if he could not for worlds have resisted the invitation, so he
went in, very shyly, and seated himself on the bench in the porch.
The door was open, and opened straight into the neatest, prettiest
sitting-room Dick had ever seen--or, at any rate, ever remembered
having seen--in his life. Everything was so bright and fresh, the
brass fender, the cheerful fire, the old cups and saucers on the
mantelpiece, the white ceiling, the painted walls, the chintz-covered
sofa and chairs, the small round table with neatly arranged piles of
books--not show books, but looking rather like volumes in the daily
use of a student--and a drawing-board--actually a drawing-board,
the old engravings, the little cabinet of shells in the corner
yonder. All the furniture in the room might hardly have realized
five-and-twenty pounds at an auction, but the general effect was
delightful to Richard Plowden’s eye and mind.
The young lady--he felt sure now that she was a young lady, in spite
of her homely dress and that lazy old water-wheel--went on with her
gardening, nailed up stray shoots here and there against the plaster
wall, and took no more notice of Dick than if he had been a hundred
miles away. Dick was much too shy to make conversation, so he sat in
silence, lazily watching the girl’s graceful figure as it moved about
the garden, in a pleasant reverie.
Presently there came a sound from within--a small shrill voice
calling ‘mammie.’ An inner door opened, and a little toddling thing,
just emerged from babyhood, came running out to the porch.
At sight of Dick it screamed as if it had seen lions, and stood
stock still, paralyzed with terror--a significant evidence that a
stranger was a rare bird at Dorley Mill.
The girl ran to him, took him up in her arms, and smothered him with
kisses.
‘Mammie!’ said Dick to himself. ‘Then this charming girl is a married
woman! I didn’t observe the wedding ring.’
He glanced at the hands which were clasped round the child. No, there
was no ring there.
‘What a dear little--thing!’ he said, doubtful about the sex.
‘Yes, he is a darling little fellow.’
‘Your nephew, I suppose?’
‘No,’ and the girl’s cheek crimsoned, ‘he’s an adopted child.’
This was all Dick ever heard about the boy. He might have known more
perhaps had he been curious enough or audacious enough to inquire,
but he was neither. Yet he wondered a little, adopted children being
rarities, to have stumbled upon one in the tiny village of Dorley.
He came to Dorley several times, finding this particular walk the
most picturesque of all his wanderings, and he rested for half an
hour, or even longer, in the porch, while Linda Challice, he had
found out her name in due course, sat at work in the pretty parlour
and chatted with him pleasantly, quite at her ease. There was
something about Richard Plowden which made people friendly with him
at once.
They talked about the country, which Linda knew by heart, and about
London, which was a strange and wonderful city she had never beheld.
They talked of books and flowers and ferns, and by this time they had
become as familiar as friends of long standing.
Linda had never invited Mr. Plowden to come beyond the porch,
however. She was not quite sure whether her grandfather, a funny
little old man, who was always in a floury condition on week days,
would approve of such a step on her part.
And now, on this fine February morning, Dick makes his appearance,
rosy with his brisk walk, and takes his accustomed seat in the porch.
‘If you come to Dorley some Sunday afternoon,’ says Linda, after a
little while, ‘you can make grandfather’s acquaintance. He’s always
in the mill on week days.’
‘He seems a kind old gentleman,’ says Dick, who had received a
friendly nod from the little miller.
‘He is kindness itself. There never was such an indulgent
grandfather.’
‘And you have lived with him----’
‘All my life. My mother was his only daughter. She married an artist
who came to Dorley to fish and sketch one summer. She was very
pretty, they say.’
‘I can easily believe it,’ murmured Dick.
‘Oh, much prettier than I!’ says Linda, blushing, ‘if you are trying
to pay me a compliment. I have a portrait of her in my room, painted
by my father. It was quite a love match, and I dare say people
said my father had degraded himself by marrying a country miller’s
daughter, for he was what people call a fashionable artist, and might
have made a very different marriage. But they were very happy, and
I believe my father was almost broken-hearted when my mother died a
few months after my birth. I suppose he didn’t quite know what to do
with me, poor fellow, so when my grandfather and grandmother offered
to take care of me he consented to my being brought up by them until
I was old enough to go to school. I was a sickly baby, they say, and
that decided him. Well, my good grandmother brought me down here
within a month of my mother’s death, and it has always seemed as if I
was born here, for I can remember no other place. My first memories
are of the garden and the mill--the big black wheel and the foaming
race--and those snowdrops growing within the box border.’
‘And you were sent to school----’
‘Never. Before the school time came my poor father had died in Italy.
He had earned a great deal of money at one time, but his reputation
had not lasted as long as his life, and he left very little behind
him. I never went to any school except the little village day school,
where I learned to read and write; and if it had not been for the
last Vicar of Cheswold--a dear old man--I must have grown up in
ignorance. But one day when he came over to see my grandfather he
heard my father’s name mentioned, and was interested in me directly.
He was a great admirer of my father’s pictures. He asked how I was
being educated, and when he found that I was not being educated at
all, he offered to give me a couple of hours’ instruction twice
a week if I would go as far as Cheswold Vicarage. I was only too
glad--for I was fifteen years old at this time, and felt the burden
of my ignorance,--and for four years I was that dear old man’s pupil.
He taught me Latin, French, and Italian, and gave me the best books
in his library to read. I owe it to him that I never wasted an hour
upon a worthless book. He was indeed a friend. His memory is dearer
to me than words can tell.’
Dick listens with profoundest interest, and is about to express his
admiration of the good vicar, when a noise in the distance startles
Linda and him. It is the sound of several voices talking in excited
tones. Linda throws down her work and follows Dick to the garden
gate. A labourer in a smock-frock comes running round the corner, by
the brief row of cottages which the inhabitants dignify with the name
of street.
‘What’s the matter, John?’ asks Linda; ‘anything wrong with your
children?’
‘No, miss, they be right enough, but there’s a accident yonder with
some gentlemen hunting, a young gent chucked over an ’edge, among the
rushes in that there ditch just beyond your grandfeyther’s field.’
‘Is he much hurt?’
‘His arm’s broke, and there’s somethink wrong inside of ’im, miss,
some of his internal bones scrunched, I’m afeard, for he’s been
a-spittin’ blood like one o’clock.’
‘What are they going to do with him, poor fellow?’
‘The other gents is a-bringin’ him ’ere, miss, and I ran on afore to
tell ’ee.’
Dick is pale as death. Those terrible presentiments of his! have
they been cruelly verified? He can scarcely find voice to ask the
question,--
‘Do you know who the gentleman is?’
‘One on ’em said it were the young squire of Ches’old.’