Miss Peyton was shocked and grieved; but she was also affronted and
wounded. Now anger seems to have some fine buoyant quality, which makes
it rise and come uppermost in an agitated mind. She rode proudly into
the court-yard of her father's house, and would not look once behind to
see the last of her perverse lover.
The old groom, Joe, who had taught her to ride when she was six years
old, saw her coming, and hobbled out to hold her horse, while she
alighted.
"Mistress Kate," said he, "have you seen Master Griffith Gaunt
anywheres?"
The young lady colored at this question.
"Why?" said she.
"Why?" repeated old Joe, a little contemptuously. "Why, where have _you_
been not to know the country is out after un? First comed Jock Dennet,
with his horse all in a lather, to say old Mr. Charlton was took ill,
and had asked for Master Griffith. I told him to go to Dogmore Copse:
'Our Kate is a-hunting to-day,' says I; 'and your Griffith, he is sure
not to be far from her gelding's tail'; a sticks in his spurs and away a
goes. What, ha'n't you seen Jock, neither?"
"No, no," replied Miss Peyton, impatiently. "What, is there anything the
matter?"
"The matter, quo' she! Why, Jock hadn't been gone an hour when in rides
the new footman all in a lather, and brings a letter for Master Griffith
from the old gentleman's housekeeper. 'You leave the letter with me, in
case,' says I, and I sends him a-field after t' other. Here be the
letter."
He took off his cap and produced the letter.
Catharine started at the sight of it.
"Alack!" said she, "this is a heavy day. Look, Joe; sealed with black.
Poor Cousin Charlton! I doubt he is no more."
Joe shook his head expressively, and told her the butcher had come from
that part not ten minutes ago, with word that the blinds were all down
at Bolton Hall.
Poor human nature! A gleam of joy shot through Catharine's heart; this
sad news would compel Griffith to stay at home and bury his benefactor;
and that delay would give him time to reflect; and, somehow or other,
she felt sure it would end in his not going at all.
But these thoughts had no sooner passed through her than she was ashamed
of them and of herself. What! welcome that poor old man's death because
it would keep her cross-grained lover at home? Her cheeks burned with
shame; and, with a superfluous exercise of self-defence, she retired
from Old Joe, lest he should divine what was passing in her mind.
But she was so wrapt in thought that she carried the letter away with
her unconsciously.
As she passed through the hall, she heard George Neville and her father
in animated conversation. She mounted the stairs softly, and went into a
little boudoir of her own on the first floor, and sat down. The house
stood high, and there was a very expansive and beautiful view of the
country from this window. She sat down by it and drooped, and looked
wistfully through the window, and thought of the past, and fell into a
sad reverie. Pity began to soften her pride and anger, and presently two
gentle tears dimmed her glorious eyes a moment, then stole down her
delicate cheeks.
While she sat thus lost in the past, jovial voices and creaking boots
broke suddenly upon her ear, and came up the stairs; they jarred upon
her; so she cast one last glance out of the window, and rose to get out
of their way, if possible. But it was too late; a heavy step came to the
door, and a ruddy, Port-drinking face peeped in. It was her father.
"See-ho!" roared the jovial Squire. "I've found the hare on her form;
bide thou outside a moment."
And he entered the room; but he had no sooner closed the door than his
whole manner changed from loud and jovial to agitated and subdued.
"Kate, my girl," said he, piteously, "I have been a bad father to thee.
I have spent all the money that should have been thine; thy poor father
can scarce look thee in the face. So now I bring thee a good husband; be
a good child now, and a dutiful. Neville's Court is his, and Neville's
Cross will be, by the entail; and so will the baronetcy. I shall see my
girl Lady Neville."
"Never, papa, never!" cried Kate.
"Hush! hush!" said the Squire, and put up his hand to her in great
agitation and alarm; "hush, or he will hear ye. Kate," he whispered,
"are you mad? Little I thought, when he asked to see me, it was to offer
marriage. Be a good girl now; don't you quarrel with good luck. You are
not fit to be poor; and you have made enemies: do but think how they
will flout you when I die, and Bill's jade of a wife puts you to the
door, as she will. And now you can triumph over them all, my Lady
Neville,--and make your poor father happy, my Lady Neville. Enough said,
for I promised you; so don't go and make a fool of me, and yourself into
the bargain. And--and--a word in your ear: he hath lent me a hundred
pounds."
At this climax, the father hung his head; the daughter winced and moaned
out,--
"Papa, how _could_ you?"
Mr. Peyton had gradually descended to that intermediate stage of
degradation, when the substance of dignity is all gone, but its shadow,
shame, remains. He stamped impatiently on the ground, and cut his
humiliation short by rushing out of the room.
"Here, try your own luck, youngster," he cried at the door. "She knows
my mind."
He trampled down the stairs, and young George Neville knocked
respectfully at the door, though it was half open, and came in with
youth's light foot, and a handsome face flushed into beauty by love and
hope.
Miss Peyton's eye just swept him as he entered, and with the same
movement she turned away her fair head and blushing cheek towards the
window; yet--must I own it?--she quietly moulded the letter that lay in
her lap, so that the address was no longer visible to the new-comer.
(Small secrecy, verging on deceit, you are bred in woman's bones!)
This blushing and averted cheek is one of those equivocal receptions
that have puzzled many a sensible man. It is a sign of coy love; it is a
sign of gentle aversion; _our_ mode of interpreting it is simple and
judicious: whichever it happens to be, we go and take it for the other.
The brisk, bold wooer that now engaged Kate Peyton was not the man to be
dashed by a woman's coyness. Handsome, daring, good-humored, and vain,
he had everything in his favor but his novelty.
* * * * *
Look at Kate! her eye lingers wistfully on that disconsolate horseman
whose every step takes him farther from her; but George has her ear, and
draws closer and closer to it, and pours love's mellow murmurs into it.
He told her he had made the grand tour, and seen the beauties of every
land, but none like her; other ladies had certainly pleased his eye for
a moment, but she alone had conquered his heart. He said many charming
things to her, such as Griffith Gaunt had never said. Amongst the rest,
he assured her the beauty of her person would not alone have fascinated
him so deeply; but he had seen the beauty of her mind in those eyes of
hers, that seemed not eyes, but souls; and begging her pardon for his
presumption, he aspired to wed her mind.
Such ideas had often risen in Kate's own mind; but to hear them from a
man was new. She looked askant through the window at the lessening
Griffith, and thought "how the grand tour improves a man!" and said, as
coldly as she could,--
"I esteem you, Sir, and cannot but be flattered by sentiments so
superior to those I am used to hear; but let this go no farther. I shall
never marry now."
Instead of being angry at this, or telling her she wanted to marry
somebody else, as the injudicious Griffith had done, young Neville had
the address to treat it as an excellent jest, and drew such comical
pictures of all the old maids in the neighborhood that she could not
help smiling.
But the moment she smiled, the inflammable George made hot love to her
again. Then she besought him to leave her, piteously. Then he said,
cheerfully, he would leave her as soon as ever she had promised to be
his. At that she turned sullen and haughty, and looked through the
window and took no notice of him whatever. Then, instead of being
discouraged or mortified, he showed imperturbable confidence and
good-humor, and begged archly to know what interesting object was in
sight from that window. On this she blushed and withdrew her eyes from
the window, and so they met his. On that he threw himself on his knees,
(custom of the day,) and wooed her with such a burst of passionate and
tearful eloquence that she began to pity him, and said, lifting her
lovely eyes,--
"Alas! I was born to make all those I esteem unhappy!" and she sighed
deeply.
"Not a bit of it," said he; "you were born, like the sun, to bless all
you shine upon. Sweet Mistress Kate, I love you as these country boors
can never be taught to love. I lay my heart, my name, my substance, at
your feet; you shall not be loved,--you shall be worshipped. Ah! turn
those eyes, brimful of soul, on me again, and let me try and read in
them that one day, no matter how distant, the delight of my eyes, the
joy of all my senses, the pride of Cumberland, the pearl of England, the
flower of womankind, the rival of the angels, the darling of George
Neville's heart, will be George Neville's wife."
Fire and water were in his eyes, passion in every tone; his manly hand
grasped hers and trembled, and drew her gently towards him.
Her bosom heaved; his passionate male voice and touch electrified her,
and made her flutter.
"Spare me this pain," she faltered; and she looked through the window
and thought, "Poor Griffith was right, after all, and I was wrong. He
had cause for jealousy, and CAUSE FOR FEAR."
And then she pitied him who panted at her side, and then she was sorry
for him who rode away disconsolate, still lessening to her eye; and what
with this conflict and the emotion her quarrel with Griffith had
already caused her, she leaned her head back against the shutter, and
began to sob low, but almost hysterically.
Now Mr. George Neville was neither a fool nor a novice, if he had never
been downright in love before, (which I crave permission to doubt,) he
had gone far enough on that road to make one Italian lady, two French,
one Austrian, and one Creole, in love with him; and each of these
love-affairs had given him fresh insight into the ways of woman.
Enlightened by so many bitter-sweet experiences, he saw at once that
there was something more going on inside Kate's heaving bosom than he
could have caused by offering her his hand. He rose from his knees and
leaned against the opposite shutter, and fixed his eyes a little sadly,
but very observantly, on her, as she leaned back against the shutter,
sobbing low, but hysterically, and quivering all over.
"There's some other man at the bottom of this," thought George Neville.
"Mistress Kate," said he, gently, "I do not come here to make you weep.
I love you like a gentleman. If you love another, take courage, tell me
so, and don't let your father constrain your inclinations. Dearly as I
love you, I would not wed your person, and your heart another's: that
would be too cruel to you, and" (drawing himself up with sudden majesty)
"too unjust to myself."
Kate looked up at him through her tears, and admired this man, who could
love ardently, yet be proud and just. And if this appeal to her candor
had been made yesterday, she would have said, frankly, "There is one
I--esteem." But, since the quarrel, she would not own to herself, far
less to another, that she loved a man who had turned his back upon her.
So she _parried_.
"There is no one I love enough to wed," said she. "I am a cold-hearted
girl, born to give pain to my betters. But I shall do something
desperate to end all this."
"All what?" said he, keenly.
"The whole thing: my unprofitable life."
"Mistress Kate," said Neville, "I asked you, was there another man. If
you had answered me, 'In truth there is, but he is poor and my father is
averse or the like,' then I would have secretly sought that man, and, as
I am very rich, you should have been happy."
"Oh, Mr. Neville, that is very generous, but how meanly you must think
of me!"
"And what a bungler you must think me! I tell you, you should never have
known. But let that pass; you have answered my question; and you say
there is no man you love. Then I say you shall be Dame Neville."
"What, whether I will or no?"
"Yes; whether you _think_ you will or no."
Catharine turned her dreamy eyes on him.
"You have had a good master. Why did you not come to me sooner?"
She was thinking more of him than of herself, and, in fact, paying too
little heed to her words. But she had no sooner uttered this inadvertent
speech than she felt she had said too much. She blushed rosy red, and
hid her face in her hands in the most charming confusion.
"Sweetest, it is not an hour too late, as you do not love another," was
stout George Neville's reply.
But nevertheless the cunning rogue thought it safest to temporize, and
put his coy mistress off her guard. So he ceased to alarm her by
pressing the question of marriage, but seduced her into a charming talk,
where the topics were not so personal, and only the tones of his voice
and the glances of his expressive eyes were caressing. He was on his
mettle to please her by hook or by crook, and was delightful,
irresistible. He set her at ease, and she began to listen more, and even
to smile faintly, and to look through the window a little less
perseveringly.
Suddenly the spell was broken for a while.
And by whom?
By the other.
Ay, you may well stare. It sounds strange, but it is true, that the poor
forlorn horseman, hanging like a broken man, as he was, over his tired
horse, and wending his solitary way from her he loved, and resigning the
field, like a goose, to the very rival he feared, did yet (like the
retiring Parthian) shoot an arrow right into that pretty boudoir and hit
both his sweetheart and his rival,--hit them hard enough to spoil their
sport, and make a little mischief between them--for that afternoon, at
all events.
The arrow came into the room after this fashion.
Kate was sitting in a very feminine attitude. When a man wants to look
in any direction, he turns his body and his eye the same way, and does
it; but women love to cast oblique regards; and this their instinct is a
fruitful source of their graceful and characteristic postures.
Kate Peyton was at this moment a statue of her sex. Her fair head leaned
gently back against the corner of the window-shutter; her pretty feet
and fair person in general were opposite George Neville, who sat facing
the window, but in the middle of the room; her arms, half pendent, half
extended, went listlessly aslant her, and somewhat to the right of her
knees, yet, by an exquisite turn of the neck, her gray eyes contrived to
be looking dreamily out of the window to her left. Still in this figure,
that pointed one way and looked another, there was no distortion; all
was easy, and full of that subtile grace we artists call repose.
But suddenly she dissolved this feminine attitude, rose to her feet, and
interrupted her wooer civilly.
"Excuse me," said she, "but can you tell me which way that road on the
hill leads to?"
Her companion stared a little at so sudden a turn in the conversation,
but replied by asking her, with perfect good-humor, what road she meant.
"The one _that gentleman on horseback has just taken_. Surely," she
continued, "that road does not take to Bolton Hall."
"Certainly not," said George, following the direction of her finger.
"Bolton lies to the right. That road takes to the sea-coast by Otterbury
and Stanhope."
"I thought so," said Kate. "How unfortunate! He cannot know; but,
indeed, how should he?"
"Who cannot know? and what? You speak in riddles, Mistress. And how pale
you are! Are you ill?"
"No, not ill, Sir," faltered Kate; "but you see me much discomposed. My
cousin Charlton died this day; and the news met me at the very door."
She could say no more.
Mr. Neville, on hearing this news, began to make many excuses for having
inadvertently intruded himself upon her on such a day; but, in the midst
of his apologies, she suddenly looked him full in the face, and said,
with nervous abruptness,--
"You _talk_ like a _preux chevalier_. I wonder whether you would ride
five or six miles to do me a service."
"Ay, a thousand!" said the young man, glowing with pleasure. "What is to
do?"
Kate pointed through the window.
"You see that gentleman on horseback. Well, I happen to know that he is
leaving the country; he thinks that he--that I--that Mr. Charlton has
many years to live. He must be told Mr. Charlton is dead, and his
presence is required at Bolton Hall. I _should_ like somebody to gallop
after him, and give him this letter; but my own horse is tired, and I am
tired; and, to be frank, there is a little coolness between the
gentleman himself and me. Oh, I wish him no ill, but really I am not
upon terms--I do not feel complaisant enough to carry a letter after
him; yet I do feel that he _must_ have it. Do not _you_ think it would
be malicious and unworthy in me to keep the news from him, when I know
it is so?"
Young Neville smiled.
"Nay, Mistress, why so many words? Give me your letter, and I will soon
overtake the gentleman: he seems in no great hurry."
Kate thanked him, and made a polite apology for giving him so much
trouble, and handed him the letter. When it came to that, she held it
out to him rather irresolutely; but he took it promptly, and bowed low,
after the fashion of the day. She curtsied; he marched off with
alacrity. She sat down again, and put her head in her hand to think it
all over, and a chill thought ran through her. Was her conduct wise?
What would Griffith think at her employing his rival? Would he not infer
Neville had entered her service in more senses than one? Perhaps he
would throw the letter in the dirt in a rage, and never read it.
Steps came rapidly, the door opened, and there was George Neville again,
but not the same George Neville that went out but thirty seconds before.
He stood in the door looking very black, and with a sardonic smile on
his lips.
"An excellent jest, Mistress!" said he, ironically.
"Why, what is the matter?" said the lady, stoutly; but her red cheeks
belied her assumption of innocence.
"Oh, not much," said George, with a bitter sneer. "It is an old story;
only I thought you were nobler than the rest of your sex. This letter is
to Mr. Griffith Gaunt."
"Well, Sir!" said Kate, with a face of serene and candid innocence.
"And Mr. Griffith Gaunt is a suitor of yours."
"Say, _was_. He is so no longer. He and I are out. But for that, think
you I had even listened to--what you have been saying to me this ever so
long?"
"Oh, that alters the case," said George. "But stay!" and he knitted his
brows, and reflected.
Up to a moment ago, the loftiness of Catharine Peyton's demeanor, and
the celestial something in her soul-like, dreamy eyes, had convinced him
she was a creature free from the small dishonesty and lubricity he had
noted in so many women otherwise amiable and good. But this business of
the letter had shaken the illusion.
"Stay!" said he, stiffly, "You say Mr. Gaunt and you are out?"
Catharine assented by a movement of her fair head.
"And he is leaving the country. Perhaps this letter is to keep him from
leaving the country."
"Only until he has buried his benefactor," murmured Kate, in deprecating
accents.
George wore a bitter sneer at this.
"Mistress Kate," said he, after a significant pause, "do you read
Moliere?"
She bridled a little, and would not reply. She knew Moliere quite well
enough not to want his wit levelled at her head.
"Do you admire the character of Celimene?"
No reply.
"You do not. How can you? She was too much your inferior. She never sent
one of her lovers with a letter to the other to stop his flight. Well,
you may eclipse Celimene; but permit me to remind you that I am George
Neville, and not Georges Dandin."
Miss Peyton rose from her seat with eyes that literally flashed fire;
and--the horrible truth must be told--her first wild impulse was to
reply to all this Moliere with one cut of her little riding-whip. But
she had a swift mind, and two reflections entered it together: first,
that this would be unlike a gentlewoman; secondly, that, if she whipped
Mr. Neville, however inefficaciously, he would not lend her his piebald
horse. So she took stronger measures; she just sank down again, and
faltered,--
"I do not understand these bitter words. I have no lover at all; I never
will have one again. But it is hard to think I cannot make a friend nor
keep a friend,"--and so lifted up her hands, and began to cry piteously.
Then the stout George was taken aback, and made to think himself a
ruffian.
"Nay, do not weep so, Mistress Kate," said he, hurriedly. "Come, take
courage. I am not jealous of Mr. Gaunt,--a man that hath been two years
dangling after you, and could not win you. I look but to my own
self-respect in the matter. I know your sex better than you know
yourselves. Were I to carry that letter, you would thank me now, but
by-and-by despise me. Now, as I mean you to be my wife, I will not risk
your contempt. Why not take my horse, put whom you like on him, and so
convey the letter to Mr. Gaunt?"
Now this was all the fair mourner wanted; so she said,--
"No, no, she would not be beholden to him for anything; he had spoken
harshly to her, and misjudged her cruelly, cruelly,--oh! oh! oh!"
Then he implored her to grant him this small favor; then she cleared up,
and said, Well, sooner than bear malice, she would. He thanked her for
granting him that favor. She went off with the letter, saying,--
"I will be back anon."
But once she got clear, she opened the door again, and peeped in at him
gayly, and said she,--
"Why not ask me who _wrote_ the letter, before you compared me to that
French coquette?"--and, with this, made him an arch curtsy, and tripped
away.
Mr. George Neville opened his eyes with astonishment. This arch
question, and Kate's manner of putting it, convinced him the obnoxious
missive was not a love-letter at all. He was sorry now, and vexed with
himself, for having called her a coquette, and made her cry. After all,
what was the mighty favor she had asked of him? To carry a sealed letter
from somebody or other to a person who, to be sure, had been her lover,
but was so no longer,--a simple act of charity and civility; and he had
refused it in injurious terms.
He was glad he had lent his horse, and almost sorry he had not taken the
letter himself.
To these chivalrous self-reproaches succeeded an uneasy feeling that
perhaps the lady might retaliate somehow. It struck him, on reflection,
that the arch query she had let fly at him was accompanied with a
certain sparkle of the laughing eye, such as ere now had, in his
experience, preceded a stroke of the feminine claw.
As he walked up and down, uneasy, awaiting the fair one's return, her
father came up, and asked him to dine and sleep. What made the
invitation more welcome was, that it in reality came from Kate.
"She tells me she has borrowed your horse," said the Squire; "so, says
she, I am bound to take care of you till day-light; and, indeed, our
ways are perilous at night."
"She is an angel!" cried the lover, all his ardor revived by this
unexpected trait. "My horse, my house, my hand, and my heart are all at
her service, by night and day."
Mr. Peyton, to wile away the time before dinner, invited him to walk out
and see--a hog, deadly fat, as times went. But Neville denied himself
that satisfaction, on the plea that he had his orders to await Miss
Peyton's return where he was. The Squire was amused at his excessive
docility, and winked, as much as to say, "I have been once upon a time
in your plight," and so went and gloried in his hog alone.
The lover fell into a delicious reverie. He enjoyed, by anticipation,
the novel pleasure of an evening passed all alone with this charming
girl. The father, being friendly to his suit, would go to sleep after
dinner; and then, by the subdued light of a wood-fire, he would murmur
his love into that sweet ear for hours, until the averted head should
come round by degrees, and the delicious lips yield a coy assent. He
resolved the night should not close till he had surprised, overpowered,
and secured his lovely bride.
These soft meditations reconciled him for a while to the prolonged
absence of their object.
In the midst of them, he happened to glance through the window; and he
saw a sight that took his very breath away, and rooted him in amazement
to the spot. About a mile from the house, a lady in a scarlet habit was
galloping across country as the crow flies. Hedge, ditch, or brook,
nothing stopped her an instant; and as for the pace,--
"She seemed in running to devour the way."
It was Kate Peyton on his piebald horse.