UNFILIAL.
"At seven o'clock all must be ready," said Mr. Sharp, towards the
close of a hurried conversation with Miss Patch, Grace Oglander being
sent out of the way, according to established signal; "there is no
time to lose, and no ladies' tricks of unpunctuality, if you please.
We must have day-light for these horrid forest-roads, and time it so
as to get into the London road about half-past eight. We must be in
London by two in the morning; the horses, and all that will be
forthcoming. Kit rides outside, and I follow on horse-back. Hannah,
why do you hesitate?"
"Because I cannot--I cannot go away, without having seen that Jesuit
priest in the pig-net wallowing. It is such a grand providential
work--the arm of the Lord has descended from heaven, and bound him in
his own meshes. Luke, I beg you, I implore you--I can pack up
everything in an hour--do not rob me of a sight like that."
"Hannah, are you mad? You have never been allowed to go near that
place, and you never shall!"
"Well, you know best; but it does seem very cruel, after all the lack
of grace I have borne with here, to miss the great Protestant work
thus accomplished. But suppose that the child should refuse to come
with us--we have no letters now, nor any other ministration."
"We have no time now for such trumpery; we must carry things now with
a much higher hand. Everything hangs upon the next few hours; and by
this time to-morrow night all shall be safe: Kit and the girl gone for
their honeymoon, and you sitting under the most furious dustman that
ever thumped a cushion."
"Oh, Luke, how can you speak as if you really had no reverence?"
"Because there is no time for such stuff now. We have the strength,
and we must use it. Just go and get ready. I must ride to meet my
people. The girl, I suppose, is with Kit by this time. What a pair of
nincompoops they will be!"
"I am sure they will be a very pretty pair--so far as poor sinful
exterior goes--and, what is of a thousand-fold more importance, their
worldly means will be the means of grace to hundreds of our poor
fellow-creatures, who, because their skin is of a different tint, and
in their own opinion a finer one, are debarred----"
"Now, Hannah, no time for that. Get ready. And mind that there must be
no feminine weakness if circumstances should compel us to employ a
little compulsion. Call to your mind that the Lord is with us; the
sword of the Lord and of Gideon."
Pleased with his knowledge of Holy Writ, he went to the place where
his horse was tied, and there he found a man with a message for him,
which he just stopped to hearken.
"As loovin' as a pair o' toortle doves; he hath a-got her by the
middle; as sweet as my missus were to me, afore us went to church
togither!" Black George had been set to watch Kit and Gracie, during
their private interview, lest any precaution should be overlooked.
"Right! Here's a guinea for you, my man. Now, you know what to do till
I come back--to stay where you are, and keep a sharp look-out. Can the
fool in the net do without any water? Very well, after dark, give him
some food, bandage his eyes, and walk him to and fro, and let him go
in Banbury.
"All right, governor. A rare bait he shall have of it, with a little
swim in the canal, to clane un."
"No hardship, no cruelty!" cried Mr. Sharp, with his finger to his
forehead, as he rode away; "only a little wise discipline to lead him
into closer attention to his own affairs."
Black George looked after his master with a grin of admiration. "He
sticketh at nort," said George to himself, as he began to fill a grimy
pipe; "he sticketh at nort no more than I would. And with all that
house and lands to back un! Most folk with money got no pluck left,
for thinking of others as owneth the same. I'll be danged if he
dothn't carry on as bold as if he slep' in a rabbit-hole." With these
words he sat down to watch the house, according to his orders.
But this man's description of what he had seen in the wood was not a
correct one--much as he meant to speak the truth--for many reasons,
and most of all this: that he ran away before the end of it. It was a
pretty and a moving scene; but the rabbit-man cared a great deal more
for the pipe, which he could not smoke in this duty, and the guinea
which he hoped to get out of it. And it happened, as near as one can
tell, on this wise:
Grace Oglander, came down the winding wooded path, with her heart
pit-a-patting at every step, because she was ordered to meet somebody.
An idea of that kind did not please her. A prude, or a prim, she would
never wish to be; and a little bit of flirting had been a great
relief, and a pleasant change in her loneliness. But to bring matters
to so stern a point, and have to say what she meant to say, in as few
words as possible, and then walk off--these strong measures were not
to her liking, because she was a most kind-hearted girl, and had much
good-will towards Christopher.
Kit on the other hand, came along fast, with a resolute brow and firm
heavy stride. He had made up his mind to be wretched for life, if the
heart upon which he had set his own should refuse to throb
responsively. But whatever his fate might be, he would tread the
highest path of generosity, chivalry, and honour; and this resolution
was well set forth in the following nervous and pathetic lines, found
in his blotting-paper after his untimely--but stay, let us not
anticipate. These words had been watered with a flood of tears.
"C. F. S. TO MISS G. O.
Say that happier mortal woos thee,
Say that nobler knight pursues thee,
While this blighted being teareth
All the festive robes it weareth,
While this dead heart splits to lose thee--
Ah, could I so misuse thee?
Though this bosom, rent by thunder,
Crash its last hope anchor'd in thee;
Liefer would I groan thereunder,
Than by falsehood win thee!"
And now they met in a gentle place, roofed with leaves, and floored
with moss, and decorated with bluebells. The chill of the earth was
gone by and forgotten, and the power of the sky come back again;
stately tree, and graceful bush, and brown depths of tangled
prickliness--everything having green life in it--was spreading its
green, and proud of it. Under this roof, and in these halls of bright
young verdure, the youth and the maid came face to face befittingly.
Grace, as bright as a rose, and flushing with true tint of wild rose,
drew back and bowed, and then, perceiving serious hurt of Christopher,
kindly offered a warm white hand--a delicious touch for any one. Kit
laid hold of this and kept it, though with constant fear of doing more
than was established, and, trying to look firm and overpowering, led
the fair young woman to a trunk of fallen oak.
Here they both sat down; and Grace was not so far as she could wish
from yielding to a little kind of trembling which arose in her. She
glanced at Kit sideways whenever she felt that he could not be looking
at her; and she kept her wise eyes mainly downward whenever they
seemed to be wanted--not that she could not look up and speak, only
that she would rather wait until there was no other help for it; and
as for that, she felt no fear, being sure that he was afraid of her.
Kit, on the other hand, was full of fear, and did all he could in the
craftiest manner to make his love look up at him. He could not tell
how she might take his tale; but he knew by instinct that his eyes
would help him where his tongue might fail. At last he said--
"Now, will you promise faithfully not to be angry with me?"
"Oh yes, oh yes--to be sure," said Grace; "why should I be angry?"
"Because I can't help it--I give you my honour. I have tried very
hard, but I cannot help it."
"Then who could be angry with you, unless it was something very
wicked?"
"It is not very wicked, it is very good--too good for me, a great
deal, I am afraid."
"There cannot be many things too good for you; you are simple, and
brave, and gentle."
"But this is too good for me, ever so much, because it is your own
dear self."
Grace was afraid that this was coming; and now she lifted her soft
blue eyes and looked at him quite tenderly, and yet so directly and
clearly that he knew in a moment what she had for him--pity, and
trust, and liking; but of heart's love not one atom.
"I know what you mean," he whispered sadly, with his bright young face
cast down. "I cannot think what can have made me such a fool. Only
please to tell me one thing. Has there been any chap in front of me?"
"How can I tell what you mean?" asked Grace; but her colour showed
that she could guess.
"I must not ask who it is, of course. Only say it's not the swell that
drives the four bay horses."
"I do not know any one that drives four bay horses. And now I think
that I had better go. Only, as I cannot ever meet you any more, I must
try to tell you that I like you very much, and never shall forget what
I owe to you; and I hope you will very soon recover from this--this
little disappointment; and my dear father, as soon as we return to
England--for I must go to fetch him----"
"Grace--oh, let me call you 'Grace' once or twice, it can't matter
here in the middle of the wood--Grace, I was so taken up with myself,
and full of my miserable folly, which of course I ought to have known
better----"
"I must not stop to hear any more. There is my hand--yes, of course
you may kiss it, after all that you have done for me."
"I am going to do a great deal more for you," cried Kit, quite carried
away with the yielding kindness of lovely fingers. "For your sake I am
going to injure and disgrace my own father--though the Lord knows the
shame is of his own making. It is my father who has kept you here; and
to-night he is going to carry you off. Miss Patch is only a tool of
his. Your own father knows not a word about it. He believes you to be
dead and buried. Your tombstone is set up at Beckley, and your father
goes and cries over it."
"But his letters--his letters from Demerara? Oh! my head swims round!
Let me hold by this tree for a moment!"
Kit threw his arm round her delicate waist to save her from falling;
and away crept George, who had lurked behind a young birch-tree too
far off to hear their words.
"You must rouse up your courage," said Kit, with a yearning gaze at
his sweet burden, yet taking no advantage of her. "Rouse up your
courage, and I will do my best to save you from myself. It is very
hard--it is cruelly cruel, and nobody will thank me!"
"His letters from Demerara!" cried Grace, having scarcely heard a word
he said. "How could he have written them? You must be wrong."
"Of such letters I have never heard. I suppose they must have been
forgeries. I give you my word that your father has been the whole of
the time at Beckley, and a great deal too ill to go from home."
"Too ill!--my father? Yes, of course--of course! How could he help
being ill without me? And he thinks I am dead? Oh! he thinks that I am
dead! I wonder that he could dare to be alive. But let me try to think
a little."
She tottered back to the old stump of the tree, and sat down there,
and burst forth into an extraordinary gush of weeping: more sad and
pitiful tears had never watered an innocent face before. "Let me
cry!--let me cry!" was her only answer when the young man clumsily
tried to comfort.
Kit got up and strode about; his indignation at her deep low sobs, and
her brilliant cheeks like a river's bed, and her rich hair dabbled
like drifted corn, and above all the violent pain which made her lay
both hands to her heart and squeeze--his wrath made him long to knock
down people entitled to his love and reverence. He knew that her heart
was quite full of her father in all his long desolation, and was
making a row of pictures of him in deepening tribulation; but a girl
might go on like that for ever; a man must take the lead of her.
"If you please, Miss Oglander," he said, going up and lifting both her
hands, and making her look up at him, "you have scarcely five minutes
to make up your mind whether you wish to save your father, or to be
carried away from him."
Grace in confusion and fear looked up. All about herself she had
forgotten; she had even forgotten that Kit was near; she was only
pondering slowly now--as the mind at most critical moments does--some
straw of a trifle that blew across.
"Do you care to save your father's life?" asked Kit, rather sternly,
not seeing in the least the condition of her mind, but wondering at
it. "If you do, you must come with me, this moment, down the hill,
down the hill, as fast as ever you can. I know a place where they can
never find us. We must hide there till dark, and then I will take you
to Beckley."
But the young lady's nerves would not act at command. The shock and
surprise had been too severe. All she could do was to gaze at Kit,
with soft imploring eyes, that tried to beg pardon for her
helplessness.
"If we stay here another minute, you are lost!" cried Kit, as he heard
the sound of the carriage-wheels near the cottage, on the rise above
them. "One question only--will you trust me?"
She moved her pale lips to say "yes," and faintly lifted one hand to
him. Kit waited for no other sign, but caught her in his sturdy arms,
and bore her down the hill as fast as he could go, without scratching
her snow-white face, or tearing the arm which hung on his shoulder.