THE COURTSHIP OF HARBOROUGH OF GURNETT.
There can be no doubt that few things are so well concealed as the
perfectly obvious, no course of conduct so little observed as that
which is open to all observation. If Bill had wished to conceal her
doings on Sunday afternoon she would probably have been found out;
since she was perfectly indifferent as to who knew what she did, no one
discovered it. If she had been anxious for concealment she would have
gone to the rectory by way of the field-path, and would inevitably have
been seen by Miss Minchin and catechised by her in due season. But,
since she was far too absorbed in other matters to care what any one
thought, she went by the public way and no one knew it; no one, till
Mr. Dane’s old housekeeper admitted her and took her to the study where
Mr. Dane, but lately returned from a children’s service at Ashelton
End, sat before his beloved piano.
The rector of Ashelton knew every one in his parish and, to a certain
extent, all about every one; consequently he knew of Mrs. Morton’s aunt
and sister and cousins in Wrugglesby. To be sure, he knew about them
before Theresa was Mrs. Morton, for Miss Brownlow was an institution of
such long standing that he, being also an institution of long standing,
could hardly fail to know of her. Still, this knowledge did not give
him much information about Bill, of whom he only knew that she was a
niece of Miss Brownlow and a cousin of Mrs. Morton. At one time he
had tried to find out more about her, though not from any personal
interest, for he did not know her even by sight then. It was on account
of her name that he had made the enquiries, having good reason to
remember the name of Alardy. However, he could discover nothing to
couple her with the other Alardy, nor indeed had he been very hopeful
of discovering anything. It was the familiarity of the name that had
tempted him; and it was this familiarity which caused him an almost
painful start when she was announced on that Sunday afternoon. He did
not know her, nor her business, nor could he guess what it might be.
Bill did not leave him long in doubt; her very face betrayed her; there
was about her whole manner a contrition and self-abasement almost
suggestive of a dog in disgrace. “I have come to tell you I did it,”
she said, standing in the centre of the room; and the old rector at
once perceived that he was to hear a confession, the enormity of which
seemed terrible to the offender.
“Sit down,” he said kindly. “There is something you want to tell me,
something which seems very bad? Let us hear what is the matter, and we
will see what can be done.”
“Nothing can be done or undone.” She spoke with absolute conviction. “I
want to tell you in case you should blame anyone else, and because I
owe it to you,--that is the reason. The thing can’t be altered now.”
And then she plunged straight into her confession. “It is about this
morning’s service. It was all my fault; I got Mr. Harborough to have
it.”
Mr. Dane had known the owner of Wood Hall more years than he had
known Ashelton. He was considerably surprised by Bill’s confession,
considerably more surprised than he had been by the affair of the
morning.
“You induced Mr. Harborough to have the mass read?” he asked. “You? But
why?--how?”
“I thought of it,” she answered, “and,--he did it. This is how it
happened. I was in the wood, and he found me and took me to the house
to amuse him a little while, and I amused him as well as I could. It
was rather like the daughter of Herodias dancing before Herod, though
I did not dance, he did not ask me; but I sang and talked and pleased
him. It is true he did not ask me at the end what I would like, but
when I thought of this he half promised to do it; and now,--he has done
it.”
“Then it was your idea? He did it to please you, or rather because you
asked him?”
“Yes; it was my fault; he would not have done it if it had not been for
me. I suppose,” she added doubtfully, “he hardly knew what it would be.”
Mr. Dane had other opinions, but he only said: “Perhaps we had better
not consider his action in the matter. I have known him long enough
to be tempted to judge him as one man is sometimes tempted to judge
another; but we will not do it. Let us talk about you; you persuaded
him, or at least suggested the idea?”
“Yes; I suggested,--I did not persuade, I only suggested; but I had
pleased him first so that he was ready to do as I wished; it was almost
as good as persuading.”
Her eyes were honest, but the rector was perplexed. He could not quite
understand the case; the nature of the offence and the manner of the
committal were clear enough; but the nature of the offender puzzled
him. “Tell me,” he said, “what made you suggest such a thing; why did
you do it?”
“I thought it would be--” Bill hesitated for a word,--“not exactly
fun, though still funny,--it was, too, at first”; and in spite of her
genuine penitence a smile stole over her face at the recollection. “I
believe I wanted to see what would happen more than anything else,” she
concluded after a pause.
“Were you satisfied with what did happen?”
“No; oh, no, no! If I had thought of that I would never have suggested
it; I never thought about hurting you or the poor priest. When I saw
how you took it, and how he hated what he had got to do, I felt as if
I should like to get up and tell Mr. Harborough to stop. But it would
have been no use, I am sure,--I had done it and I could not undo it.”
“No,” he answered her very gravely, “no, you could not.”
There was a moment’s silence, and Bill for the first time in her life
faced the irrevocable. At last the old man spoke again. “And it never
occurred to you,” he said, “that it would be painful to other people?
Tell me, did another and a higher consideration never occur to you
either?”
“That it was irreverent? I did not think of it at the time; now, of
course, I know it was; but I really did not mean to be, and I think God
must know. That is the best of it; you need never pretend or explain
to Him. He knows, but other people,--I am very, very sorry.”
Mr. Dane pressed that point no further; perhaps the offender was
beginning to explain herself to him a little, and so he judged it
unwise. He led her to talk of the events which preceded her suggestion;
she told him all readily, the walk to Gurnett, the ramble in the wood,
even her own rapture when alone there.
“And to think,” she concluded, “that I should have felt like that,--as
if the whole world were holy--and then, a little later think of such a
thing!”
“I know,” he said, “I know. The human mind is a very strange thing, and
evil thoughts, in spite of what some people say to the contrary, are
perhaps the very strangest things which ever come there.”
“Yes,”--and she drew a deep breath. “I was so glad to be alive that
morning,” she went on; “I was glad about everything; I was fairly crazy
with,--with life I think. I can’t explain, and I am afraid you don’t
understand.”
Did he not? It was a great many years ago, but he too knew what it
meant--life and the joy of living, the wanton madness of youth. He
understood so well that he said little more about the act she deplored
but could not undo. Instead, he tried to prepare for the future, and
he prepared by asking some few questions about the past, about life
at Ashelton, life at Wrugglesby with Miss Brownlow, poor dear Miss
Brownlow. And again she told him readily, but her answers only deepened
the wrinkles in his forehead. She thought they were for her wrong
doings, but she confessed them all bravely, including her enjoyment of
the prayer-meeting.
“I liked it,” she admitted, “because Mr. Johnson was so fine when he
talked about faith, the evidence of the spirit, and the things which
are not as they are, and all the rest of it. I suppose it is wrong? I
have not imitated him very much yet; I will try not. That is the chief
reason why I liked the prayer-meeting and why I went to the second
one. There was another reason,--I liked driving there. It was such a
splendid evening, one of those that make you feel as if you would like
to live for ever.”
He ruffled his hair thoughtfully, and looked at her with a still
troubled brow.
“You don’t understand?” she said, mistaking him. “I don’t mean eternal
life that we--that Mr. Johnson talks about; but never to leave the
world. It is so beautiful, so,--so dear! I can’t”--and there was almost
a sob in her voice--“I can’t bear to think I shall have to die and lose
sight of it all; that the thrushes will sing and I shall not hear them,
the leaves come and go, the suns rise and set, and I never see them. It
is sad to think how much I have lost already, though inside myself I
always feel as if I had not really lost it, as if I had been there all
the time from the beginning and seen all the changes. You know what I
mean; you can learn lots about the past but nothing about the future;
nothing helps you about that, and by-and-bye there will be, must be,
more earth-history--it does not seem possible that I shall not know; I
do not feel as if I could die!”
She looked up, appealing almost passionately for mercy on this first
time that her soul had been betrayed into words. Perhaps the old rector
was a lenient judge; his eyes were almost wistful as he said half to
himself: “And you are never ill, and never tired.”
“I never have been.”
“And you have not nearly enough to do--” he was speaking solely to
himself now--“God help you!”
It is possible Mr. Dane thought this was a case for man’s help also; at
all events he did not dismiss it with some brief fatherly advice and a
blessing. He talked to Bill as he had not talked before to anyone in
Ashelton; he, who, as it were, kept all on the outskirts of his life,
spoke of those things which were the innermost shrine of his faith,
the things which, like the priests of old, he believed should be kept
for the initiated. And Bill was not initiated. Possibly she did not
quite understand him; but it did not matter, she would do so some day.
Possibly he did not quite understand her; how should he with all the
gap of years between them? Nevertheless he treated the girlish fancies
delicately, almost as holy things.
In the end he set her a penance, for, though a believer in spiritual
repentance, he also held that work was very good for the soul; so for
her wrong-doing he set her a task, at least he said it was for that.
“What shall I do?” she asked eagerly.
“You know that long bed at the bottom of Mrs. Morton’s garden? Dig it
up. First pull up all the weeds and burn them, then dig it up, dig
deep, put in manure and plant potatoes. I do not think Mrs. Morton will
object; I fancy she would let you do what you like in her garden.”
“Yes, oh yes, she won’t mind. I will begin to-morrow morning; is there
nothing else? I shall like doing that.”
“Do that first,” he said, and she promised, not questioning his right
to set her a task nor the fitness of the one he set. In fact, so
satisfied did she seem with his wisdom that, just as she was leaving,
she told him of the promise to go to Wood Hall again and of the
difficulties attending it.
“I promised,” she said, “thinking Theresa would let me go, and now she
won’t; but I must still go.”
“You should not have promised;” and he looked very grave.
“But I have; I thought Theresa would not mind.”
“She is quite right; nevertheless one must keep a promise.”
It is to be feared that here spoke the man dowered with family
tradition, and not the clergyman and spiritual adviser. The sentiment,
however, was one which Bill understood. “Yes,” she said, “I must go.”
“But not alone,” he answered; “she must go with you.”
This Bill did not understand; she was also very certain that Theresa
would not agree, and proceeded to explain the difficulty.
“She would take you, surely she would drive with you?” Mr. Dane
persisted.
But Bill shook her head. “She would say the promise was wrong and could
not be kept, and she would think she was encouraging wrong by going;
that is her way of looking at it.”
Mr. Dane felt he was brought face to face with a difficulty, but he
only repeated firmly, “You must not go alone.” Perhaps he could think
of nothing else to say.
Fortunately just then Bill thought of a possible way out of the
trouble. “Do you think it would do if Polly were to drive with me?” she
asked. “Polly is my eldest cousin. I should have to leave her outside
the house, but I would not be many minutes gone.”
Mr. Dane did not know Polly, but he thought she would do. He strongly
recommended also that she should, if possible, accompany Bill into the
house. Bill was not at all sure that Polly would do this, and she was
very sure indeed that she did not want her to do it; however, she could
not explain all this to Mr. Dane in the time now at her disposal, so
she prepared to say good-bye.
“There is one thing I should like to ask you before you go,” said Mr.
Dane, looking at her thoughtfully as she stood by his chair. “It is
about yourself.”
“I will tell you if I can,” she answered, “but I think I have already
told you all there is to tell.” Indeed, she had told him a great deal,
far more than she was aware of, but it was not quite what he meant.
“Your mother was Miss Brownlow’s sister?” he asked.
“Yes, the youngest, Kate; but I do not remember her at all; she died
when I was very little.”
Mr. Dane looked at her thoughtfully. “I should doubt if you were like
your mother,” he said; “you are not at all like your cousins, or Miss
Brownlow either.”
“No, I am not like them; sometimes Polly says I am like my father; but
she did not know him, and she only says it when she is angry. I don’t
think I can be like him really, except that I am dark. He was dark, but
then he was very clever and fascinating; Auntie says he bewitched my
mother, so that she would marry him in spite of what they all said. I
believe they did not think him good enough for her. I don’t quite know
what he was; he used to come sometimes to sing at the town where she
lived, but he was not a grand professional singer. Some people said he
was half a gipsy; he loved wandering about.”
“Do you remember him?”
“Not clearly; he did not live long after my mother; still I remember
him better than I do her. I can just remember going about with him, or
at least I think I can; it is difficult to tell which is memory and
which fancy, it is all so long ago. I came to Auntie when I was very
small.”
“And remained there ever since?”
“Yes, remained there ever since,” and she held out her hand to him.
He took it. “Good-bye,” he said, “good-bye, little maiden. Do they call
you Katie, too?”
“No; Bill,--Wilhelmina.”
“Wilhelmina!”
Perhaps the other Alardy had been called Wilhelmina; the old man’s face
almost looked as if it were so, or as if some ghost had sprung to life
at the name. But Bill did not see his face; for a moment he stood in
the shadow of the door, then turned and went stooping into the dimness
of the passage; and she went onward down the road, thinking only how
she could compass to-morrow’s visit.
Polly was shrewd enough after her fashion, and if she saw Mr.
Harborough would, Bill felt certain, find out more than was desirable
concerning her cousin’s share in the reading of the mass. Therefore
Polly must not set foot inside Wood Hall. Bill had some respect for
her shrewdness, though she was depending on being able to outwit it
when she said she would get her chaperonage for the intended call. “But
I’ll get her,” Bill assured herself as she walked home that Sunday
afternoon; and the chances were that she would, for she was a tenacious
little person, and also, while much lacking in perception on some
points, she had an instinctive comprehension of character which gave
her a truer conception of the turns and twists of Polly’s nature than
either of the other cousins possessed.
On Monday morning Bill set to work to carry out her plan. Her newly
acquired mastery over the reins was the first thing pressed into
her service. She would drive the old pony over to Wrugglesby, pack
some clothes she wanted, and bring Polly (Bella would be giving
music-lessons) home to Haylands with her for the night. At first
Theresa demurred, but Robert only laughed at her fears; and finally
Bill was allowed to go, with Henry, the boot-boy, in attendance in case
of accidents. Bill accepted Henry’s escort to Wrugglesby, but said he
would have to walk back as she intended to take Polly for a drive by
herself. Theresa demurred again, but Robert was on Bill’s side; and
finally, as might have been foreseen, Henry walked back alone, while
Bill and Polly went for their drive.
Not, however, before Bill had encountered another obstacle, which
presented itself in the attractive form of Bella. Bella wanted to make
one of the party; she pointed out that there was room for her in the
pony-carriage, and that Theresa was sure not to mind an extra guest for
one night. Of course, in the ordinary way it would have been impossible
for her to get out in the afternoon, but to-day it happened that nearly
the whole school was going to a birthday party and there were only two
music-lessons to give. These two lessons were Bill’s salvation: she and
Polly would take their drive while Bella gave them; as soon as she had
done she was to walk to Sales Cross Roads, where they would meet her
with the pony-chaise at a quarter to four.
The plan met with Polly’s entire approval; she did not at all wish to
waste the early part of the afternoon waiting for Bella, and she was
not troubled with many unselfish scruples. When Bella inconveniently
said, “I think I could be at Sales Cross before that,” Polly answered
decidedly, “But we cannot.” Whereupon the good-natured Bella gave way,
and, with matters at last satisfactorily arranged, the other two drove
away.
Polly leaned back with great satisfaction; Bill had borrowed a cushion
from Theresa for her and she appreciated it. “Really, Bill,” she said
benignly, “I should never have thought you would learn to drive so
well; you are quite getting on.”
“Do you think I have grown up any more?” Bill asked.
Polly looked at her thoughtfully. “I don’t think you have developed
much,” she said, after consideration. Before she reached the end of her
journey that day she changed her opinion and came to the conclusion
that Bill had developed surprisingly, in one direction at least.
“We are going to Gurnett,” Bill announced, and Polly, to whom one place
was as good as another, acquiesced.
“We can easily get from there to Sales Cross to meet Bella,” Bill went
on to explain when they were nearing the village. “I want to see some
one at Gurnett, or rather, just this side of it; we don’t go through
the village.”
“Whom are you going to see? I will hold the reins while you go in;
I don’t care about going with messages to strange farms; there are
always geese and cows about.”
Bill entirely agreed with this suggestion. “Yes,” she said, “you must
wait outside while I go in; I won’t be long, not more than ten minutes
I expect. It is not to a farm we are going, though; it is to Wood Hall.”
“Wood Hall? Whatever does Theresa want from there?”
“Theresa does not want anything; I am going on my own business. She
does not know I am going, and she would be very angry if she did.”
“Well, Bill!”
“But I have got to go all the same,” Bill continued, ignoring the
exclamation.
“What about me? Pray, why should I allow it if Theresa does not? I
insist on hearing all about it at once.”
Curiosity as well as indignation prompted this speech, which Bill
proceeded to gratify to a certain extent. “I will tell you as much as
there is time for,” she said, and there was not time for a great deal.
Polly’s explosions of righteous wrath, not so judicial and certainly
not so genuine as Theresa’s, helped to shorten the narrative.
“Well, Bill, I could not have believed it of you! No, I could not, even
if anyone had told me! I know a good deal about you, it is true, but I
should never have expected--well--” Words failed, and Polly took refuge
in a superlatively expressive sniff; she had brought the language of
sniffs to a rare perfection.
But Bill was not at all impressed, and when Polly asked with stern
dignity, “Do you think I, any more than Theresa, will allow you to go
to Wood Hall?” she answered, “You can’t help yourself.”
“Can’t help myself, indeed!”
“No, we are just there.” That was undeniably true; they were in the
drive and must soon reach the house. “If you did not mean to come,”
Bill went on composedly, “why did you not say so before we turned in?”
“I did not notice.”
Bill was politely doubtful. “Look here, Polly,” she said, “what is the
good of pretending? It is not what things are that matters to you, it
is how they look. I am sure that this is quite right; you are not; but
that does not count, as you only want it to look right--”
“Bill! You are a wicked girl. How dare you say such things?”
“I dare say them, and you dare think them,” Bill retorted, vaguely
aware that she must have outraged the sense of decency again. At that
moment a sharp turn in the drive showed them the house just in front,
the chaise swayed to one side, for the ground dipped suddenly down
before it rose again for the last little ascent.
“I shall come in with you,” Polly said heroically, as she gripped the
sides of the chaise with a firm, though nervous, grasp. “I shall not
leave you--Bill, do be careful how you drive!--not leave you in spite
of your conduct to me.”
“Yes, you will. You will wait outside, and think how it can be made to
look best.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind!”
“Then I shall frighten the pony and make him run away. He won’t run
far, but by the time you get back here I shall have gone inside.
Good-bye for the present; I sha’n’t be long.”
Bill jumped out as she spoke, and the indignant, though discreet,
Polly took the reins and patiently waited in the pony-carriage. Bill
certainly had developed, and developed, among other things, a painful
plainness of speech. This hurt Polly more than anything else, for
she believed in observing all the decencies of life, in saying and
seeming all that was suitable to the occasion, even to a certain extent
persuading herself to feel it too. She always acted, for herself if
there was no other audience; she could not help it, and the fact
that there was not the least chance of anyone being deceived did
not deter her from taking a part. More often than not people were a
little deceived; they believed in her more or less, as she believed
in herself. Bill did not, which was her misfortune; but she said so
baldly, and that was her fault, a fault Polly found it hard to forgive
just then. “Yet,” Polly thought when she sat in the chaise waiting and
meditating on Bill’s development, “she is proving to be rather as I
expected; she has twenty times the go of the other two, if only one
could make her sensible.” From which it may be seen that Polly had a
keen eye to the main chance, and even in matters of personal affront
sought first a possible advantage; afterwards, if expedient, she
resented the annoyance. During the ten minutes that she waited for Bill
she had serious thoughts of making common cause with that offender.
Bill was as good as her word. Mindful of a limit to Polly’s patience,
she came to the point as soon as possible, and asked what Mr.
Harborough demanded in return for fulfilling her wish. But he, not
aware of any urgent reason for haste, set the question aside and asked
instead if she had been satisfied with Sunday’s comedy.
She did not think it a comedy; indeed, to tell the truth, she was not
quite sure what a comedy was; certainly she had not been satisfied,
but, as she hastened to explain, that was not his fault. “It was my
own,” she said.
“Your own, daughter of Eve? Dissatisfied as soon as gratified? It’s the
way with ’em all. Still I own this affair did not turn out as well as
it might.”
“You did not expect it to be like that? Neither did I; if I had
thought--”
“You would have chosen a day when the curate was in sole command? It
certainly would have been better from a sporting point of view.”
For a moment the vision of what might have occurred in those
circumstances flitted through Bill’s mind, but she banished it and said
gravely: “It would have been funnier, I dare say, but no better; worse,
I think, for I should not then have found out that it was wrong.”
Mr. Harborough laughed, seeming to find a good deal of amusement in the
idea of Bill’s tardy conscientious scruples; but on account, he said,
of her disappointment he asked nothing further of her, saying that they
would now cry quits to the bargain. Bill was relieved, having been
afraid he would lay some fresh difficulty upon her; as it was, she felt
she had escaped easily, and prepared to make her adieux with a light
heart, explaining at the same time that, as Polly was waiting outside,
she must go at once. The idea of Polly waiting outside also seemed to
amuse Mr. Harborough.
“Dear me, how they have been talking to you!” he said. “Bringing home
the enormity of your conduct to you with a vengeance! They won’t
leave me my unsophisticated little maiden long; good women are great
teachers of the ways of this wicked world.”
Bill scarcely understood him; still, she fancied he was insinuating
something against her cousin whose words really had had no weight at
all in determining her action. “It was not exactly Theresa’s doing,”
she said.
“Not Theresa?” He laughed. “Yet you have brought a dragon, a chaperone
to watch over you. You need scarcely have taken the trouble; I should
have done you no harm.”
“They would not let me come alone.”
“I wonder they let you come at all.”
“Theresa would not; Polly could not help herself.” Bill did not explain
Mr. Dane’s share in the matter, and Harborough did not ask it. “When
are you coming again?” was all he said.
“Never.”
“Never? Are you going to leave me all alone in my desolate old age?”
“They won’t let me come.”
The old man’s tone had been but half serious, yet as he spoke the
extreme silence of the house suddenly impressed Bill, the loneliness
of the great room where they two made an oasis of humanity in a desert
of shadowy memories. The polished floor stretched around her, only
quivering into life when she moved and sent distorted reflections of
herself along the boards; the mirrors on the wall never waking till she
turned for them to cast back her brown face and ruddy hair. Away at the
far end of the room there were chairs and cabinets, but they were too
distant to reflect her on their polished wood, too far off to have any
connection with this life. They belonged to the folks who looked down
from the walls. It was a wondrous house, a wondrous lonely house for
an old man who did not care for memories, whose taste, vitiated by the
hot peppers of his manhood, could not appreciate the _pot-pourri_ of
the centuries that were gone.
“Could you not get someone else to come,” Bill said at last, “someone
belonging to you? You haven’t got anyone?”--he had shaken his head and
she felt the case was a bad one till a happy idea occurred to her. “Why
not pay a girl?” she said. “You could, you know; you could get one that
way.”
“For what would you undertake the post?”
The question was asked with all gravity, but she was not quite sure
that he was in earnest. It would be a good thing if he were, for
this was work she could do, and, since she had to earn her living,
it seemed much better that she should do it in this way which fitted
her small abilities. She glanced quickly at him, uncertain what to
answer. “Twenty-five pounds a year,” she said at last, at a venture,
naming a sum which seemed to her exorbitant considering his straitened
circumstances.
He smiled a little and shook his head. “Can’t be done,” he said, and
she prepared to reduce her terms cautiously, but he explained the
obstacles.
“It is the aunts and cousins who are in the way, my dear; if you were
alone in the world we would not quarrel as to terms.”
“Oh, but I could easily explain to them.”
Bill was confident, but Mr. Harborough reminded her of her confidence
with regard to Theresa’s permission to repeat her visit. She was forced
to admit his superior knowledge there, and to allow of its possibility
again, although it seemed foolish to carry social objections into a
purely commercial transaction.
“Believe me,” he said, “there are no terms on which they would allow
you to enter my service, except the cover of my name.” She did not
understand. “If the salary were a marriage settlement,” he explained,
“they would permit you to take it, and, under the name of Mrs.
Harborough, they would raise no objection to your accepting the post of
companion.”
In spite of her disappointment at finding the offer not a genuine one
after all, Bill burst out laughing; laughing principally at her own
stupidity in taking him seriously. Then she said: “I must go; Polly
will be tired of waiting.”
“Laugh and go,” he said. “Do you laugh at Wood Hall? I could--by
Heaven, it is almost worth doing!” he exclaimed with a sudden access of
energy. “There are some who would not laugh then, my little brown elf.”
He laughed himself at the idea, laughed softly with a bitter spite
in his eyes. Afterwards it occurred to Bill vaguely that perhaps he
really had been in earnest, and that she was to have played a part in
some scheme of vengeance. But she never seriously thought so, and at
the time it did not appear to her as anything but a jest. As such she
laughed again so that her merriment rang in the great room; and she was
still smiling when a minute later she came out to Polly waiting in the
chaise.