PETER HARBOROUGH’S SHOE-BUCKLES.
Polly had no doubt done wisely in sending Bill to Ashelton while she
herself was settling affairs at Wrugglesby. Not only was she thus freed
from Bill’s interference, but also Bill had an opportunity for putting
into practice her good resolutions regarding Gilchrist Harborough.
Polly was sure she would make use of the opportunity, for Bill could
always be relied on to keep her word. In the main she fulfilled Polly’s
expectations; she certainly tried to do so. Theresa found her curiously
subdued on her return to Ashelton, and found also that she herself was
watched and sometimes imitated with an embarrassing closeness. Bill was
trying to be a lady.
She obeyed to the letter Polly’s instructions concerning Gilchrist,
always putting on her best dress for his coming, never calling him
Theo now, never baffling him by tantalising moods and goblin mockery
and playful defiance. Indeed so circumspect was her behaviour that
Gilchrist not unnaturally concluded that the lecture he had given
her after the affair of the plums had taken effect. Of course he was
humanly gratified to find that his words had not been wasted, but it
is to be feared that he found Bill in her new character of lady, as
copied from Theresa, something of a disappointment; she did not always
compare favourably with her model.
Bill did not know how her efforts impressed Gilchrist, neither did she
greatly care, for his opinion was not her highest standard. But she was
herself by no means satisfied, and one day, soon after her return to
Ashelton, she took her difficulties to her friend the rector. He, by
right of his office and reason of his experience, had been consulted
on many points in his time, some rather peculiar ones since his
acquaintance with Bill; but even she had never faced him with anything
quite so unexpected as on the day when she brought him the problem of
her own behaviour. She was examining the high shelves of his book-case
at the time, standing on the back of an arm-chair to do so, having
first weighted the seat with encyclopaedias.
“THE DIARY OF A LADY,” she read the title of one of the books, then
stood a moment looking at it thoughtfully. “Monseigneur,” she said,
“you know I told you I was trying to behave better? Well, I am not
getting on a bit.”
Mr. Dane was busy with his parish accounts; as a rule the girl’s
presence did not disturb him at all, but now he looked up, arrested by
her tone.
“What is it?” he asked, putting down his pen. “What have you been
doing?”
“Nothing; I haven’t done anything wrong and I do all the right things I
can find to do. Theresa thinks I am much improved, but I’m not really.”
As she reached up to replace the book, the chair tilted a little.
“Would you mind kneeling on the seat?” she said. “The chair tips when I
reach up. Thank you.”
She jumped to the ground and drawing a chair to the writing-table faced
the rector. “What is your notion of a lady?” she asked abruptly.
Mr. Dane considered a moment, before hazarding an opinion, knowing that
his answer would be taken literally and perhaps translated into action.
“One,” he said at length, “who considers others, who never by word
or deed causes unnecessary pain, who listens sympathetically, talks
pleasantly, never says a great deal even when she feels much or knows
more. One who does her mental and moral washing in private, but is not
afraid to do her duty in public; who respects the secrets of others,
the honour of her family, and her own self more than all. One who
speaks with tact, acts with discretion, and places God before fashion
without needlessly advertising the fact to the annoyance of the rest of
the world.”
“Thank you,” said Bill, and a long silence followed; perhaps she was
learning the definition for her own benefit. At last she spoke again.
“You think I could be a lady if I learned to control myself and,--and
did not run away when I wanted to, and all those sorts of things?”
Mr. Dane did think so; possibly he did not regard her as so hopeless a
case as did Polly. Then there was another silence during which there
came the sound of wheels on the drive at the other side of the house.
Neither noticed it, and Bill, thinking of Polly’s lectures on her
disreputable appearance, asked a second question. “I suppose a lady
always wants to look right? It matters very much how she looks, how she
is dressed?”
“It matters very much for some,” the rector answered; “but others--”
he was only a man after all, and though old not altogether wise--“with
others,” he said, “you are so busy wondering what colour their eyes
are that you never notice their gowns; so much perplexed as to what
they are, Princess Puck, that you never know what they wear--”
He broke off smiling as the housekeeper opened the door: “A gentleman
to see Miss Alardy,” she announced.
“Me?” Bill exclaimed.
“Yes, miss; he has been to Haylands, he says, and they told him you
were here; he’s waiting in the hall now,--young Mr. Harborough.”
“Mr. Harborough?” Bill repeated rising. “Whatever can he want?”
“Not Mr. Harborough from Crows’ Farm,” the housekeeper explained;
“young Mr. Harborough from Wood Hall.”
“Oh!--I’ll come and speak to him.”
Ladies controlled themselves; they said nothing even when they felt
much; they respected themselves, the honour of their family, the
secrets of their friends. Bill was going to be a lady, and she would
not even allow herself to feel surprised.
Mr. Dane took up his pen again. Old Mr. Harborough was worse no doubt;
he had been ill all the week, and that it was a mere question of days
everyone knew. Probably it was a question of hours now, and for that
reason they had summoned the heir. And for what reason had the heir
come for Bill? If old Mr. Harborough had a fancy for seeing her again
before he died Mr. Dane was not the man to gainsay him. Bill knew that,
the instant he came into the hall where she stood with Kit Harborough.
“Go, by all means,” was his advice, “go at once; I will explain to Mrs.
Morton.”
So Bill fetched her hat from the study where it lay on the
encyclopaedias, and without another word drove away with Kit to Wood
Hall. And Mr. Dane had time to finish his accounts and then explain
matters to Theresa before lunch.
Theresa was very much surprised to hear of Bill’s going, but since the
rector approved she was quite willing to do the same. As the afternoon
wore on and Bill did not return, she began to wonder a little what the
girl was doing; and when in the evening Gilchrist called and Bill was
still absent, she found the situation rather awkward. Gilchrist showed
such an unreasonable displeasure at her absence that Theresa wished
Mr. Dane could have explained to the impatient lover the propriety
and justice of Bill’s going. To tell the truth, Gilchrist was both
displeased and anxious, for he did not feel at all sure what Bill might
be saying with regard to the Wood Hall estate. She had told him how
she had met and warned Kit Harborough at Bymouth; and though it is
true that she had listened with commendable humility to his natural
explosion of anger, and at the end had assured him (with the shadow of
contempt in her voice) that the heir had declined to take advantage
of the warning, what guarantee was there that she might not, for some
reason of her own, think fit to warn the old man in time to create
unnecessary complications? Gilchrist was very uneasy indeed, not at all
sure what Bill would do.
But Kit had no doubts at all. He was perfectly sure she would say
nothing; and, as certain of her as he was of himself, he never once
during the drive to Gurnett reopened the question of the claim. He
never even mentioned it when he helped her to alight at the great door,
never spoke of it or referred to it as he led her across the echoing
hall to the wide stairs and the rooms above.
Old Harborough was dying, but dying elegantly, almost as if with a
subtle and unconscious recollection of what was due to the traditions
of his family. He was powerless in body but terribly alert in mind,
keenly conscious of the situation and accepting the inevitable with the
cynicism he had shown to so many of the happenings of his life, neither
curious nor afraid, politely indifferent, almost politely sceptical.
Bill, the many-sided, the sympathetic, felt something like a touch of
admiration for this survival of a passing type. He, on his part, feeble
as he was, still received her with something of his former mocking
courtesy, thanked her for troubling to come to him, apologised for the
manner of her reception, and prayed her to be seated.
There was a nurse present when Bill entered the room, a tall, quiet
woman who looked curiously at the girl. The man who had met Mr.
Harborough with the chair that April day in the woods was also present;
but he did not look curiously at Bill, either because he thought it
bad manners, or else because he understood her claim to his master’s
interest. Both of them, however, withdrew to a more distant part of the
large room. Kit remained standing near the bed, but Mr. Harborough took
no notice of him, only once indirectly acknowledging his presence and
then in no pleasant manner; it was when he himself apologised to Bill
for not handing her to a chair.
“You must take the will for the deed,” he said, “since I cannot do
it; it is clear such trifling attentions will not survive the old
generation.”
He did not look at Kit, nevertheless the lad coloured hotly. Bill
sat down, wondering a little how the old manners would suit the
new generation; but she did not say so and in a minute she dropped
the thought out of her mind, turning her entire attention on Mr.
Harborough. She did not find it difficult to talk to him, though Kit
was a listener, even when the old man referred to her last visit and
the offer then made she felt little embarrassment.
“Are you not sorry you did not take it?” he asked her. “I’d have left
you Wood Hall for as long as you remained a Harborough. Pity it was
not done! It might have saved the old place; an heiress isn’t always
the only thing or the best thing to mend a broken family.” He seemed
almost to be speaking to himself, but he addressed her directly when he
asked abruptly: “Are you not sorry you did not take it? By this time
to-morrow it would all have been yours.”
“I don’t want it,” she answered him vehemently. “I don’t want it; I
would hate to have it!”
“Hate to have it? Why, I thought you liked it?”
“I do, so much that I would hate to have it.”
A priest had come quietly into the room, but, seeing Mr. Harborough
engaged in conversation, he went to a distant window and opened a book
he carried. Bill recognised him at once for the same man who had read
the mass at Ashelton Church. Mr. Harborough followed her eyes but, not
being aware that she recognised him, thought she was only wondering as
to the reason of his presence.
“The last relic of the Catholic faith here,” he explained in his weak
harsh voice. “I have to be dressed for the next world, the last of us
who ever will be. Kit is not a Catholic; he is a Purist or a Deist
or something sincere and modern. He troubles about his soul and his
Creator like any other mental dyspeptic, and believes something on his
own account. When I was young it was thought ill-bred to interfere with
the concerns of the Almighty, and the minding of souls was left to
those who were paid to do it. We were not tied down by a Sunday-school
morality in those days, and we had the courage of our convictions.”
Bill nodded. “I know,” she said.
“How do you know?” he asked sharply.
“By you,” she answered.
“By me? What have I said to you? What do you know?”
“I can’t exactly explain,” she said doubtfully; “only the world was
different then. One can’t measure you by the people of to-day, nor the
people of to-day by you.”
He fixed her with eyes which were still keen. “How do you know that?”
he persisted.
“I don’t know; I suppose I feel it.”
“You are a lenient judge,” he said almost softly, “about the most
lenient judge I have ever had, you odd child. What an odd child! I did
not know how odd the day I found you in the wood, the day you found God
in the wood; you did find Him, did you not?”
“Yes,” she answered simply. “He seemed very close; but then I think the
devil was too.”
“God and the devil at your right elbow and your left. A survival of
Puritan days,--to find God in the woods now!”
The tone was not wholly mocking; there was a touch of wistfulness
in it, and Bill hearing it answered it from the depth of her own
convictions. “Everywhere it is beautiful one feels God,” she said
softly, “in forest and sea and sky.” She raised her eyes and met Kit’s.
He may have been guilty of a Sunday-school morality; he certainly was
guilty of a belief, and he betrayed its existence then to one who
shared it.
But Mr. Harborough did not know it; he was not thinking of Kit at all
as he lay looking curiously at the girl. His lips moved once: “Shall
see God,” he said as if to himself, then raising his voice slightly he
asked: “Who is it that shall see God, Father Clement?”
The priest turned. “‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see
God,’” he answered drawing nearer.
“The pure in heart,” Mr. Harborough repeated, “that is it; I had
forgotten. Well, little witch, you have seen something that I, for
all my years and experience, have not; something that I--I suppose
because of those years and experience--cannot see. But now I must ask
you to go; there is a heavenly toilet to be made. Go down and get some
lunch, but come back by-and-bye. Kit must take you; I apologise for him
beforehand.”
Bill rose. “Kit does not need anyone’s apology,” she said hotly; then
she followed the young man out of the room feeling ashamed. Kit that
day was like the Kit of Bymouth, the Kit she had met in the lane; there
did not seem such a gulf between them as when they parted, nor yet such
terrible courtesy. They were boy and girl in the great house together,
boy and girl watching together, by an odd chain of circumstances, for
the coming of the great shadow. They went to the solemn old dining-room
and lunched in state as Bill had once lunched with Mr. Harborough.
During the meal Kit did not mention to his guest the subject which
had never really been absent from his mind since she herself first
put it there that morning on the sands at Bymouth. A little while
back he had had some talk with a solicitor of his acquaintance, and
without betraying a personal interest in the test-case he described,
had learned the very serious position of the man placed as he was. But
he did not speak of it to Bill then, although, in spite of the still
intangible nature of it all, he felt the shadow of this man from the
new country spread over the stately old house, filling its most secret
corners, taking possession of its most sacred spots. And Bill, though
he did not speak of it, knew the thought that was in her companion’s
mind, and felt with him this haunting presence.
After lunch the doctor and nurse agreed in forbidding either Kit or his
guest to see the patient before four o’clock, saying that they should
be summoned then unless some unexpected change made their presence
necessary earlier. There were nearly two hours before them, two hours
for Kit to play host in the house which might soon pass to another.
With an effort he tried to banish the thought from his mind as he asked
Bill to come to the library.
“This is the room I like best,” he said when they stood in the great
low room where some past Harborough had gathered a store of books.
Mercifully the later comers, not thinking them of sufficient value to
sell, had left them intact, even, indeed, adding a volume now and then,
each man according to his taste, for there was no lack of intellect
even among the wildest of them. The September sunlight slanted
through the broad low windows where weedy sunflowers and uncut trails
of late-blooming roses looked in on a big room, irregular in shape,
full of angles, with bookshelves jutting out in unexpected places,
and a silence in it which was a luxury of the brain. The light was a
warm brown gloom cast back from book-lined shelves; the smell was the
wonderful, indescribable smell of an old library, Russia leather, and
oak shelves, and book-dust blended into one, a perfume never to be
forgotten. For, as the rose on his mistress’s bosom to a lover, or the
breath of the clover which filled the air when he pledged his vows, so
is the smell of such a library to the man of books, and above all, to
the man who has been reared to it, the man who has learned by common
use and childish association to love the outside of the volumes before
ever he could read them within.
Bill felt her breast heave suddenly, and a great lump came in her
throat. She had never been in such a library before, never to her
knowledge smelt its sweet familiar smell, yet her breast heaved and she
could not speak. It was absurd, of course; it was nothing to her, the
books were not her friends, and as an alien she could claim no kinship
with them; yet she felt for them, felt so that she could not speak. As
for Kit, he had followed her into the room and stretched out a hand to
set straight a book on a lower shelf, but he did not touch it; his hand
dropped and he turned abruptly to a window, and for a long minute both
stood silent, not regarding one another. Then Bill mastered herself
with an effort.
“What is this?” she asked, taking a book at random.
It was Sir Thomas Brown’s VULGAR ERRORS, an old folio edition with
wonderful woodcuts. Kit looked at it for a moment, though he knew it
well enough, and then recovering himself he told her. They took the
book to the broad window-sill and together turned its pages, looking
at the curious pictures. After that he took down another book and then
another; Bill was sitting on the window-sill now, the books piled
beside her, while Kit drew a great wooden chair in front. In this way
he showed her a Chaucer massively bound and clamped with brass, a Pope
of 1717, a PILGRIM’S PROGRESS grotesquely illustrated,--the books he
loved, wonderful old German prints, poets of a later date, and stout
old sermon-writers with whose solid works he had built houses in
childish days.
So the afternoon passed with strange pleasure to both, though neither
quite forgot the shadow that hung over the house, nor the even deeper
shadow not only of death, that brooded over the library and in some
unexplained way touched every book they looked at and every passage
they read. Once Kit took down a Milton, old and shabby and unopened,
except by himself, for many years, and began to read a passage from IL
PENSEROSO.
“Oft on a plat of rising ground
I hear the far-off curfew sound,
Over some well watered shore,
Swinging slow--”
He stopped abruptly; each heard the curfew as on that night, each smelt
the scent of the wet grass in the lane. There was a pause when neither
looked at the other; then he went on hurriedly, a little lower down the
page:
“Some still removèd place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom--”
Kit shut the book sharply and gave it up. All round him lay the heaped
up volumes as they used to lie on the winter afternoons when he had
built towers with the works of the divines in that same glowing gloom.
He glanced at the wide fireplace; Bill had glanced at it before him,
because she too had thought of it, though she had never seen it when
the fire burned low at twilight. So they each looked, and then each
looked at the other and neither, for all their resolutions, hid the
thought nor pretended to hide it. Bill’s throat began to swell again. A
volume of Hooker, balanced on the window-sill, fell with a thud to the
floor. Kit took a long time in picking it up, and when at last he put
it in a place of safety with Marcus Aurelius on the top, he said: “He
would love the books.”
It was perfectly unnecessary to explain who _he_ was; Bill knew and
thought of Gilchrist’s tastes and bookshelf before she answered: “Yes,
I think he would.” She picked up the MEDITATIONS. “He has got this,”
she said; “his is in English, though, bound in green cloth, and cost
one and sixpence. I believe he would like his own edition better; it is
cheaper and clearer.”
Kit silently took the imperial philosopher from the girl’s hand, as
she got down from the window-seat and helped him to put the books back
in their places. Neither spoke of Gilchrist again; and a little later
someone came to fetch them to Mr. Harborough.
They went up-stairs together and quietly into the old man’s room. Bill
noticed a difference directly she entered; she needed no one to tell
her that she had been called to say good-bye to the eccentric old man
she had so little known.
“Come here,” he said hoarsely when he saw her hesitate near the door.
She came and stood close to him, Kit standing on the other side of the
bed.
“Here’s a keepsake for you,” he whispered, trying to raise his
nerveless hand. “I give it you in the presence of witnesses,” he
glanced at the nurse as he spoke, “so there will be no dispute
afterwards. It is not an heirloom, and I can do with it as I like. Put
your hand on mine, take it, here.”
Bill put her hand in his as requested and the cold powerless fingers
beneath her warm touch fumbled feebly before the two glittering buckles
fell into her hand.
“There,” he said triumphantly, “they are for you; that is, if you will
do me the favour of accepting them.”
“For me?” she said gazing half bewildered, half fascinated by the
brilliancy of the stones.
“Yes, for you,” Mr. Harborough told her. “They are yours now, the gift
is witnessed,” he went on, for she hardly seemed to realise the fact.
Then she stooped and kissed the hand that gave them.
“They were Peter Harborough’s shoe-buckles,” he whispered, “about the
only thing he did not lose at cards; he lost everything else even
including--” there was a little cough for breath--“including his life.
My father left them to me; they are my own; I can do with them as I
like, and I like to give them to you. They are all the diamonds we have
now and,” addressing Kit with a sudden access of spite, “no wife of
yours can have them now.”
Bill dropped the buckles as if they had burnt her; they fell with a
clink on the counterpane and lay there, a sparkle of light. “I can’t
take them,” she said. “I won’t have them; you--you don’t understand.”
Kit leaned across and, picking them up, gently gave the buckles back to
her. He did not speak, but there was something in his manner she could
not resist.
“That’s right,” the old man muttered as if he had not fully understood.
“They are yours, little witch; he can’t take them; I have given them to
you.”
Bill grasped them in silence, pressing the sharp stones into her flesh.
“Now good-bye,” Harborough said more clearly, “good-bye, or shall
we say _au revoir_?” His breath failed him for a moment but he
recovered himself and went on cynically, “I have to go through with
this business, and being new to it I may bungle. In case I do not die
decently I would rather not disgrace myself in the presence of a lady.”
So Bill said good-bye and went out. Kit opened the door for her, and
shutting it after her, left her standing alone outside. So she stood
a moment, like one in a dream, the diamonds still pressed into her
flesh; then she turned and went with slow steps down the stairs, with
quickening steps across the hall to the open door, and so out into the
garden where the afternoon shadows were long and the tender warmth of
September lay over everything. She followed the terraced path awhile,
and then, her steps still quickening, crossed the lawn where the grass
was emerald green and the elm leaves lay scattered here and there. She
was almost running now, quite running when she came to the shrubbery,
running at full speed, running blindly, wildly, faster and faster
until she reached the wood and flung herself down in the waist-deep
bracken and sobbed as if her heart would break.
It was much later when Kit found her, knowing perhaps where to look
for her. She had told him of her first ramble in the wood; at any rate
when all was over, he found her under the yellowing beeches half hidden
among the ferns. She started when she heard his step beside her, and
at first was minded to pretend she had not been crying and practise
a belated self-control. But she did not, chiefly because he did not
pretend; he made no pretence of anything, nor yet behaved in the manner
expected of him and worthy of his breeding. He sat down beside her
without speaking, whereupon she obstinately buried her face in the
bracken and would not so much as look up though the stiff fern-stalks
pricked her neck. She moved her head uneasily and he gently broke a
stalk away; in doing so his hand came in contact with her hair, a
little curl of which, having become loosened, had contrived to get wet
with tears. The contact with it, and the recognition that it was wet
with tears, were things Kit did not soon forget; but he drew his hand
away and only said stupidly: “Don’t cry, please don’t cry; I didn’t
know you cared about him like that.”
“He was good to me”--Bill’s voice was muffled by the ferns--“but it
isn’t exactly that.”
He had not been good to Kit, yet Kit felt vaguely grieved and shocked
by his death; he looked in some perplexity at the girl beside him.
“What is it then?” he asked, but she did not answer, so he fell back on
his first remark and entreated her not to cry any more.
“I shall,” she answered without looking up. “I have not cried half
enough yet,--there are so many things.--I haven’t nearly done.”
Kit glanced rather hopelessly at the half-buried figure. “Are you going
to cry for them in order?” he asked attempting to smile.
“Yes.”
Nevertheless Bill, with the sunny lights coming back to her eyes, sat
up, rustling the dead leaves as she did so. “I wonder if the wood will
be cut down,” she said wistfully, as she glanced up at the interwoven
branches above her.
“No,” Kit told her, “for neither you nor I would allow it.”
“I?”
“Yes; if it is not mine it will be yours, or as good as yours.”
“Mine?”
“Yes; if it is Theo’s--you said you were going to marry him--it will be
yours too, and I am glad.”
“Glad! I am not.”
Her voice was passionate, almost vindictive, and Kit went on quickly:
“I am glad, and you ought to be too. You said once that, were you in my
place, you would do anything to get Wood Hall; surely you ought not to
mind if you have it.”
“I’m not in your place,” Bill said, “and I don’t want it a bit. Do
anything to get it! A woman can’t do anything but be married. I don’t
want Theo to have it, and I don’t want to come here.”
She buried her face in the ferns again, but now she did not cry. Kit
broke the stiff fern-stalk into little pieces, and as he threw them
away caught sight of the buckles shining among the ferns near the
girl’s arm. Bill heard them clink as he picked them up, and sat up
again, facing him now with a calm determination. “I am not going to
have them,” she said quietly.
“You must; you can’t help yourself. They were given to you, and you
must have them,” and he dropped them into her lap.
“I am not going to have them,” she repeated; “had he known, he would
not have given them to me.”
“No, because very probably they would have come to you in any case; I
don’t know how such things go, but it is likely they would have come to
you. At all events they are yours beyond dispute now.”
“Mine, not my husband’s?”
“Certainly, yours absolutely.”
“Mine to do with as I like?” The sense of ownership seemed to please
the girl. Kit wondered why a little, but he did not ask and her next
words explained. “Then I can give them to whom I please? I shall give
them to your wife on her wedding-day.”
Bill put the rejected buckles in her pocket, but Kit said quietly:
“That you will never do, for I shall never marry.”