MORE THAN KIND.
"He understood me at once," thought Nelly, whose headache left her the
moment she entered her own room. "How gentle he always seems, and how
nice. I wonder who and what he is? Grandfather says there can be no
mistake about his being well-born, and a man of fashion. Parson Gale
often boasts _he_ is not a man of fashion; but I know I like a man of
fashion best. I wonder when I shall see him again. Not that I want to
see him one bit; only he must have thought me so rude to leave like
that, and I ought to explain. How angry Mr. Gale looked, and how cross
he seemed all the way home. What does it matter to me? What need I care
how cross he is? Only--only I wish I was never going to set eyes on him
again!"
Now this was hardly justice--perhaps I should rather say it was woman's
justice. In the absence of other society, the time had been when Nelly
was well pleased to accept, in a dignified distant kind of way, the
Parson's homage, and felt flattered, if not gratified, by his obvious
devotion to herself; now she seemed instinctively to shrink from him as
from an enemy. And why? Because John Garnet had merry eyes and a ruddy
cheek? Because he was the first specimen of his class she had ever met?
Or because they were thrown together, two comely young people, in this
pretty little village by the sea? She could not have given a reason--no
more can I.
Twenty-four hours did not elapse, of course, before they met again. She
looked timidly in his face, and put out her hand. He might be offended,
she thought, and felt rather disappointed to have no opportunity of
begging pardon; but his frank and pleasant manner was so reassuring,
that she wondered how she could have dreaded their meeting so much, and
why she spent all the morning thinking of it. Nelly was always wondering
now, and for the first time in her life had forgotten to take
grandfather's posset off the hob last night before it was smoked.
It is no doubt provoking not to be able to irritate a man if you wish;
but Nelly had hardly yet arrived at that stage in the malady which
desires a quarrel for the pleasure of making up.
"You--you didn't get wet," she said, timidly, "when we were all obliged
to hurry home yesterday. The showers here are very heavy, and apt
to--to----"
"Wet a man to the skin," he said, laughing; "so they are everywhere
else. I was sorry to lose your pleasant society, Mistress Carew; but,
thinking the strange gentleman might be an old friend of your
grandfather, I did not wish to intrude, and walked home as fast as I
could."
She shot a grateful glance at him. "Yes," she observed, in rather a
marked tone, "he _is_ a friend of grandfather's rather than of mine,
though I have known him ever since I was a little girl."
"Is that so very long, Mistress Carew?" he asked, with another of his
pleasant smiles.
They were walking through the orchard behind her home, along a path that
led to the shore. She stopped and plucked some wild flowers from the
hedge, perhaps to hide a blush.
"I have a favour to ask you," she said, in a low voice, and stooping
her head over the posy. "Do not say Mistress Carew--I don't like it. I
had rather _you_ would call me Nelly."
There was the least possible inflection of voice on the pronoun, just
enough to make John Garnet's heart beat as it had never beat before.
"Nelly," he repeated, "will you give me one of those flowers?"
"You may take the whole bunch," she answered, "I only gathered them for
you." But she walked on so fast after this gratifying avowal, that it
was impossible to tell her one word of the old tale that was rising to
his lips.
All that day she took care not to be alone with him another minute. From
the orchard she took him to the beach, where the villagers were
collecting sea-weed; thence to a field where harvest was already nearly
done; home by the cow-house, with its attendant milkmaid; and so back to
grandfather's parlour, where she poured out his evening draught of cider
with her own hands.
Why Nelly should have cried like a naughty child when she laid her head
on the pillow; why she should have woke before daybreak, and risen at
sunrise to put new ribbons in her dress of a colour she had lately heard
somebody say he liked, is more than I can take upon me to explain. I can
understand, however, why John Garnet lay a-bed longer than usual that
same morning, and turned on the other side, hoping to go to sleep again,
that he might dream another dream like the last about Nelly Carew.
Abner Gale's dreams, if he had any, would seem to have been of no such
pleasant nature, for he was stirring with the dawn, breakfasting
fiercely before sunrise, on Devonshire mutton and strong ale, cursing,
notwithstanding his profession, each of his servants in turn for imputed
shortcomings, from his cherry-cheeked parlour-maid to the man who fed
the pigs. In and out the house, and through the precincts of the
farm-yard, or "barton," as he called it, the master's eye was only less
dreaded than his tongue, his tongue than his hand. Yet was he well
served too, with the scrupulous obedience of fear.
He would fain have mounted his horse and ridden across the moor in the
direction of Porlock again to-day, but even Abner Gale was compelled to
pay some respect to the decencies of life, and even such a parish as his
exacted a few hours' attention after an absence of weeks.
There were conditions to be written out for a wrestling-match between
two rival champions; arrangements to be made for supplying the ringers
with unlimited cider at their approaching feast; a badger recently drawn
to visit; and some terrier-puppies just opening their eyes on this
wicked world, to inspect.
Also, there was a child to be baptised, a matter that would keep, and a
wench to be married, a matter that would _not_.
"For to-day," thought the Parson, "I have got my hands full; to-morrow I
shall be free again, and it's strange if I fail to find out something
more of your goings on, Mistress Nelly, and put a spoke in the wheel of
that young spark down by the water-side, who seems to make himself so
much at home!"
Though he never saw him before, though he had not the vaguest notion
that John Garnet was the man he had sworn to hunt to death, some
antagonistic instinct caused him to hate this man with a deadly hatred,
scarcely to be accounted for, even by that jealousy which is
proverbially cruel as the grave.
In no appropriate frame of mind, the Parson was about to don his frayed
and dirty canonicals for administration of that matrimonial rite it
would be unwise to delay, when his quick eye caught sight of a man
riding on the moor, whose appearance caused him to cast aside his
sacred vestments with an oath, and rush to the door, carrying a brimming
jug of cider in his hand.
Mr. Gale swore when he was pleased, and when he was angry, when he rode
and when he walked, when he worked and when he rested. Altogether he
swore a good deal between morning and night.
"It's the harbourer!" he exclaimed, steadying the vessel not to spill a
drop; "the harbourer, as I'm a living sinner, Red Rube!" he shouted,
while the new arrival drew the rein at the mounting-block, "stop and wet
your whistle--you're always welcome, and you're always dry."
Red Rube, whose real name was Reuben Rudd, needed no second bidding.
Raising the jug to his weather-tanned face, he took a hearty pull, a
pull that nearly emptied its contents.
The Parson scanned him approvingly. Rube wiped his mouth on his sleeve,
and sat motionless in the saddle without a word.
He was a man of seventy at least, short, shrunken, withered, and tough
as shoe-leather, with a keen grey eye, set in countless wrinkles, that
seemed traced in the red-brown skin with the point of a needle. He rode
a broken-kneed Exmoor pony, low in condition, but as hard as nails.
Sportsman was written in every line of his face, every turn of his
limbs, yet his steed, saddle, bridle, and the clothes on his back would
have been dear at five pounds.
Like a ghost, it was Rube's custom not to speak till he was spoken to.
His answers too were ghostly and mysterious, and he loved to vanish like
a ghost when he had delivered his pithy say.
Presently, in such a whisper as denotes respectful confidence, the
Parson broke silence.
"Three inches?" he asked, with the utmost concern.
"And a quarter," was the reply. "Twenty-two score and may-be a pound
over. The slot was less than an hour old at sunrise."
"Rights?" asked the Parson.
"A warrantable deer," answered Rube, and each mused in silence for more
than a minute.
"It's a pity," observed the Parson, after a pause, "there's no knowing
where he may get to by next week. These heavy deer travel a long way
when they're not hurried. It's hard to say where he may be when we want
him. There ought to be no Sundays in the hunting season."
So self-evident a proposition seemed not to require assent; Red Rube
held his peace, and looked at the empty cider-jug. Taking the hint, Gale
entered the house, and returned with it refilled. The old man's eye
glittered, and he indulged in another pull. It seemed to loosen his
tongue. "That be main good zider," said he, shortening his reins and
applying his one spur to the pony's ribs, as though to depart, but
turning in his saddle, with an after-thought for a few last words.
"I wur down Lapford way yesterday," said he, with a chuckle, "and hoam
by Rose Ash. I larned reading, Pa'yson, three-score years ago and more,
afore I took to the deer. There's money to be made by reading, I
tell'ee, and money means drink."
"What do _you_ mean?" asked Gale.
"I mean there's hand-bills up at both places, offering a hundred guineas
reward; that's what I mean," replied the old man, kindling to
excitement. "Him as rode the grey stallion has been about again.
Galloping Jack they always called 'un that spoke of 'un to _me_--and if
a man could steal a view of 'un, or get the wind of 'un, or so much as
slot 'un where he harbours, 'tis a hundred golden guineas paid down in
hand. I've moved many a right stag in my time, Master Gale, but never
such a noble head as that."
Then, as fearing his loquacity must have compromised him in the eyes of
so good a sportsman, Red Rube departed at a gallop, and was seen no
more.
Abner Gale looked after him, with a smile. Lord Bellinger then had taken
his advice, and adopted the most likely means of bringing to justice the
perpetrator of an outrage that was both highway robbery and high
treason. It interested the Parson but little save in so far as the grey
horse was concerned. If its rider should come to the gallows he would do
all he knew to put that noble beast in his own stable. In imagination,
he was already galloping it over Exmoor, to go and see Nelly Carew.
Then the Parson sighed and swore, and sighed again, and put on his dingy
cassock to marry the tardy couple who had waited so long.
He tied them up, however, fast and sure, before the stroke of noon,
pocketing his fees with considerable satisfaction, for Mr. Gale took no
delight in the gratuitous administrations of the Church, little thinking
that, even while he pronounced the blessing, which it did not strike him
seemed a mockery from such lips as his, John Garnet was turning out into
the sunshine, fresh and fair, like a bridegroom himself, to wait upon
Mistress Carew.
That gentleman lay long in bed without dreaming the pleasant dream
again, so bethought him at last that it would be more to the purpose to
rise and pursue the reality, than lose his time in sighing after the
shadow. He was very far gone now. The posy she had given him stood in
water at his bedside, every hour of the day seemed wasted that was not
spent with this blue-eyed girl, and he never gave Waif a thought for
more than a moment at a time.
Bold, blithe, and buoyant, he whistled a merry air as he strode up the
village street, thinking of his first, last love, like a cock-bird in
full plumage going to look for its mate He seemed to moult a feather or
two though, as he passed the village stocks, on the posts of which, for
want of a more prominent elevation, were posted two conspicuous
hand-bills, beginning with a gigantic "Whereas," and continuing through
a long and minute description of his own person, to the offer of one
hundred guineas for his capture, dead or alive; the whole concluding
with a flourish, in capital letters, to the glory of "Our Sovereign Lord
the King."
He went on to see Nelly all the same, but resolved that he would put off
to a more convenient season something he meant to have told her to-day.