"Thistledown for thoughts," said May Fisher, laughing, as she tried to
seize the glossy balls floating by on the idle air of the lane.
"Thoughts are of little value, then," said Felix St Bees.
"Except to the goldfinches," said Margaret; "see how busy they are."
It was a lovely afternoon: white fleecy clouds lingered in the upper
atmosphere, so gauze-like in texture as scarcely to diminish the sun's
rays when they passed over. The golden mist of ripe September filled
the hollows and hung over the distant ridges, softening with haze the
outlines of the hills. The fierce stress of midsummer heat was gone,
leaving instead a luxurious warmth that lured them into the fields.
Margaret had succeeded in persuading old Andrew Fisher to let May return
to Greene Ferne. Rude as he was, Margaret's beauty stirred the expiring
spirit of gallantry, and he yielded. Although he would not let May go
back at once in her company, he fixed a day for her return. Margaret
explained to him that St Bees did not need his money, having plenty;
and the old man--prompted too by avarice--sent a gruff kind of apology,
and asked Felix to call again. Felix, however, had had his dignity
upset by the blackthorn cudgel hurled at his head, and naturally waited
awhile before repeating his visit. Geoffrey still stayed at Thorpe
Hall, for the shooting now, and Valentine at Hollyock Cottage. They had
all started that afternoon to go a-nutting in Thorpe Wood.
The wood was approached by a winding thick-hedged lane. As they slowly
advanced a bevy of goldfinches went before them, rising from the
thistles, for they love the seeds in the down, with a "fink" of
remonstrance, settling again to start up once more, and finally, out of
patience at the interruption, taking flight to the tall ash-trees, to
wait till the intruders had passed on.
"We must have some sticks with crooks to pull the boughs down," said
May, "or we shall not reach half the nuts."
So the gentlemen took out their pocket-knives, and searched for suitable
sticks. Felix cut one of hazel, twice as long as himself; Valentine
another of ash; Geoffrey carelessly slashed off the first willow-bough
he came to, and trimmed it.
"Yours will not do," said Margaret to him. "The willow is too weak--it
will split."
"Will mine answer?" asked Valentine, showing a stout piece of ash.
"Yes, that is tougher. Why don't you get an ash, Geoffrey?"
"I shall trust in my first choice," said Geoffrey, just a trifle annoyed
even by so slight a matter; for when men's minds are strung with love
and jealousy the least thing nettles them.
"I think it will do," said May, anxious to smooth it over.
As they went on down the lane the blackbirds every now and then sprang
from the bushes with a loud cry; the song-thrushes, less wild, sat on
the spray till they came close. Stray blue butterflies wandered
wonderingly in and out, with a dainty tripping flight--wonderingly,
because they had but lately entered to the summer world, and found so
much to see they could not stay long in one place. Bryony leaves,
shaped like the shields of ancient Norman knights, trailed a pale buff
scarf across the bushes. Bryony berries, some red and some a metallic
shining green, clustered in grape-like bunches. Blackberries ripening;
haws reddening on the thorn; yellow fronds of brake fern on the tall
stems rising beside the brambles. No sound save the dry grasshoppers
singing in the grass, and leaping before their footsteps; and the
robin's plaintive notes from the ash. So they went on and into the
silence of the wood. The soft warmth brooded over it--the winds were
still. High up in the beeches spots of red gold were widening slowly,
and the acorns showed thickly on the oaks. Then past narrow "drives,"
or tracks going through the woods, bounded on each side with endless
walls of ashpoles with branches of pole green; carpeted with dark-green
grass and darker moss luxuriating in the dank shade, and roofed with
spreading oak-spray. These vistas seemed to lead into unknown depths of
forest. They paused and looked down one, feeling an indefinite desire
of exploration; and as they looked in the silence a leaf fell, brown and
tanned, with a trembling rustle, and they saw its brown oval dot the
rank green grass, upon whose blades it was upborne. On again, and out
into a broad glade, where the rabbits had been at play, and raced to
their hiding-places. Here were clumps of beeches, brown with
innumerable nuts; straight-grown Spanish chestnuts, with spiny green
balls of fruit; knotted oaks; and tall limes, already yellow and filled
by the sunshine with a hazy shimmer of colour. Over the glade a dome of
deep-blue sky, and a warm loving sun, whose drowsy shadows lingered and
moved slow.
After a while they reached the hazel bushes, acres upon acres of them;
tall straight rods, with tapering upturned branches, whose leaves fell
in a shower when the stem was shaken. Nuts are the cunningest of fruit
in their manner of growth; outwardly they show a few clusters fairly
enough, especially bunches at an almost inaccessible height; when these
are gathered, those who are not aware of the ways of the hazel naturally
pass on, leaving at least twice as many unseen. The nuts grow under the
bough in such a position that, in pulling it down to reach a visible
bunch, the very motion of the bough as it bends hides the rest beneath
it. These will stay till they drop from the hoods, till, turning to a
dark and polished brown, they fall ratling from branch to branch to the
earth. There again the dead brown leaves hide them by similarity of
colour. So that, to thoroughly strip a hazel bush requires a knowledge
of the likely places and the keenest of eyes.
As for May, restless and ever in movement, glinting hither and thither
like a sunbeam when the shadows of the branches dance in the breeze, she
could never stay long enough to really search the boughs. She went from
thicket to thicket, constantly finding one that bore more than that she
had just left. This butterfly flight soon carried her away and hid her
among the bushes, though her merry laugh came back in answer to
Margaret's call. Felix of course was with her.
Like money-getting, nut-gathering grows upon the searcher. When pockets
are full and baskets running over, and a heap on the handkerchief spread
upon the ground, though the palate is weary with eating, and the arms
with working held high above the head, yet still the avarice increases.
So Margaret gathered and gathered, and laughed and chatted, and stood on
tiptoe, and enjoyed the gipsying. Her hat had fallen back almost upon
her shoulder, the impudent snatches of the branches loosened her hair,
and the fierce caress of the briars tore her skirt. Her cheek was
flushed with the bloom of pure young blood put swiftly in motion by the
labour. The grey eyes sparkled, and as she raised her hand the sleeve
dropped and gave a glimpse of the white polished wrist glowing among the
leaves. The excitement, the _abandon_ of the moment, gave another charm
to her beauty. It is where the river ripples that the sunbeams glisten,
not on the smooth still flow. She felt along the boughs for the
cluster, for what the eyes may miss the hand will often discover; she
let the boughs spring up a little way without quite releasing them, to
look a second time underneath before quitting hold. The heap of nuts
grew larger every moment.
Valentine and Geoffrey were there, helping to pull the boughs within
reach for her. Without a thought of evil, the very brightness, the
carelessness of her enjoyment, raised to a bitter height the smouldering
jealousy between them. The smile upon her face when turned towards
Geoffrey had the inspiration of love behind it, which he in his rising
anger could not see. Towards Valentine it was a smile only, though
seemingly as bright; yet he, eager for a sign, interpreted it as
something more. She knew that they had been the dearest friends, and in
her innocence never dreamed that a smile or a glance could play such
havoc with that friendship. Her heart she knew was Geoffrey's--it was
the very knowledge of his love that made her so happy that day. But
under the nut-tree, and the laugh, and the sunshine, fierce passions
were stirring in their hearts. Both were watching eagerly for a chance
of speaking to her privately; Valentine, to say words that had long been
as it were upon his lips, to ask her to accept him; Geoffrey, full of
reproaches, and yet with a guilty sense of lacking trust. When the
great bush was stripped to the uttermost as it seemed, Margaret stood
back a little distance to view it the better, and see that not one nut
had escaped.
"Ah," she cried, pointing to the topmost bough, "I can see a splendid
cluster. Look, Valentine, there must be five or six nuts in one bunch."
There was a fine and tempting cluster where she pointed, the sunlight
shining on it, and one side of the nuts rosy, as if ripened more towards
the beams. Geoffrey ran to the bush and seized the strong hazel high up
with his willow crook. It was an exceptionally large nut-tree stick,
stiff and tall, and scarcely yielded to his first attempt.
"Pull gently," said Margaret, all intent, "or you will shake them out,
and perhaps lose them."
"Can you reach them now?" he asked; for as the bough came down he could
not see well, being under it.
"Yes; I've got them. O!" For, as the tips of her fingers touched the
nuts, there was the sound of splitting wood, and the cluster flew up to
its original height. Geoffrey's willow crook had broken, as she had
said it would.
"Here are some," said Valentine, just behind; secretly glad at
Geoffrey's failure. He had gone to an adjacent bush and crooked a laden
bough down with his tough ash stick. Margaret turned to go there.
Instantly Geoffrey, angry and jealous, sprang at the hazel pole that had
baffled him, seized it as far up as possible, and hung with all his
weight. It bent; he put his foot against the stole, and with all his
great strength wrenched the bough from its juncture. With a loud crack
it parted and fell at her feet.
"Now take them," he said savagely. But the force of the fall had shaken
the nuts out and scattered them afar, lost among the grass and leaves.
"What a pity! The bough is spoilt too," said Margaret. "Why don't you
cut a crook like Valentine's?" She went towards Valentine's bush,
somewhat surprised at the vehemence of Geoffrey's manner.
Geoffrey took his knife and ran into the bushes to cut another crook.
Hardly had he disappeared in the thickets when he called to her.
"Margaret, Margaret! I have found your glove--you dropped it."
She went towards the voice; the moment she came near he grasped both her
hands tightly. There was no glove, it was a _ruse_ to speak to her.
"You seem to prefer _his_ society to mine," he said, in a low, hard
tone.
"What _do_ you mean?" Her glance and surprised expression reproached
him for his harshness. He hated himself for his next words, and yet he
uttered them; jealousy is cruel, and drove him on even against his
better mind.
"I mean that you play double--first with me and then with _him_."
Now this was not only positively untrue, but in the worst possible
taste; had he been cool he would never have said it; as it was he
instantly repented. She stood before him silent, all the blood gone
from her cheek in the extremity of her indignation, unable to speak.
Then she drew her hands away, and her breath came in short quick sobs.
"No, no, I did not mean it." He tried to take her hand again, but she
fled swiftly among the brake fern and the thickets seeking May. He
stood bewildered at his own folly; then his anger was redoubled against
Valentine instead of against himself. A minute or two afterwards he
heard a slight cry, as if caused by pain, and immediately went towards
it, but in a dazed kind of way. Valentine was swifter.
As Margaret ran between the bramble bushes and the nut-tree stoles,
winding round the tangled masses of fern, and increasing her pace as the
full significance of Geoffrey's insinuation became apparent to her, she
was heedless of her footsteps, and so caught her foot in a trailing bine
of honeysuckle, and fell on one knee. In falling she instinctively
grasped at the nearest bough, and thereby did the mischief; for a briar
was twisted round it, and a great hooked thorn ran deep into her thumb.
The sharp sudden pain caused her cry. Valentine was at her side in a
moment. He saw the thorn, which had broken away from the briar and was
fixed in the wound.
"I am so sorry," he said. "Let me take it out."
A tiny red globule of blood oozed from the white and polished skin,
contrasting so sweetly in colour that he actually paused half a second
to admire before he drew it.
"Quick, please," she said.
He drew it tenderly, and another larger crimson drop welled up, and
stood on the delicate white thumb. "It is out."
"You are sure the point is not left in?" He bent over to examine more
carefully. The sunbeams lit up her beautiful hand; temptation overcame
him and he kissed it, and the crimson drop stained his lip.
"Sir!" She angrily snatched it away. At the same moment she saw
Geoffrey looking through the parted bushes behind Valentine, who did not
know he was so near.
"A moment!" cried Valentine, in the flood of his passion. "Listen. I
love--"
But she rushed from him. Valentine followed her. Geoffrey let the
bushes come together, and Valentine did not see him. Margaret went
towards May's merry laugh, which she could hear not far off.
"May! May!"
"Here I am--by the oak."
Then Felix, knowing his _tete-a-tete_ with May was almost at an end,
snatched a kiss.
"I will go up to the mill again," said he. "I will succeed this time."
"Beware of the blackthorn," laughed May, and was very innocently engaged
looking at a sprig of oak with three young acorns on it when Margaret
came.
"I am glad I have found you."
"You have torn your sleeve!"
"In the briars--see my thumb."
"Aphrodite has pricked her hand instead of her foot this time," said
Felix. "We shall see a new flower in the spring. Let me bind it up?"
and he wrapped May's handkerchief round it. Then Geoffrey and Valentine
came, apart and yet together.
"I think it is time to return home," said May, guessing at once from the
expression of their faces and Margaret's manner that something was
wrong.
"Yes, I think so too," said Margaret. "We have plenty of nuts."
The joy of the day was over; so easily can a few jarring words cloud the
loveliest sky and darken the sweetest landscape. They left the wood and
returned to Greene Ferne. As they approached the house a labouring man
advanced and spoke to Margaret.
"Be this yourn, miss?" he said, and offered her the lost earring. "I
found un on the Down by the Cave, as you and measter here," (looking at
Geoffrey), "thuck night--"
"Wait a moment," said Margaret, in confusion, for the night adventure
had been carefully kept secret from all but Mrs Estcourt. "I will come
to you in a moment."
Valentine heard the man's words, and noted his reference to Geoffrey.
Instantly his jealousy was aroused--here was something secret. What had
they to do with the Cave at night? Nor was Margaret's halting
explanation, that she had dropped it while riding, satisfactory to him.
Altogether the situation was constrained. Both Valentine and Geoffrey
stayed at the house as late as they could purposely, but neither found
an opportunity of speaking alone with Margaret. When they left Greene
Ferne the two old friends at once took different roads.
Valentine, walking through the village, ascended a slight hill, and
overtook an old woman of the working class, who was groaning and
mumbling to herself, and bent almost double under a large bundle of
gleanings on her shoulder, and a heavy basket in her hand. As he came
up, he good-naturedly took the basket to relieve her, and accommodated
his pace to hers.
"You seem to have a heavy load," he said. In the dusk the old hag
either did not recognise him, or perhaps did not care if she did.
"I ain't got half a bundle," she grunted. "Thaay won't let a pore old
body glean when a-can't rip."
"Well, it's beautiful weather for the harvest."
"Aw, eez--the het [heat] makes um giddy: our ould Bill fell down; the
gearden be a-spoiling for rain."
"The farmers pay good wages now, don't they?"
"Um pays what um be obliged to."
"You have a good landlord here--Squire Thorpe."
"_He_! Drotted ould skinvlint! You go and look at thaay cottages:
thaay be his'n. The rain comes drough the thatch, and he won't mend it.
I be forced to put a umberella auver my bed nights when it rains."
"At all events, the farmers like him."
"Do um? Never heard say zo. His rabbits yeats their crops like a flock
of sheep."
"The vicar--Mr Basil--is kind to the poor, is he not?" asked Valentine,
forgetting for the moment his own ill-temper in the old woman's
bitterness and abuse of everybody and everything. He was most surprised
at her venomous spite against the squire, who he knew was of a kindly
disposition. She perfectly hissed at the mention of the vicar.
"Our paason! ould varmint--a gives all the coals and blankets at
Christmas to thaay as goes to church, and narn to thaay as be
chapel-volk. What have he done with the widders' money, I wants to
knaw?"
"What money was that?"
"Why, that as was left to us widders of this yer parish for ever: you
med see it stuck up in the chancel. I never seed none of it, nor
anybody else as ever I heard tell on."
"But you get wine and luxuries, no doubt, when ill?"
"A vine lot: it bean't for such as we."
"You seem to have some industrious people in the village, however: now,
that little grocer's shop where they sell--"
"You means Betsy Warren, what sells tobacco and snuff and lollipops and
whipcord. Her buys hares and birds from the poachers--her will get
notice to quit zum o' these yer days."
"But the blacksmith works hard. I always hear his hammer when I go by."
"What--_he_! The justices fined he a pound a bit ago for fighting
Mathew the cobbler. Mathew lives with Thompson's wife--he as was
transported for firing Farmer Ruck's rick-barken. That be a vine
thing--her be as bad as he."
"The new school will set you to rights."
"Aw, will a'? The schoolmaster kissed one of the wenches, and got sent
away; but them Timothy wenches bean't no better than um should be."
"Who's Timothy?"
"Doan't you knaw ould Timothy? He be a mower--a' will drink dree
gallons a day. That young Sam'l lodges with he: he be a shepherd, a' be
a new chap. I doan't knaw much about he, but I've hearn as a' had six
weeks for stealing lambs."
"H'm!" said Valentine, smiling. "They all seem a bad lot."
"Zo um be."
"But surely Mrs Estcourt is good to the poor: you don't know anything
against her?"
"Aw, doan't I? What be her daughter up to? What wur her a-doing on the
Down thuck night with thuck gurt lanky chap from the squire's as goes
arter her? Mebbe you knaws un."
"When was it?" asked Valentine, with sudden interest, all his annoyance
and bitterness returning. "What do you mean?"
"Miss Margaret--a vine miss she be; zo grand. Lord, I minds when
farmers' daughters was Molly and Marjory, and no vine Miss about it.
That ould Jane, the housekeeper at Fisher's--warn you knaws her?--her
tould zum on um, and zum on um told Mathew, as tould Betsy, as tould I."
"Told what?" sharply.
"What I ses, to be zure. Miss and he wur out thegither a-main bit thuck
night. 'Tain't no use caddling I--I can't tell ee no more. What,
bean't you going to carry that basket no furder?"
For as they reached the top of the hill, Valentine, angry now, handed it
back to her; she barely took it, and made no sign of thanks.
"Mebbe you'll give I a bit of snuff?" she said. He gave her a shilling
and strode on swiftly, full of furious thoughts, the more so because all
these innuendoes afforded nothing by which an open quarrel could be
fixed on Geoffrey.
"This is intolerable," he said to himself, "that he should make Margaret
a common talk among these people. What on earth did the old woman
allude to, and how came that earring lost?"
It was a pity that the Down adventure had been kept secret; and yet it
was natural enough that it should be. The old woman, as Valentine
walked rapidly on in the dusk, put the shilling in her pocket,
readjusted her burden, and tottered on, muttering to herself, "The gurt
chattering fool to come a' hindering I!"