The time was altered at Panty-cuckoo Farm. Christmas had come and
gone--rather a melancholy Christmas. The weather had been raw and
chill; Mrs Llewellyn had been laid up with sciatica; and the farmer had
appeared depressed and out of spirits. Hugh Owen had left off coming
to the farm altogether, at which Nell was not surprised, though her
mother grumbled, and her father said that with some people out of sight
seemed out of mind. But with the advent of spring things grew better.
Is it not always the way with spring? Its bright, hopeful surroundings
seemed to make one ashamed of murmuring over one’s own troubles. The
bursting buds; the rivulets released from the icy grip of winter; the
callow birds; the balmy life-giving air; all speak of renewed action
and strength, after the numbing effects of winter. One grows young
again with spring. The buoyancy of the atmosphere, and all the glad
sights and sounds that salute one’s eyes and ears, seem to fill one
with new feelings--new ideas--new hopes. Even Nell succumbed to the
delights of the season, and felt sorry to think she had driven her
kindest friend from her side. She had tried several times to see Hugh
Owen, and make up her quarrel with him, but he always managed to avoid
meeting her. There was a baby at Dale Farm now, over which Hetty and
her mother-in-law were crooning half the day, with which, of course,
old Mrs Llewellyn was delighted, but which Nell never saw without a
sigh. She thought that when Hugh christened her little nephew, she
would at least secure a word or two with him in private, but it was not
so. He never turned his eyes her way during the ceremony, and pleaded
other duties as an excuse for not being present at the substantial
feast which was spread for them afterwards at Dale Farm.
‘I can’t think what’s come of Hugh lately,’ said his mother. ‘He was
never what you might call very sociable-like, but now it’s a wonder
ever to get a word out of him. He seems to spend his life praying
people out of the world, and I’m sure it don’t make him more cheerful
at home.’
‘There, missus, let the lad alone, do!’ exclaimed her husband. ‘You
know’d from the first that he was good for nothing but the ministry.
He’s got no heart, nor stomach, nor liver, nor nothing, hasn’t Hugh;
he’s just a minister and nothing else. He’s been as silent and as sulky
as a bear for the last three months, but I take no notice of it. Let
him go on his own way, say I, and thank the Lord, ’tain’t mine.’
‘Well, I suppose we’ve offended him, though I’m sure I can’t tell
how,’ interposed Mrs Llewellyn, ‘for he’s not been near us for ever
so long. When our Nell was ill, he was at the farm every day, praying
most beautiful, and bringing her books and flowers, and such-like; but
I don’t believe we’ve seen him, not to speak of, since Christmas, have
we, Nell?’
‘I don’t think we have, mother,’ replied Nell consciously.
‘Oh, that’s plain enough,’ said Farmer Owen. ‘You ain’t dying any
longer, my lass, or you’d have Master Hugh at your bedside often
enough. He don’t care for lasses with rosy cheeks, and who can eat a
good dinner, and use their legs. They’ve no interest for a minister.
You shouldn’t have got well, if you wanted to keep Hugh by your side.’
‘Well, for my part, I wish she was better than she is, if we never saw
Hugh again for it, begging your pardons, neighbours. But Nell ain’t
half satisfactory. Dr Cowell, he says it’s only the weakness after the
fever, but she’s a long time coming round, to my mind. She eats pretty
well, but she hasn’t got any life in her, nor she can’t seem to take
any interest in anything. Her memory too is something dreadful. She’s
always dreaming when she ought to be doing. We must see if we can’t
send her to Swansea this summer for the benefit of the sea air.’
Nell coloured faintly as she replied,--
‘Now, mother, I wish you’d talk of something more interesting than me.
I’m right enough. And we’re all talking of ourselves, and forgetting
the little man’s health. Who’ll propose the toast? Shall I? Here’s to
the very good health of Griffith William Owen, and may he live a long
life and a happy one!’
And in the chatter and congratulations that followed the toast, Nell
and Hugh were both happily forgotten. All the same, she wished he
had not taken her communication so much to heart, and was dreadfully
afraid lest his evident avoidance of Panty-cuckoo Farm should end by
directing some sort of suspicion towards herself. It was about this
time that Nell perceived that there was something decidedly wrong with
her father. Not in health, but in mind. He seemed to regard everything
in its worst light, and to have some objection to make to whatever
might be said to him. If her mother remarked how comfortable and happy
Hetty was in her new home, Mr Llewellyn would observe,--
‘Ay, ay, it’s just as well she’s feathered her nest before troubles
come,’ or if Nell said she felt stronger and better for the fine
weather, it would be, ‘Well, I don’t know as it’s a thing to crow over.
Many a person’s happier dead than alive.’
At last one morning she came down to breakfast to find him in a brown
study over a lawyer’s letter, which had reached him in a long, blue
envelope. The postman was a rare visitor at Panty-cuckoo Farm. The
Llewellyns had not many relatives, and were not a writing family, if
they had had them. Everything went on too simply with them to require
much correspondence. Above all, a lawyer’s letter was a rarity.
‘Had bad news, father?’ inquired Nell, as she met him.
‘Ay, my lass, as bad as it could well be. Sir Archibald Bowmant’s going
to raise the rent of the old farm again, and I don’t know how it’s to
be made to pay it. Times have been awful bad the last year or two,
Nell. Of course, the mother didn’t say nothing to you up in London
town about it. Where was the use? You was well provided for in a rare
good and respectable situation; we knew you was safe, and didn’t want
to worry you with our troubles. But since Sir Archibald’s married this
new lady he’s been an altered man. He used to think a deal of his
tenants in the old times, and I don’t say he’s a bad landlord now, but
she runs him into a lot of money, I hear, and then the land has to pay
for it. Here’s a notice from the solicitor, to say the rents will all
be raised again after next summer. It’s deuced hard on a man like
me. I’ve spent more than I knew where to put my hand on, this autumn,
draining and manuring, and now I shall have to pay all I hoped to make
by it on the rent. But it can’t go on for ever. The worm will turn some
day, and I shall chuck up the farm and emigrate.’
‘Oh, father, don’t talk like that!’ cried his wife. ‘What would you and
I do emigrating at our age? ’Tisn’t as if we were young and strong. We
should die before we had crossed the sea. We’ll get on right enough,
now I’ve got Nell to help me with the dairy, and that must keep us
going till you’re straight again.’
‘You’re a good wife, Mary,’ said the farmer, ‘but you’re a fool for all
that. Will the dairy keep the men and horses, and pay for the subsoil
dressings and the fish-manure and the losses which every year brings
with it? You women don’t understand the number of expenses keeping up
a large farm like this entails. I’ve only just done it for years past,
and if the rents are to be raised, why, I _can’t_ do it, and that’s
all.’
‘But you won’t decide in a hurry, father?’ said Nell.
‘No, lass, no. But it’s very discouraging. It takes the heart out of
a man for work, or anything. Sometimes I wish I had emigrated when I
was a young man. There, out in Canada, the Government give a man one
hundred and fifty acres of land free, and, if he’s got a little money
of his own and a little gumption, he can make a living for his family,
and have something to leave behind him when he dies.’
‘Well, well,’ said his daughter soothingly, ‘if the worst comes to the
worst, father, I will go out to Canada with mother and you, and we’ll
see if we can’t manage to keep ourselves alive somehow.’
She put her hand on the old man’s grey head as she spoke, and he got
hold of it and drew it down with his own.
‘What a soft, white hand it is!’ he said admiringly. ‘You’re a good,
kind lass, Nell, but I doubt if you could do much work with such
fingers as these. Where did you get them from? Who’d think you’d
done hard work in your lifetime? They look like a lady’s, so smooth
and soft. You must have had a fine easy place of it up at Lord
Ilfracombe’s, Nell. It was a pity you ever left it. You won’t get such
another in a hurry.’
‘No, father, I know that,’ she answered sadly.
‘And you think you were foolish to chuck it, my girl? You fret a bit
over it sometimes, eh, Nell?’
‘Sometimes, father,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Ah, my lass, you see we never know what’s best for us. I was main glad
to see ye home, so was mother; but if times get worse than they are, I
shall be sorry ye ever came.’
‘Then I’ll go to service again,’ she answered quickly. ‘Don’t be afraid
I’ll ever be a burden on you, dear father. I am capable of filling many
situations--a nurse’s, for instance. If, as you say, times get worse,
I’ll practise on little Griffith, and advertise for a place in the
nursery.’
She spoke in jest, but Mr Llewellyn took her words in earnest.
‘Ay, my lass, and you’d get it too. The earl would give you a grand
character, I’m bound to say. Wouldn’t he, now? Three years is a good
time to stay in one place.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Nell hastily, as she remembered the
circumstances under which she had left Grosvenor Square, and hurried
away for fear her father should take it in his head to question her
about it.
Poor Nell! Her absent lord was never absent from her heart or thoughts;
but she dared not indulge herself in too much reminiscence lest she
should break down under it. Whilst Lord Ilfracombe was growing happier
day by day in the increasing affection of his wife, the unfortunate
woman whom he believed to be buried beneath the bosom of the river
was wearing her heart out for news of him, and wondering often how
she could possibly contrive to get sight or speech with him without
attracting the attention of her friends. By day she had little leisure
to indulge in dreaming; but as soon as night fell, and she found
herself in solitude and silence on her bed, the ghost of her happy,
reckless past would walk out of its sanctuary to confront her, and she
would lie awake half the night, pondering on Ilfracombe’s appearance,
and recalling his tenderest moments and sayings and doings, till she
had worked herself up into a state of despair. She had persuaded
herself that her separation from her lover was no fault of his, but
the combined work of Mr Sterndale and the woman he had married, and
that if Ilfracombe saw her again all his first admiration and affection
would be rekindled.
Nell did not stop to consider how bitterly unfair this would be to his
young wife. She hated the very thought of Nora, and would have injured
her in any possible way. Lord Ilfracombe was hers--hers alone--that
was the way she argued--and his wife had robbed her of him, and must
take the consequences, whatever they might be. Her love for him was so
deep, so passionate, so overwhelming, he could not resist nor stand
against it. Had she only refused to let him leave England, his marriage
would never have taken place. It had been a cheat, a robbery, a fraud,
and such things never thrive. If they only met--if she could only meet
him--he and his wife would both have to acknowledge the truth of what
she said.
Meanwhile, however, she could gain no news of the Earl of Ilfracombe,
her own act of supposed suicide having put the possibility of hearing
of him out of her reach. She could not come in contact with him again
without her former position in his household being made known. For this
reason, as long as she remained with her parents, Nell saw no chance of
seeing him. And it was only at times that she desired it. At others,
she felt as if the sight of her perfidious lover would kill her--as if
she would run miles the other way sooner than encounter him; and these
were the despairing moments, when she wept till she was nearly blind,
and made her mother rather impatient, because she would not confess
what ailed her, nor say what she wanted. The poor girl was passing
through the gates of hell, through which most of us have to pass during
our lifetime, in which whoever enters must leave Hope behind, for the
portals are so dark and gloomy that Hope could not exist there. Some
women will get over a disappointment like this in a reasonable time;
some never get over it at all; and Nell Llewellyn was one of the
latter. Her very soul had entered into her love for Lord Ilfracombe,
and she could not disentangle it. It had not been an ordinary love with
which she had regarded him, but an ardent worship--such worship as a
devotee renders to the God of his religion. I do not say that such
women never love again, but they never forget the first love, which is
ready to revive at the first opportunity, and which lives with them all
through the exercise of the second, glorifying it, as it were, by the
halo thrown over it from the past.
Nell was still in a state of hopeless collapse. She had not got over
the news of Ilfracombe’s marriage in the slightest degree. She was
perfectly aware that he had shut the gates of Paradise between them for
evermore; yet she often experienced this feverish anxiety to learn from
his own lips in what light he regarded their separation.
Meanwhile her conscience occasionally accused her of not having behaved
as kindly as she might to Hugh Owen--sometimes gave her a sickening
qualm also, as she remembered she had parted with her cherished secret
to a man who had apparently quarrelled with her ever since. He had
assured her it was safe with him, but Nell felt that he despised her
for the confession she had made, and might not his contempt lead him
to forget his promise? She wanted further assurance that he would be
faithful and true.
She went over to the Dale Farm far oftener than she had been wont to
do (which Hetty accepted entirely as a compliment to her baby), in the
hope of encountering him; but he always managed to slink away before
she reached the house, or to have some excuse for leaving directly
afterwards.
One afternoon, towards the end of May, however, as she distinctly saw
him hurrying off through the fields at the back, with a book in his
hand, Nell waited till he was well out of sight, and then, altering her
course, turned also and followed him up.