It would seem something a matter for a wonder that a lady of Miss
Royston’s refinement and varied capacity for ideals should be content
to lead so long an annual series of her days to a pastoral retirement.
A month in London about the chill opening of the year, and another,
later, at Epsom, Tunbridge Wells, or, perhaps, Newmarket, would
comprise the wonted period of her absence from “Chatters.” This may
have been so according to choice or necessity; but it was probably
dictated by the first in greatest degree. It is true her brother’s
smug, good-humoured little face misexpressed a character very fairly
endowed with determination. He was, and desired to be, a country
squire; and, though he subscribed with infinite complacency to the
extremest fashions of the town, it was only that he might thereby hold
his neighbours to the right quantity of respect in alluding to his
position amongst them. He would figure in their eyes, no Will Levett
with a cudgel for Assembly Rooms, and still less a London fribble
sporting with squirearchy; but a courteous lord of acres who should
exemplify the best characteristics of both and the exaggerations of
neither.
But his heart was with the country, and therefore it might be supposed
that Miss Angela, in her rustic retirement, made a cloisteral virtue
of necessity. It might be, and wrongfully, I believe. For this young
lady’s tastes held much in common with those of her brother, enjoying
different interests, but adapted to similar conditions. Perhaps she
found a world of trees and flowers most fitting to her many excursions
in romance. Perhaps she preferred conducting her own chorus of praise
at “Chatters” to playing upon heart-strings in the crowded orchestras
of fashion. Certainly she never had a mind to fiddle second, and,
possibly, shrunk on that account from the necessity of ever assuming
herself out-rivalled in that claim for leadership so passionately
advanced by successive strings of town _élégantes_.
However that may be, her capacity for situations was extreme; her
sensitiveness to any least appeal of the emotions a perpetual excuse
for what, in a less gifted creature, would have passed for a most
engaging inconstancy. Indeed, to thwart her in some pursuit of an
ideal, was to feel the full force of the passion that impelled her to
the chase.
So, for some nine months of the year, she held at her brother’s house
her little feudatory court, and found, in the faithful homage of her
squireens, a spring of content so untinged by jealousy, or the
necessity of it, as that it seemed the very rejuvenating water of
life. There, did she tire of poetry, she smiled upon music in a way to
make it almost in tune with itself; did she fall out of touch with
Handel, she sickened, as it were, of art, and painted her name with an
elegant flourish on the bright margin of the sky; did she weary of
Tom, she handed him over for decent burial in a homelier heart, and
coquetted with Dick during the whole of a St. Martin’s summer. And for
all she did there was the appropriate background of woods and freshets
and frisking lambs, that seemed to justify her most erratic courses.
For the trees changed month by month, and the freshets swelled to
torrents, and the lambs frisked into mutton with fat wool and were
shorn.
Now, about the period of Mr. Tuke’s invasion of her fields of romance,
she was in her state aurelian; and, bursting its shell, her butterfly
fancy lighted on him. Never before had she happened upon so dear a
flower for the engagement of her sensibilities. She tested him with
her delicate antennæ, and found him full of a rough honey that
charmed her palate exceedingly. He had thorns; but with her little
nippers she could pinch the tips off these and make them harmless. She
fell into a really parlous state, and seemed to learn her
womanliness--though she was rising twenty-seven--in a single sweet
hour.
His image had dwelt with her ever since. It was with her now, as she
stepped over the threshold of “Chatters” in her riding-habit. For she
was for a canter with her brother; and secretly she hoped to come
across _him_ in the course of it.
Sir David was already in the saddle, and a groom held her horse.
At the very moment she came forth, she heard her brother utter an
exclamation, and saw a light bounding figure fling itself towards him
and, catching at his saddle-bow, make some appeal to him with a frenzy
of gesture. It was the girl Darda, as she saw--hoodless, flushed and
dishevelled; and the lady looked on a little amazed, and with a fine
attitude of scorn towards a creature who could so forego the ethics of
her sex under the stimulus of excitement.
“What is it, Davy?” she said, descending the steps, and coldly
ignoring the wild-eyed young woman, who as indifferently returned her
contempt with utter disregard of her presence.
Sir David looked perplexed and troubled.
“Hush!” he said to the girl, who still pleaded with him in a low
clamour of words.
Darda fell silent; but she looked round on Miss Royston with lowered
brows and her white teeth set doggedly.
“Rabbit it!” cried the little baronet in perturbation. “I’m foundered,
Angel. What shall I do?”
“We are going for a ride, are we not?”
“Yes. But lookee here. The girl says Tuke accuses her brother of some
villainy, and hath shut him up in the ‘Priest’s Hole.’”
“He can do as he likes with his own, I presume.”
Darda broke into a mad outcry.
“Shame on you!” she screamed--“that can lock your woman’s breast from
pity with a key of gold! He’s poor and friendless, or such as you
would never dare to speak so!”
“Silence, girl!” said Sir David sternly; but his sister had flushed up
a very stormy red.
“The fellow hath no more than his deserts, I’ll warrant,” she said
loudly. “It must be ill managing a craven and an idiot.”
Sir David vaulted from his saddle. Miss Angel’s fingers were nervous
with her little riding-whip, and her pale eyes glinted like broken
flints.
“Have reason, Angel,” he said quickly. “What if I _have_ small ground
to interfere? Dennis is my old friend; and, by cock, I can’t believe
him guilty of aught but weakness at the worst. There must be some
mistake. At least I can do no harm by seein’ the master.”
Darda caught his hand and kissed it passionately.
“You will let him free!” she cried. “Come, come, come! Every minute
maddens him that he lies among the shadows. You don’t know what that
is. Put my fine lady there and cure her of the vapours.”
Her fingers crooked with desire to mangle the fair face near her.
“Come!” she shrieked again--“or that devil will have his own. I tried
to stab him, but he saw and struck the knife out of my hand.”
Sir David started back.
“Oh!” he cried, with a fallen face. “What’s that? I must ride over in
good truth. Follow, you, Darda; and keep those wicked fingers out of
the fire.”
Miss Royston stepped forward haughtily. The groom, a passive but
greatly interested spectator of this pretty scene, touched his cap and
held down his hand for stirrup.
“If you really intend it,” said the lady, making, on a sudden thought,
a virtue of inclination, “I will come with you. There may be bad blood
fired, where one interferes unwarrantably with the actions of
another.”
“I think not,” said Sir David quietly; “if Mr. Tuke is the man I take
him to be. But, come, Angel. You may serve as an argument where none
of mine would carry.”
She gave a light laugh as she was lifted into her saddle.
“You flatter me, brother,” she said. “I will persuade in the language
of flowers, and you by club-law. We will see which hath the better
wit.”
She flicked up her horse, and, whether by accident or design, drove it
brushing against Darda as she stood near.
The girl sprang back, almost with an oath on her lips.
“Some day, perhaps,” she muttered in her teeth--“some day, perhaps,
you shall set your wit against bright steel, mistress, and see which
is the sharper.”
She caught sight of Sir David turning in his saddle and beckoning her
to follow, and waved to him and cried wildly, “I am coming!”
“To ’a view hulloa!” said the attentive groom, with a grin. “Run un to
earth, gal, in the ‘Priest’s Hoal.’”
“Oh, my!” he cried jeeringly, as she struck at him aimlessly in
passing and sped on her way.